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[illeg] of specie was in the air" & "that men's minds were prepared for it."  I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally [illeg] various naturalist, & never happened to come across a single one, who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. Even L. & H. though they wd listen to me never seem to agree. I tried once or twice to explain what I meant by natural selection, but never succeed in making my listeners ever understand me: What I believe was strictly true is there was an enormous accumulation of well observed facts stored in the minds of naturalists ready to take out their proper places, as soon as any theory which would reuse them, was sufficiently explained. Another element in the success of the book, was its publication in moderate compass, & this I owe to Wallace; had I published on the scale in which I began to write in 1856, it wd have made the book 4 or 5 times as long as the Origin & very few wd have had the patience to read it.

I gained much by not publishing for 20 long years, after the theory had been clearly conceived viz from 1839 to 1859