During the last two months of 1859 I was fully occupied in preparing a second edition of the Origin, and by an enormous correspondence.  On January 1, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, but it was not published until the beginning of 1868, the delay having been caused partly by frequent periods of illness, one of which lasted seven months, and partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects which at the time interested me more.

My Descent of Man was published in February, 1871.  As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law.  Accordingly I collected notes on the subject for my own satisfaction, but not, for a long time, with any intention of publishing.  Although in the Origin of Species the derivation of any particular species is never discussed, yet I thought it best, in order that no honorable man should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that by the work “light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”  It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to parade, without giving any evidence, my conviction with respect to his origin.

But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to me advisable to work up such notes as I possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of man.  I was the more glad to do so as it gave me an opportunity of fully discussing sexual selection—­a subject which had always greatly interested me.  This subject, and that of the variation of our domestic productions, together with the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole subjects which I have been able to write about in full, so as to use all the materials which I have collected.  The Descent of Man took me three years to write, but then, as usual, some of this time was lost by ill-health and some was consumed by preparing new editions and other minor works.  A second and largely corrected edition of the Descent appeared in 1874.

(1860) THE KINGDOM OF ITALY ESTABLISHED, Giuseppe Garibaldi and John
       Webb Probyn

After the suppression of the Italian Revolution, by Austria, in 1849, and the restoration of Austrian power in Italy, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, who had headed the movement for Italian independence and had been defeated, abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel.  The new King, as Victor Emmanuel II, succeeded to the throne March 23, 1849, the day of his father’s defeat at Novara.  He was a liberal sovereign and zealous for the cause of his country.  With the aid of his great minister, Count Cavour, he proceeded with the work of securing the unity and freedom of Italy.  In 1859 Sardinia and France, in alliance, defeated Austria.  In