117. TO D.T. ANSTED…

117. TO D.T. ANSTED

(117/1. The following letter was published in Professor Meldola's presidential address to the Entomological Society, 1897, and to him we are indebted for a copy.)

15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, October 27th [1860].

As I am away from home on account of my daughter's health, I do not know your address, and fly this at random, and it is of very little consequence if it never reaches you.

I have just been reading the greater part of your "Geological Gossip," and have found part very interesting; but I want to express my admiration at the clear and correct manner in which you have given a sketch of Natural Selection. You will think this very slight praise; but I declare that the majority of readers seem utterly incapable of comprehending my long argument. Some of the reviewers, who have servilely stuck to my illustrations and almost to my words, have been correct, but extraordinarily few others have succeeded. I can see plainly, by your new illustrations and manner and order of putting the case, that you thoroughly comprehend the subject. I assure you this is most gratifying to me, and it is the sole way in which the public can be indoctrinated. I am often in despair in making the generality of NATURALISTS even comprehend me. Intelligent men who are not naturalists and have not a bigoted idea of the term species, show more clearness of mind. I think that you have done the subject a real service, and I sincerely thank you. No doubt there will be much error found in my book, but I have great confidence that the main view will be, in time, found correct; for I find, without exception, that those naturalists who went at first one inch with me now go a foot or yard with me.

This note obviously requires no answer.

118. TO H.W. BATES. Down, November 22nd [1860]

I thank you sincerely for writing to me and for your very interesting letter. Your name has for very long been familiar to me, and I have heard of your zealous exertions in the cause of Natural History. But I did not know that you had worked with high philosophical questions before your mind. I have an old belief that a good observer really means a good theorist (118/1. For an opposite opinion, see Letter 13.), and I fully expect to find your observations most valuable. I am very sorry to hear that your health is shattered; but I trust under a healthy climate it may be restored. I can sympathise with you fully on this score, for I have had bad health for many years, and fear I shall ever remain a confirmed invalid. I am delighted to hear that you, with all your large practical knowledge of Natural History, anticipated me in many respects and concur with me. As you say, I have been thoroughly well attacked and reviled (especially by entomologists--Westwood, Wollaston, and A. Murray have all reviewed and sneered at me to their hearts' content), but I care nothing about their attacks; several really good judges go a long way with me, and I observe that all those who go some little way tend to go somewhat further. What a fine philosophical mind your friend Mr. Wallace has, and he has acted, in relation to me, like a true man with a noble spirit. I see by your letter that you have grappled with several of the most difficult problems, as it seems to me, in Natural History--such as the distinctions between the different kinds of varieties, representative species, etc. Perhaps I shall find some facts in your paper on intermediate varieties in intermediate regions, on which subject I have found remarkably little information. I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear that you have attended to the curious point of equatorial refrigeration. I quite agree that it must have been small; yet the more I go into that question the more convinced I feel that there was during the Glacial period some migration from north to south. The sketch in the "Origin" gives a very meagre account of my fuller MS. essay on this subject.

I shall be particularly obliged for a copy of your paper when published (118/2. Probably a paper by Bates entitled "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley" ("Trans. Entomol. Soc." Volume V., page 335, 1858-61).); and if any suggestions occur to me (not that you require any) or questions, I will write and ask.

I have at once to prepare a new edition of the "Origin," (118/3. Third Edition, March, 1861.), and I will do myself the pleasure of sending you a copy; but it will be only very slightly altered.

Cases of neuter ants, divided into castes, with intermediate gradations (which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-ant, page 241 (please look at the passage.)

119. TO T.H. HUXLEY

(119/1. This refers to the first number of the new series of the "Natural History Review," 1861, a periodical which Huxley was largely instrumental in founding, and of which he was an editor (see Letter 107). The first series was published in Dublin, and ran to seven volumes between 1854 and 1860. The new series came to an end in 1865.)

Down, January, 3rd [1861].

I have just finished No. 1 of the "Natural History Review," and must congratulate you, as chiefly concerned, on its excellence. The whole seems to me admirable,--so admirable that it is impossible that other numbers should be so good, but it would be foolish to expect it. I am rather a croaker, and I do rather fear that the merit of the articles will be above the run of common readers and subscribers. I have been much interested by your brain article. (119/2. The "Brain article" of Huxley bore the title "On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals," and appeared in No. 1, January 1861, page 67. It was Mr. Huxley's vindication of the unqualified contradiction given by him at the Oxford meeting of the British Association to Professor Owen's assertions as to the difference between the brains of man and the higher apes. The sentence omitted by Owen in his lecture before the University of Cambridge was a footnote on the close structural resemblance between Homo and Pithecus, which occurs in his paper on the characters of the class Mammalia in the "Linn. Soc. Journal," Volume II., 1857, page 20. According to Huxley the lecture, or "Essay on the Classification of the Mammalia," was, with this omission, a reprint of the Linnean paper. In "Man's Place in Nature," page 110, note, Huxley remarks: "Surely it is a little singular that the 'anatomist,' who finds it 'difficult' to 'determine the difference' between Homo and Pithecus, should yet range them, on anatomical grounds, in distinct sub-classes.") What a complete and awful smasher (and done like a "buttered angel") it is for Owen! What a humbug he is to have left out the sentence in the lecture before the orthodox Cambridge dons! I like Lubbock's paper very much: how well he writes. (119/3. Sir John Lubbock's paper was a review of Leydig on the Daphniidae. M'Donnell's was "On the Homologies of the Electric Organ of the Torpedo," afterwards used in the "Origin" (see Edition VI., page 150).) M'Donnell, of course, pleases me greatly. But I am very curious to know who wrote the Protozoa article: I shall hear, if it be not a secret, from Lubbock. It strikes me as very good, and, by Jove, how Owen is shown up--"this great and sound reasoner"! By the way, this reminds me of a passage which I have just observed in Owen's address at Leeds, which a clever reviewer might turn into good fun. He defines (page xc) and further on amplifies his definition that creation means "a process he knows not what." And in a previous sentence he says facts shake his confidence that the Apteryx in New Zealand and Red Grouse in England are "distinct creations." So that he has no confidence that these birds were produced by "processes he knows not what!" To what miserable inconsistencies and rubbish this truckling to opposite opinions leads the great generaliser! (119/4. In the "Historical Sketch," which forms part of the later editions of the "Origin," Mr. Darwin made use of Owen's Leeds Address in the manner sketched above. See "Origin," Edition VI., page xvii.)

Farewell: I heartily rejoice in the clear merit of this number. I hope Mrs. Huxley goes on well. Etty keeps much the same, but has not got up to the same pitch as when you were here. Farewell.

120. TO JAMES LAMONT. Down, February 25th [1861]

I am extremely much obliged for your very kind present of your beautiful work, "Seasons with the Sea-Horses;" and I have no doubt that I shall find much interesting from so careful and acute an observer as yourself. (120/1. "Seasons with the Sea-Horses; or, Sporting Adventures in the Northern Seas." London, 1861. Mr. Lamont (loc. cit., page 273) writes: "The polar bear seems to me to be nothing more than a variety of the bears inhabiting Northern Europe, Asia, and America; and it surely requires no very great stretch of the imagination to suppose that this variety was originally created, not as we see him now, but by individuals of Ursus arctos in Siberia, who, finding their means of subsistence running short, and pressed by hunger, ventured on the ice and caught some seals. These individuals would find that they could make a subsistence in this way, and would take up their residence on the shore and gradually take to a life on the ice...Then it stands to reason that those individuals who might happen to be palest in colour would have the best chance of succeeding in surprising seals...The process of Natural Selection would do the rest, and Ursus arctos would in the course of a few thousands, or a few millions of years, be transformed into the variety at present known as Ursus maritimus." The author adds the following footnote (op. cit., page 275): "It will be obvious to any one that I follow Mr. Darwin in these remarks; and, although the substance of this chapter was written in Spitzbergen, before "The Origin of Species" was published, I do not claim any originality for my views; and I also cheerfully acknowledge that, but for the publication of that work in connection with the name of so distinguished a naturalist, I never would have ventured to give to the world my own humble opinions on the subject.")

P.S. I have just been cutting the leaves of your book, and have been very much pleased and surprised at your note about what you wrote in Spitzbergen. As you thought it out independently, it is no wonder that you so clearly understand Natural Selection, which so few of my reviewers do or pretend not to do.

I never expected to see any one so heroically bold as to defend my bear illustration. (120/2. "In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects in the water."--"Origin," Edition VI., page 141. See Letter 110.) But a man who has done all that you have done must be bold! It is laughable how often I have been attacked and misrepresented about this bear. I am much pleased with your remarks, and thank you cordially for coming to the rescue.

121. TO W.B. TEGETMEIER

(121/1. Mr. Darwin's letters to Mr. Tegetmeier, taken as a whole, give a striking picture of the amount of assistance which Darwin received from him during many years. Some citations from these letters given in "Life and Letters," II., pages 52, 53, show how freely and generously Mr. Tegetmeier gave his help, and how much his co-operation was valued.

The following letter is given as an example of the questions on which Darwin sought Mr. Tegetmeier's opinion and guidance.)

Down, March 22 [1861].

I ought to have answered your last note sooner; but I have been very busy. How wonderfully successful you have been in breeding Pouters! You have a good right to be proud of your accuracy of eye and judgment. I am in the thick of poultry, having just commenced, and shall be truly grateful for the skulls, if you can send them by any conveyance to the Nag's Head next Thursday.

You ask about vermilion wax: positively it was not in the state of comb, but in solid bits and cakes, which were thrown with other rubbish not far from my hives. You can make any use of the fact you like. Combs could be concentrically and variously coloured and dates recorded by giving for a few days wax darkly coloured with vermilion and indigo, and I daresay other substances. You ask about my crossed fowls, and this leads me to make a proposition to you, which I hope cannot be offensive to you. I trust you know me too well to think that I would propose anything objectionable to the best of my judgment. The case is this: for my object of treating poultry I must give a sketch of several breeds, with remarks on various points. I do not feel strong on the subject. Now, when my MS. is fairly copied in an excellent handwriting, would you read it over, which would take you at most an hour or two, and make comments in pencil on it; and accept, like a barrister, a fee, we will say, of a couple of guineas. This would be a great assistance to me, specially if you would allow me to put a note, stating that you, a distinguished judge and fancier, had read it over. I would state that you doubted or concurred, as each case might be, of course striking out what you were sure was incorrect. There would be little new in my MS. to you; but if by chance you used any of my facts or conclusions before I published, I should wish you to state that they were on my authority; otherwise I shall be accused of stealing from you. There will be little new, except that perhaps I have consulted some out-of-the-way books, and have corresponded with some good authorities. Tell me frankly what you think of this; but unless you will oblige me by accepting remuneration, I cannot and will not give you such trouble. I have little doubt that several points will arise which will require investigation, as I care for many points disregarded by fanciers; and according to any time thus spent, you will, I trust, allow me to make remuneration. I hope that you will grant me this favour. There is one assistance which I will now venture to beg of you--viz., to get me, if you can, another specimen of an old white Angora rabbit. I want it dead for the skeleton; and not knocked on the head. Secondly, I see in the "Cottage Gardener" (March 19th, page 375) there are impure half-lops with one ear quite upright and shorter than the other lopped ear. I much want a dead one. Baker cannot get one. Baily is looking out; but I want two specimens. Can you assist me, if you meet any rabbit-fancier? I have had rabbits with one ear more lopped than the other; but I want one with one ear quite upright and shorter, and the other quite long and lopped.

122. TO H.W. BATES. Down, March 26th [1861]

I have read your papers with extreme interest, and I have carefully read every word of them. (122/1. "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley." (Read March 5th and November 24th, 1860). "Entomological Soc. Trans." V., pages 223 and 335).) They seem to me to be far richer in facts of variation, and especially on the distribution of varieties and subspecies, than anything which I have read. Hereafter I shall re-read them, and hope in my future work to profit by them and make use of them. The amount of variation has much surprised me. The analogous variation of distinct species in the same regions strikes me as particularly curious. The greater variability of the female sex is new to me. Your Guiana case seems in some degree analogous, as far as plants are concerned, with the modern plains of La Plata, which seem to have been colonised from the north, but the species have been hardly modified. (122/2. Mr. Bates (page 349) gives reason to believe that the Guiana region should be considered "a perfectly independent province," and that it has formed a centre "whence radiated the species which now people the low lands on its borders.")

Would you kindly answer me two or three questions if in your power? When species A becomes modified in another region into a well-marked form C, but is connected with it by one (or more) gradational forms B inhabiting an intermediate region; does this form B generally exist in equal numbers with A and C, OR INHABIT AN EQUALLY LARGE AREA? The probability is that you cannot answer this question, though one of your cases seems to bear on it...

You will, I think, be glad to hear that I now often hear of naturalists accepting my views more or less fully; but some are curiously cautious in running the risk of any small odium in expressing their belief.

123. TO H.W. BATES. Down, April 4th [1861]

I have been unwell, so have delayed thanking you for your admirable letter. I hope you will not think me presumptuous in saying how much I have been struck with your varied knowledge, and with the decisive manner in which you bring it to bear on each point,--a rare and most high quality, as far as my experience goes. I earnestly hope you will find time to publish largely: before the Linnean Society you might bring boldly out your views on species. Have you ever thought of publishing your travels, and working in them the less abstruse parts of your Natural History? I believe it would sell, and be a very valuable contribution to Natural History. You must also have seen a good deal of the natives. I know well it would be quite unreasonable to ask for any further information from you; but I will just mention that I am now, and shall be for a long time, writing on domestic varieties of all animals. Any facts would be useful, especially any showing that savages take any care in breeding their animals, or in rejecting the bad and preserving the good; or any fancies which they may have that one coloured or marked dog, etc., is better than another. I have already collected much on this head, but am greedy for facts. You will at once see their bearing on variation under domestication.

Hardly anything in your letter has pleased me more than about sexual selection. In my larger MS. (and indeed in the "Origin" with respect to the tuft of hairs on the breast of the cock-turkey) I have guarded myself against going too far; but I did not at all know that male and female butterflies haunted rather different sites. If I had to cut up myself in a review I would have [worried?] and quizzed sexual selection; therefore, though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may imagine how pleased I am at what you say on your belief. This part of your letter to me is a quintessence of richness. The fact about butterflies attracted by coloured sepals is another good fact, worth its weight in gold. It would have delighted the heart of old Christian C. Sprengel--now many years in his grave.

I am glad to hear that you have specially attended to "mimetic" analogies--a most curious subject; I hope you publish on it. I have for a long time wished to know whether what Dr. Collingwood asserts is true--that the most striking cases generally occur between insects inhabiting the same country.

124. TO F.W. HUTTON. Down, April 20th [1861]

I hope that you will permit me to thank you for sending me a copy of your paper in "The Geologist" (124/1. In a letter to Hooker (April 23rd?, 1861) Darwin refers to Hutton's review as "very original," and adds that Hutton is "one of the very few who see that the change of species cannot be directly proved..." ("Life and Letters," II., page 362). The review appeared in "The Geologist" (afterwards known as "The Geological Magazine") for 1861, pages 132-6 and 183-8. A letter on "Difficulties of Darwinism" is published in the same volume of "The Geologist," page 286.), and at the same time to express my opinion that you have done the subject a real service by the highly original, striking, and condensed manner with which you have put the case. I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce direct evidence of one species changing into another, but that I believe that this view in the main is correct, because so many phenomena can be thus grouped together and explained. But it is generally of no use; I cannot make persons see this. I generally throw in their teeth the universally admitted theory of the undulation of light,--neither the undulation nor the very existence of ether being proved, yet admitted because the view explains so much. You are one of the very few who have seen this, and have now put it most forcibly and clearly. I am much pleased to see how carefully you have read my book, and, what is far more important, reflected on so many points with an independent spirit. As I am deeply interested in the subject (and I hope not exclusively under a personal point of view) I could not resist venturing to thank you for the right good service which you have done.

I need hardly say that this note requires no answer.

125. TO J.D. HOOKER

(125/1. Parts of this letter are published in "Life and Letters," II., page 362.)

Down, [April] 23rd, [1861].

I have been much interested by Bentham's paper in the "Natural History Review," but it would not, of course, from familiarity, strike you as it did me. (125/2. This refers to Bentham's paper "On the Species and Genera of Plants, etc." "Nat. Hist. Review," April, 1861, page 133, which is founded on, or extracted from, a paper read before the Linn. Soc., November 15th, 1858. It had been originally set down to be read on July 1st, 1858, but gave way to the papers of Darwin and Wallace. Mr. Bentham has described ("Life and Letters," II., page 294) how he reluctantly cancelled the parts urging "original fixity" of specific type, and the remainder seems not to have been published except in the above-quoted paper in the "Nat. Hist. Review.") I liked the whole--all the facts on the nature of close and varying species. Good Heavens! to think of the British botanists turning up their noses and saying that he knows nothing of British plants! I was also pleased at his remarks on classification, because it showed me that I wrote truly on this subject in the "Origin." I saw Bentham at the Linnean Society, and had some talk with him and Lubbock and Edgeworth, Wallich, and several others. I asked Bentham to give us his ideas of species; whether partially with us or dead against us, he would write excellent matter. He made no answer, but his manner made me think he might do so if urged--so do you attack him. Every one was speaking with affection and anxiety of Henslow. I dined with Bell at the Linnean Club, and liked my dinner...dining-out is such a novelty to me that I enjoyed it. Bell has a real good heart. I liked Rolleston's paper, but I never read anything so obscure and not self-evident as his "canons." (125/3. See "Nat. Hist. Review," 1861, page 206. The paper is "On the Brain of the Orang Utang," and forms part of the bitter controversy of this period to which reference occurs in letters to Huxley and elsewhere in these volumes. Rolleston's work is quoted by Huxley ("Man's Place in Nature," page 117) as part of the crushing refutation of Owen's position. Mr. Huxley's letter referred to above is no doubt that in the "Athenaeum," April 13th, 1861, page 498; it is certainly severe, but to those who know Mr. Huxley's "Succinct History of the Controversy," etc. ("Man's Place in Nature," page 113), it will not seem too severe.) I had a dim perception of the truth of your profound remark--that he wrote in fear and trembling "of God, man, and monkeys," but I would alter it into "God, man, Owen, and monkeys." Huxley's letter was truculent, and I see that every one thinks it too truculent; but in simple truth I am become quite demoniacal about Owen--worse than Huxley; and I told Huxley that I should put myself under his care to be rendered milder. But I mean to try and get more angelic in my feelings; yet I never shall forget his cordial shake of the hand, when he was writing as spitefully as he possibly could against me. But I have always thought that you have more cause than I to be demoniacally inclined towards him. Bell told me that Owen says that the editor mutilated his article in the "Edinburgh Review" (125/4. This is the only instance, with which we are acquainted, of Owen's acknowledging the authorship of the "Edinburgh Review" article.), and Bell seemed to think it was rendered more spiteful by the Editor; perhaps the opposite view is as probable. Oh, dear! this does not look like becoming more angelic in my temper!

I had a splendid long talk with Lyell (you may guess how splendid, for he was many times on his knees, with elbows on the sofa) (125/5. Mr. Darwin often spoke of Sir Charles Lyell's tendency to take curious attitudes when excited.) on his work in France: he seems to have done capital work in making out the age of the celt-bearing beds, but the case gets more and more complicated. All, however, tends to greater and greater antiquity of man. The shingle beds seem to be estuary deposits. I called on R. Chambers at his very nice house in St. John's Wood, and had a very pleasant half-hour's talk--he is really a capital fellow. He made one good remark and chuckled over it: that the laymen universally had treated the controversy on the "Essays and Reviews" as a merely professional subject, and had not joined in it but had left it to the clergy. I shall be anxious for your next letter about Henslow. Farewell, with sincere sympathy, my old friend.

P.S.--We are very much obliged for "London Review." We like reading much of it, and the science is incomparably better than in the "Athenaeum." You shall not go on very long sending it, as you will be ruined by pennies and trouble; but I am under a horrid spell to the "Athenaeum" and "Gardeners' Chronicle," both of which are intolerably dull, but I have taken them in for so many years that I cannot give them up. The "Cottage Gardener," for my purpose, is now far better than the "Gardeners' Chronicle."

126. TO J.L.A. DE QUATREFAGES. Down, April 25 [1861]

I received this morning your "Unite de l'Espece Humaine" [published in 1861], and most sincerely do I thank you for this your very kind present. I had heard of and been recommended to read your articles, but, not knowing that they were separately published, did not know how to get them. So your present is most acceptable, and I am very anxious to see your views on the whole subject of species and variation; and I am certain to derive much benefit from your work. In cutting the pages I observe that you have most kindly mentioned my work several times. My views spread slowly in England and America; and I am much surprised to find them most commonly accepted by geologists, next by botanists, and least by zoologists. I am much pleased that the younger and middle-aged geologists are coming round, for the arguments from Geology have always seemed strongest against me. Not one of the older geologists (except Lyell) has been even shaken in his views of the eternal immutability of species. But so many of the younger men are turning round with zeal that I look to the future with some confidence. I am now at work on "Variation under Domestication," but make slow progress--it is such tedious work comparing skeletons.

With very sincere thanks for the kind sympathy which you have always shown me, and with much respect,...

P.S.--I have lately read M. Naudin's paper (126/1. Naudin's paper ("Revue Horticole," 1852) is mentioned in the "Historical Sketch" prefixed to the later editions of the "Origin" (Edition VI., page xix). Naudin insisted that species are formed in a manner analogous to the production of varieties by cultivators, i.e., by selection, "but he does not show how selection acts under nature." In the "Life and Letters," II., page 246, Darwin, speaking of Naudin's work, says: "Decaisne seems to think he gives my whole theory."), but it does not seem to me to anticipate me, as he does not show how selection could be applied under nature; but an obscure writer (126/2. The obscure writer is Patrick Matthew (see the "Historical Sketch" in the "Origin.") on forest trees, in 1830, in Scotland, most expressly and clearly anticipated my views--though he put the case so briefly that no single person ever noticed the scattered passages in his book.

127. TO L. HINDMARSH

(127/1. The following letter was in reply to one from Mr. Hindmarsh, to whom Mr. Darwin had written asking for information on the average number of animals killed each year in the Chillingham herd. The object of the request was to obtain information which might throw light on the rate of increase of the cattle relatively to those on the pampas of South America. Mr. Hindmarsh had contributed a paper "On the Wild Cattle of Chillingham Park" to the "Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume II., page 274, 1839.)

Down, May 12th [1861].

I thank you sincerely for your prompt and great kindness, and return the letter, which I have been very glad to see and have had copied. The increase is more rapid than I anticipated, but it seems rather conjectural; I had hoped that in so interesting a case some exact record had been kept. The number of births, or of calves reared till they followed their mothers, would perhaps have been the best datum. From Mr. Hardy's letter I infer that ten must be annually born to make up the deaths from various causes. In Paraguay, Azara states that in a herd of 4,000, from 1,000 to 1,300 are reared; but then, though they do not kill calves, but castrate the young bulls, no doubt the oxen would be killed earlier than the cows, so that the herd would contain probably more of the female sex than the herd at Chillingham. There is not apparently any record whether more young bulls are killed than cows. I am surprised that Lord Tankerville does not have an exact record kept of deaths and sexes and births: after a dozen years it would be an interesting statistical record to the naturalist and agriculturist.

(PLATE: PROFESSOR HENSLOW.)

128. TO J.D. HOOKER

(128/1. The death of Professor Henslow (who was Sir J.D. Hooker's father-in-law) occurred on May 16th, 1861.)

Down, May 24th [1861].

Thanks for your two notes. I am glad that the burial is over, and sincerely sympathise and can most fully understand your feelings at your loss.

I grieve to think how little I saw of Henslow for many years. With respect to a biography of Henslow, I cannot help feeling rather doubtful, on the principle that a biography could not do him justice. His letters were generally written in a hurry, and I fear he did not keep any journal or diary. If there were any vivid materials to describe his life as parish priest, and manner of managing the poor, it would be very good.

I am never very sanguine on literary projects. I cannot help fearing his Life might turn out flat. There can hardly be marked incidents to describe. I sincerely hope that I take a wrong and gloomy view, but I cannot help fearing--I would rather see no Life than one that would interest very few. It will be a pleasure and duty in me to consider what I can recollect; but at present I can think of scarcely anything. The equability and perfection of Henslow's whole character, I should think, would make it very difficult for any one to pourtray him. I have been thinking about Henslow all day a good deal, but the more I think the less I can think of to write down. It is quite a new style for me to set about, but I will continue to think what I could say to give any, however imperfect, notion of him in the old Cambridge days.

Pray give my kindest remembrances to L. Jenyns (128/2. The Rev. Leonard Jenyns (afterwards Blomefield) undertook the "Life" of Henslow, to which Darwin contributed a characteristic and delightful sketch. See Letter 17.), who is often associated with my recollection of those old happy days.

129. HENRY FAWCETT TO CHARLES DARWIN

(129/1. It was in reply to the following letter that Darwin wrote to Fawcett: "You could not possibly have told me anything which would have given me more satisfaction than what you say about Mr. Mill's opinion. Until your review appeared I began to think that perhaps I did not understand at all how to reason scientifically." ("Life of Henry Fawcett," by Leslie Stephen, 1885, page 100.)

Bodenham, Salisbury, July 16th [1861].

I feel that I ought not to have so long delayed writing to thank you for your very kind letter to me about my article on your book in "Macmillan's Magazine."

I was particularly anxious to point out that the method of investigation pursued was in every respect philosophically correct. I was spending an evening last week with my friend Mr. John Stuart Mill, and I am sure you will be pleased to hear from such an authority that he considers that your reasoning throughout is in the most exact accordance with the strict principles of logic. He also says the method of investigation you have followed is the only one proper to such a subject.

It is easy for an antagonistic reviewer, when he finds it difficult to answer your arguments, to attempt to dispose of the whole matter by uttering some such commonplace as "This is not a Baconian induction."

I expect shortly to be spending a few days in your neighbourhood, and if I should not be intruding upon you, I should esteem it a great favour if you will allow me to call on you, and have half an hour's conversation with you.

As far as I am personally concerned, I am sure I ought to be grateful to you, for since my accident nothing has given me so much pleasure as the perusal of your book. Such studies are now a great resource to me.

130. TO C. LYELL. 2, Hesketh Terrace, Torquay [August 2nd, 1861]

I declare that you read the reviews on the "Origin" more carefully than I do. I agree with all your remarks. The point of correlation struck me as well put, and on varieties growing together; but I have already begun to put things in train for information on this latter head, on which Bronn also enlarges. With respect to sexuality, I have often speculated on it, and have always concluded that we are too ignorant to speculate: no physiologist can conjecture why the two elements go to form a new being, and, more than that, why nature strives at uniting the two elements from two individuals. What I am now working at in my orchids is an admirable illustration of the law. I should certainly conclude that all sexuality had descended from one prototype. Do you not underrate the degree of lowness of organisation in which sexuality occurs--viz., in Hydra, and still lower in some of the one-celled free confervae which "conjugate," which good judges (Thwaites) believe is the simplest form of true sexual generation? (130/1. See Letter 97.) But the whole case is a mystery.

There is another point on which I have occasionally wished to say a few words. I believe you think with Asa Gray that I have not allowed enough for the stream of variation having been guided by a higher power. I have had lately a good deal of correspondence on this head. Herschel, in his "Physical Geography" (130/2. "Physical Geography of the Globe," by Sir John F.W. Herschel, Edinburgh, 1861. On page 12 Herschel writes of the revelations of Geology pointing to successive submersions and reconstructions of the continents and fresh races of animals and plants. He refers to a "great law of change" which has not operated either by a gradually progressing variation of species, nor by a sudden and total abolition of one race...The following footnote on page 12 of the "Physical Geography" was added in January, 1861: "This was written previous to the publication of Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin of Species," a work which, whatever its merit or ingenuity, we cannot, however, consider as having disproved the view taken in the text. We can no more accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variation and natural selection as a sufficient account, per se, of the past and present organic world, than we can receive the Laputan method of composing books (pushed a outrance) as a sufficient one of Shakespeare and the "Principia." Equally in either case an intelligence, guided by a purpose, must be continually in action to bias the directions of the steps of change--to regulate their amount, to limit their divergence, and to continue them in a definite course. We do not believe that Mr. Darwin means to deny the necessity of such intelligent direction. But it does not, so far as we can see, enter into the formula of this law, and without it we are unable to conceive how far the law can have led to the results. On the other hand, we do not mean to deny that such intelligence may act according to a law (that is to say, on a preconceived and definite plan). Such law, stated in words, would be no other than the actual observed law of organic succession; a one more general, taking that form when applied to our own planet, and including all the links of the chain which have disappeared. BUT THE ONE LAW IS A NECESSARY SUPPLEMENT TO THE OTHER, AND OUGHT, IN ALL LOGICAL PROPRIETY, TO FORM A PART OF ITS ENUNCIATION. Granting this, and with some demur as to the genesis of man, we are far from disposed to repudiate the view taken of this mysterious subject in Mr. Darwin's book." The sentence in italics is no doubt the one referred to in the letter to Lyell. See Letter 243.), has a sentence with respect to the "Origin," something to the effect that the higher law of Providential Arrangement should always be stated. But astronomers do not state that God directs the course of each comet and planet. The view that each variation has been providentially arranged seems to me to make Natural Selection entirely superfluous, and indeed takes the whole case of the appearance of new species out of the range of science. But what makes me most object to Asa Gray's view is the study of the extreme variability of domestic animals. He who does not suppose that each variation in the pigeon was providentially caused, by accumulating which variations, man made a Fantail, cannot, I think, logically argue that the tail of the woodpecker was formed by variations providentially ordained. It seems to me that variations in the domestic and wild conditions are due to unknown causes, and are without purpose, and in so far accidental; and that they become purposeful only when they are selected by man for his pleasure, or by what we call Natural Selection in the struggle for life, and under changing conditions. I do not wish to say that God did not foresee everything which would ensue; but here comes very nearly the same sort of wretched imbroglio as between freewill and preordained necessity. I doubt whether I have made what I think clear; but certainly A. Gray's notion of the courses of variation having been led like a stream of water by gravity, seems to me to smash the whole affair. It reminds me of a Spaniard whom I told I was trying to make out how the Cordillera was formed; and he answered me that it was useless, for "God made them." It may be said that God foresaw how they would be made. I wonder whether Herschel would say that you ought always to give the higher providential law, and declare that God had ordered all certain changes of level, that certain mountains should arise. I must think that such views of Asa Gray and Herschel merely show that the subject in their minds is in Comte's theological stage of science...

Of course I do not want any answer to my quasi-theological discussion, but only for you to think of my notions, if you understand them.

I hope to Heaven your long and great labours on your new edition are drawing to a close.

131. TO C. LYELL. Torquay, [August 13th, 1861]

Very many thanks for the orchids, which have proved extremely useful to me in two ways I did not anticipate, but were too monstrous (yet of some use) for my special purpose.

When you come to "Deification" (131/1. See Letter 105, note.), ask yourself honestly whether what you are thinking applies to the endless variations of domestic productions, which man accumulates for his mere fancy or use. No doubt these are all caused by some unknown law, but I cannot believe they were ordained for any purpose, and if not so ordained under domesticity, I can see no reason to believe that they were ordained in a state of nature. Of course it may be said, when you kick a stone, or a leaf falls from a tree, that it was ordained, before the foundations of the world were laid, exactly where that stone or leaf should lie. In this sense the subject has no interest for me.

Once again, many thanks for the orchids; you must let me repay you what you paid the collector.

132. TO C. LYELL

(132/1. The first paragraph probably refers to the proof-sheets of Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," but the passage referred to seems not to occur in the book.)

Torquay, August 21st [1861].

...I have really no criticism, except a trifling one in pencil near the end, which I have inserted on account of dominant and important species generally varying most. You speak of "their views" rather as if you were a thousand miles away from such wretches, but your concluding paragraph shows that you are one of the wretches.

I am pleased that you approve of Hutton's review. (132/2. "Some Remarks on Mr. Darwin's Theory," by F.W. Hutton. "Geologist," Volume IV., page 132 (1861). See Letter 124.) It seemed to me to take a more philosophical view of the manner of judging the question than any other review. The sentence you quote from it seems very true, but I do not agree with the theological conclusion. I think he quotes from Asa Gray, certainly not from me; but I have neither A. Gray nor "Origin" with me. Indeed, I have over and over again said in the "Origin" that Natural Selection does nothing without variability; I have given a whole chapter on laws, and used the strongest language how ignorant we are on these laws. But I agree that I have somehow (Hooker says it is owing to my title) not made the great and manifest importance of previous variability plain enough. Breeders constantly speak of Selection as the one great means of improvement; but of course they imply individual differences, and this I should have thought would have been obvious to all in Natural Selection; but it has not been so.

I have just said that I cannot agree with "which variations are the effects of an unknown law, ordained and guided without doubt by an intelligent cause on a preconceived and definite plan." Will you honestly tell me (and I should be really much obliged) whether you believe that the shape of my nose (eheu!) was ordained and "guided by an intelligent cause?" (132/3. It should be remembered that the shape of his nose nearly determined Fitz-Roy to reject Darwin as naturalist to H.M.S. "Beagle" ("Life and Letters," I., page 60).) By the selection of analogous and less differences fanciers make almost generic differences in their pigeons; and can you see any good reason why the Natural Selection of analogous individual differences should not make new species? If you say that God ordained that at some time and place a dozen slight variations should arise, and that one of them alone should be preserved in the struggle for life and the other eleven should perish in the first or few first generations, then the saying seems to me mere verbiage. It comes to merely saying that everything that is, is ordained.

Let me add another sentence. Why should you or I speak of variation as having been ordained and guided, more than does an astronomer, in discussing the fall of a meteoric stone? He would simply say that it was drawn to our earth by the attraction of gravity, having been displaced in its course by the action of some quite unknown laws. Would you have him say that its fall at some particular place and time was "ordained and guided without doubt by an intelligent cause on a preconceived and definite plan"? Would you not call this theological pedantry or display? I believe it is not pedantry in the case of species, simply because their formation has hitherto been viewed as beyond law; in fact, this branch of science is still with most people under its theological phase of development. The conclusion which I always come to after thinking of such questions is that they are beyond the human intellect; and the less one thinks on them the better. You may say, Then why trouble me? But I should very much like to know clearly what you think.

133. TO HENRY FAWCETT

(133/1. The following letter was published in the "Life" of Mr. Fawcett (1885); we are indebted to Mrs. Fawcett and Messrs. Smith & Elder for permission to reprint it. See Letter 129.)

September 18th [1861].

I wondered who had so kindly sent me the newspaper (133/2. The newspaper sent was the "Manchester Examiner" for September 9th, 1861, containing a report of Mr. Fawcett's address given before Section D of the British Association, "On the method of Mr. Darwin in his treatise on the origin of species," in which the speaker showed that the "method of investigation pursued by Mr. Darwin in his treatise on the origin of species is in strict accordance with the principles of logic." The "A" of the letter (as published in Fawcett's Life) is the late Professor Williamson, who is reported to have said that "while he would not say that Mr. Darwin's book had caused him a loss of reputation, he was sure that it had not caused a gain." The reference to "B" is explained by the report of the late Dr. Lankester's speech in which he said, "The facts brought forward in support of the hypothesis had a very different value indeed from that of the hypothesis...A great naturalist, who was still a friend of Mr. Darwin, once said to him (Dr. Lankester), 'The mistake is, that Darwin has dealt with origin. Why did he not put his facts before us, and let them rest?'" Another speaker, the Rt. Hon. J.R. Napier, remarked: "I am going to speak closely to the question. If the hypothesis is put forward to contradict facts, and the averments are contrary to the Word of God, I say that it is not a logical argument." At this point the chairman, Professor Babington, wisely interfered, on the ground that the meeting was a scientific one.), which I was very glad to see; and now I have to thank you sincerely for allowing me to see your MS. It seems to me very good and sound; though I am certainly not an impartial judge. You will have done good service in calling the attention of scientific men to means and laws of philosophising. As far as I could judge by the papers, your opponents were unworthy of you. How miserably A. talked of my reputation, as if that had anything to do with it!...How profoundly ignorant B must be of the very soul of observation! About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

I have returned only lately from a two months' visit to Torquay, which did my health at the time good; but I am one of those miserable creatures who are never comfortable for twenty-four hours; and it is clear to me that I ought to be exterminated. I have been rather idle of late, or, speaking more strictly, working at some miscellaneous papers, which, however, have some direct bearing on the subject of species; yet I feel guilty at having neglected my larger book. But, to me, observing is much better sport than writing. I fear that I shall have wearied you with this long note.

Pray believe that I feel sincerely grateful that you have taken up the cudgels in defence of the line of argument in the "Origin;" you will have benefited the subject.

Many are so fearful of speaking out. A German naturalist came here the other day; and he tells me that there are many in Germany on our side, but that all seem fearful of speaking out, and waiting for some one to speak, and then many will follow. The naturalists seem as timid as young ladies should be, about their scientific reputation. There is much discussion on the subject on the Continent, even in quiet Holland; and I had a pamphlet from Moscow the other day by a man who sticks up famously for the imperfection of the "Geological Record," but complains that I have sadly understated the variability of the old fossilised animals! But I must not run on.

134. TO H.W. BATES. Down, September 25th [1861]

Now for a few words on science. Many thanks for facts on neuters. You cannot tell how I rejoice that you do not think what I have said on the subject absurd. Only two persons have even noticed it to me--viz., the bitter sneer of Owen in the "Edinburgh Review" (134/1. "Edinburgh Review," April, 1860, page 525.), and my good friend and supporter, Sir C. Lyell, who could only screw up courage to say, "Well, you have manfully faced the difficulty."

What a wonderful case of Volucella of which I had never heard. (134/2. Volucella is a fly--one of the Syrphidae--supposed to supply a case of mimicry; this was doubtless the point of interest with Bates. Dr. Sharp says ["Insects," Part II. (in the Camb. Nat. Hist. series), 1899, page 500]: "It was formerly assumed that the Volucella larvae lived on the larvae of the bees, and that the parent flies were providentially endowed with a bee-like appearance that they might obtain entrance into the bees' nests without being detected." Dr. Sharp goes on to say that what little is known on the subject supports the belief that the "presence of the Volucella in the nests is advantageous to both fly and bee.") I had no idea such a case occurred in nature; I must get and see specimens in British Museum. I hope and suppose you will give a good deal of Natural History in your Travels; every one cares about ants--more notice has been taken about slave-ants in the "Origin" than of any other passage.

I fully expect to delight in your Travels. Keep to simple style, as in your excellent letters,--but I beg pardon, I am again advising.

What a capital paper yours will be on mimetic resemblances! You will make quite a new subject of it. I had thought of such cases as a difficulty; and once, when corresponding with Dr. Collingwood, I thought of your explanation; but I drove it from my mind, for I felt that I had not knowledge to judge one way or the other. Dr C., I think, states that the mimetic forms inhabit the same country, but I did not know whether to believe him. What wonderful cases yours seem to be! Could you not give a few woodcuts in your Travels to illustrate this? I am tired with a hard day's work, so no more, except to give my sincere thanks and hearty wishes for the success of your Travels.

135. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 18th [1862]

Your letter discusses lots of interesting subjects, and I am very glad you have sent for your letter to Bates. (135/1. Published in Mr. Clodd's memoir of Bates in the "Naturalist on the Amazons," 1892, page l.) What do you mean by "individual plants"? (135/2. In a letter to Mr. Darwin dated March 17th, 1862, Sir J.D. Hooker had discussed a supposed difference between animals and plants, "inasmuch as the individual animal is certainly changed materially by external conditions, the latter (I think) never, except in such a coarse way as stunting or enlarging--e.g. no increase of cold on the spot, or change of individual plant from hot to cold, will induce said individual plant to get more woolly covering; but I suppose a series of cold seasons would bring about such a change in an individual quadruped, just as rowing will harden hands, etc.") I fancied a bud lived only a year, and you could hardly expect any change in that time; but if you call a tree or plant an individual, you have sporting buds. Perhaps you mean that the whole tree does not change. Tulips, in "breaking," change. Fruit seems certainly affected by the stock. I think I have (135/3. See note, Letter 16.) got cases of slight change in alpine plants transplanted. All these subjects have rather gone out of my head owing to orchids, but I shall soon have to enter on them in earnest when I come again to my volume on variation under domestication.

...In the lifetime of an animal you would, I think, find it very difficult to show effects of external condition on animals more than shade and light, good and bad soil, produce on a plant.

You speak of "an inherent tendency to vary wholly independent of physical conditions"! This is a very simple way of putting the case (as Dr. Prosper Lucas also puts it) (135/4. Prosper Lucas, the author of "Traite philosophique et physiologique de l'heredite naturelle dans les etats de sante et de maladie du systeme nerveux": 2 volumes, Paris, 1847-50.): but two great classes of facts make me think that all variability is due to change in the conditions of life: firstly, that there is more variability and more monstrosities (and these graduate into each other) under unnatural domestic conditions than under nature; and, secondly, that changed conditions affect in an especial manner the reproductive organs--those organs which are to produce a new being. But why one seedling out of thousands presents some new character transcends the wildest powers of conjecture. It was in this sense that I spoke of "climate," etc., possibly producing without selection a hooked seed, or any not great variation. (135/5. This statement probably occurs in a letter, and not in Darwin's published works.)

I have for years and years been fighting with myself not to attribute too much to Natural Selection--to attribute something to direct action of conditions; and perhaps I have too much conquered my tendency to lay hardly any stress on conditions of life.

I am not shaken about "saltus" (135/6. Sir Joseph had written, March 17th, 1862: "Huxley is rather disposed to think you have overlooked saltus, but I am not sure that he is right--saltus quoad individuals is not saltus quoad species--as I pointed out in the Begonia case, though perhaps that was rather special pleading in the present state of science." For the Begonia case, see "Life and Letters," II., page 275, also letter 110, page 166.), I did not write without going pretty carefully into all the cases of normal structure in animals resembling monstrosities which appear per saltus.

136. TO J.D. HOOKER. 26th [March, 1862]

Thanks also for your own (136/1. See note in Letter 135.) and Bates' letter now returned. They are both excellent; you have, I think, said all that can be said against direct effects of conditions, and capitally put. But I still stick to my own and Bates' side. Nevertheless I am pleased to attribute little to conditions, and I wish I had done what you suggest--started on the fundamental principle of variation being an innate principle, and afterwards made a few remarks showing that hereafter, perhaps, this principle would be explicable. Whenever my book on poultry, pigeons, ducks, and rabbits is published, with all the measurements and weighings of bones, I think you will see that "use and disuse" at least have some effect. I do not believe in perfect reversion. I rather demur to your doctrine of "centrifugal variation." (136/2. The "doctrine of centrifugal variation" is given in Sir J.D. Hooker's "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania" (Part III. of the Botany of the Antarctic Expedition), 1859, page viii. In paragraph 10 the author writes: "The tendency of varieties, both in nature and under cultivation...is rather to depart more and more widely from the original type than to revert to it." In Sir Joseph's letter to Bates (loc. cit., page lii) he wrote: "Darwin also believes in some reversion to type which is opposed to my view of variation." It may be noted in this connection that Mr. Galton has shown reason to believe in a centripetal tendency in variation (to use Hooker's phraseology) which is not identical with the reversion of cultivated plants to their ancestors, the case to which Hooker apparently refers. See "Natural Inheritance," by F. Galton, 1889.) I suppose you do not agree with or do not remember my doctrine of the good of diversification (136/3. Darwin usually used the word "divergence" in this connection.); this seems to me amply to account for variation being centrifugal--if you forget it, look at this discussion (page 117 of 3rd edition), it was the best point which, according to my notions, I made out, and it has always pleased me. It is really curiously satisfactory to me to see so able a man as Bates (and yourself) believing more fully in Natural Selection than I think I even do myself. (136/4. This refers to a very interesting passage in Hooker's letter to Bates (loc. cit., page liii): "I am sure that with you, as with me, the more you think the less occasion you will see for anything but time and natural selection to effect change; and that this view is the simplest and clearest in the present state of science is one advantage, at any rate. Indeed, I think that it is, in the present state of the inquiry, the legitimate position to take up; it is time enough to bother our heads with the secondary cause when there is some evidence of it or some demand for it--at present I do not see one or the other, and so feel inclined to renounce any other for the present.") By the way, I always boast to you, and so I think Owen will be wrong that my book will be forgotten in ten years, for a French edition is now going through the press and a second German edition wanted. Your long letter to Bates has set my head working, and makes me repent of the nine months spent on orchids; though I know not why I should not have amused myself on them as well as slaving on bones of ducks and pigeons, etc. The orchids have been splendid sport, though at present I am fearfully sick of them.

I enclose a waste copy of woodcut of Mormodes ignea; I wish you had a plant at Kew, for I am sure its wonderful mechanism and structure would amuse you. Is it not curious the way the labellum sits on the top of the column?--here insects alight and are beautifully shot, when they touch a certain sensitive point, by the pollinia.

How kindly you have helped me in my work! Farewell, my dear old fellow.

137. TO H.W. BATES. Down, May 4th [1862]

Hearty thanks for your most interesting letter and three very valuable extracts. I am very glad that you have been looking at the South Temperate insects. I wish that the materials in the British Museum had been richer; but I should think the case of the South American Carabi, supported by some other case, would be worth a paper. To us who theorise I am sure the case is very important. Do the South American Carabi differ more from the other species than do, for instance, the Siberian and European and North American and Himalayan (if the genus exists there)? If they do, I entirely agree with you that the difference would be too great to account for by the recent Glacial period. I agree, also, with you in utterly rejecting an independent origin for these Carabi. There is a difficulty, as far as I know, in our ignorance whether insects change quickly in time; you could judge of this by knowing how far closely allied coleoptera generally have much restricted ranges, for this almost implies rapid change. What a curious case is offered by land-shells, which become modified in every sub-district, and have yet retained the same general structure from very remote geological periods! When working at the Glacial period, I remember feeling much surprised how few birds, no mammals, and very few sea-mollusca seemed to have crossed, or deeply entered, the inter-tropical regions during the cold period. Insects, from all you say, seem to come under the same category. Plants seem to migrate more readily than animals. Do not underrate the length of Glacial period: Forbes used to argue that it was equivalent to the whole of the Pleistocene period in the warmer latitudes. I believe, with you, that we shall be driven to an older Glacial period.

I am very sorry to hear about the British Museum; it would be hopeless to contend against any one supported by Owen. Perhaps another chance might occur before very long. How would it be to speak to Owen as soon as your own mind is made up? From what I have heard, since talking to you, I fear the strongest personal interest with a Minister is requisite for a pension.

Farewell, and may success attend the acerrimo pro-pugnatori.

P.S. I deeply wish you could find some situation in which you could give your time to science; it would be a great thing for science and for yourself.

138. TO J.L.A. DE QUATREFAGES. Down, July 11th [1862]

I thank you cordially for so kindly and promptly answering my questions. I will quote some of your remarks. The case seems to me of some importance with reference to my heretical notions, for it shows how larvae might be modified. I shall not publish, I daresay, for a year, for much time is expended in experiments. If within this time you should acquire any fresh information on the similarity of the moths of distinct races, and would allow me to quote any facts on your authority, I should feel very grateful.

I thank you for your great kindness with respect to the translation of the "Origin;" it is very liberal in you, as we differ to a considerable degree. I have been atrociously abused by my religious countrymen; but as I live an independent life in the country, it does not in the least hurt me in any way, except indeed when the abuse comes from an old friend like Professor Owen, who abuses me and then advances the doctrine that all birds are probably descended from one parent.

I wish the translator (138/1. Mdlle. Royer, who translated the first French edition of the "Origin.') had known more of Natural History; she must be a clever but singular lady, but I never heard of her till she proposed to translate my book.

139. TO ASA GRAY. Down, July 23rd [1862]

I received several days ago two large packets, but have as yet read only your letter; for we have been in fearful distress, and I could attend to nothing. Our poor boy had the rare case of second rash and sore throat...; and, as if this was not enough, a most serious attack of erysipelas, with typhoid symptoms. I despaired of his life; but this evening he has eaten one mouthful, and I think has passed the crisis. He has lived on port wine every three-quarters of an hour, day and night. This evening, to our astonishment, he asked whether his stamps were safe, and I told him of one sent by you, and that he should see it to-morrow. He answered, "I should awfully like to see it now"; so with difficulty he opened his eyelids and glanced at it, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, said, "All right." Children are one's greatest happiness, but often and often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to have none--perhaps not a wife; for then there would be nothing in this wide world worth caring for, and a man might (whether he could is another question) work away like a Trojan. I hope in a few days to get my brains in order, and then I will pick out all your orchid letters, and return them in hopes of your making use of them...

Of all the carpenters for knocking the right nail on the head, you are the very best; no one else has perceived that my chief interest in my orchid book has been that it was a "flank movement" on the enemy. I live in such solitude that I hear nothing, and have no idea to what you allude about Bentham and the orchids and species. But I must enquire.

By the way, one of my chief enemies (the sole one who has annoyed me), namely Owen, I hear has been lecturing on birds; and admits that all have descended from one, and advances as his own idea that the oceanic wingless birds have lost their wings by gradual disuse. He never alludes to me, or only with bitter sneers, and coupled with Buffon and the "Vestiges."

Well, it has been an amusement to me this first evening, scribbling as egotistically as usual about myself and my doings; so you must forgive me, as I know well your kind heart will do. I have managed to skim the newspaper, but had not heart to read all the bloody details. Good God! What will the end be? Perhaps we are too despondent here; but I must think you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the "canards" of the army of the Potomac having capitulated. My good dear wife and self are come to wish for peace at any price. Good night, my good friend. I will scribble on no more.

One more word. I should like to hear what you think about what I say in the last chapter of the orchid book on the meaning and cause of the endless diversity of means for the same general purpose. It bears on design, that endless question. Good night, good night!

140. TO C. LYELL. 1, Carlton Terrace, Southampton, August 22nd [1862]

You say that the Bishop and Owen will be down on you (140/1. This refers to the "Antiquity of Man," which was published in 1863.): the latter hardly can, for I was assured that Owen, in his lectures this spring, advanced as a new idea that wingless birds had lost their wings by disuse. (140/2. The first paragraph of this letter was published in "Life and Letters," II., pages 387, 388.) Also that magpies stole spoons, etc., from a remnant of some instinct like that of the bower-bird, which ornaments its playing passage with pretty feathers. Indeed, I am told that he hinted plainly that all birds are descended from one. What an unblushing man he must be to lecture thus after abusing me so, and never to have openly retracted, or alluded to my book!

141. TO JOHN LUBBOCK (LORD AVEBURY). Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth, September 5th [1862]

Many thanks for your pleasant note in return for all my stupid trouble. I did not fully appreciate your insect-diving case (141/1. "On two Aquatic Hymenoptera, one of which uses its Wings in Swimming." By John Lubbock. "Trans. Linn. Soc." Volume XXIV., 1864, pages 135-42.) [Read May 7th, 1863.] In this paper Lubbock describes a new species of Polynema--P. natans--which swims by means of its wings, and is capable of living under water for several hours; the other species, referred to a new genus Prestwichia, lives under water, holds its wings motionless and uses its legs as oars.) before your last note, nor had I any idea that the fact was new, though new to me. It is really very interesting. Of course you will publish an account of it. You will then say whether the insect can fly well through the air. (141/2. In describing the habits of Polynema, Lubbock writes, "I was unfortunately unable to ascertain whether they could fly" (loc. cit., page 137).) My wife asked, "How did he find that it stayed four hours under water without breathing?" I answered at once: "Mrs. Lubbock sat four hours watching." I wonder whether I am right.

I long to be at home and at steady work, and I hope we may be in another month. I fear it is hopeless my coming to you, for I am squashier than ever, but hope two shower-baths a day will give me a little strength, so that you will, I hope, come to us. It is an age since I have seen you or any scientific friend.

I heard from Lyell the other day in the Isle of Wight, and from Hooker in Scotland. About Huxley I know nothing, but I hope his book progresses, for I shall be very curious to see it. (141/3. "Man's Place in Nature." London, 1863.)

I do nothing here except occasionally look at a few flowers, and there are very few here, for the country is wonderfully barren.

See what it is to be well trained. Horace said to me yesterday, "If every one would kill adders they would come to sting less." I answered: "Of course they would, for there would be fewer." He replied indignantly: "I did not mean that; but the timid adders which run away would be saved, and in time would never sting at all." Natural selection of cowards!

142. H. FALCONER TO CHARLES DARWIN

(142/1. This refers to the MS. of Falconer's paper "On the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico (E. Columbi, Falc.)," published in the "Natural History Review," January, 1863, page 43. The section dealing with the bearing of his facts on Darwin's views is at page 77. He insists strongly (page 78) on the "persistence and uniformity of the characters of the molar teeth in the earliest known mammoth, and his most modern successor." Nevertheless, he adds that the "inferences I draw from these facts are not opposed to one of the leading propositions of Darwin's theory." These admissions were the more satisfactory since, as Falconer points out (page 77), "I have been included by him in the category of those who have vehemently maintained the persistence of specific characters.")

21, Park Crescent, Portland Place, N.W., September 24th [1862].

Do not be frightened at the enclosure. I wish to set myself right by you before I go to press. I am bringing out a heavy memoir on elephants--an omnium gatherum affair, with observations on the fossil and recent species. One section is devoted to the persistence in time of the specific characters of the mammoth. I trace him from before the Glacial period, through it and after it, unchangeable and unchanged as far as the organs of digestion (teeth) and locomotion are concerned. Now, the Glacial period was no joke: it would have made ducks and drakes of your dear pigeons and doves.

With all my shortcomings, I have such a sincere and affectionate regard for you and such admiration of your work, that I should be pained to find that I had expressed my honest convictions in a way that would be open to any objection by you. The reasoning may be very stupid, but I believe that the observation is sound. Will you, therefore, look over the few pages which I have sent, and tell me whether you find any flaw, or whether you think I should change the form of expression? You have been so unhandsomely and uncandidly dealt with by a friend of yours and mine that I should be sorry to find myself in the position of an opponent to you, and more particularly with the chance of making a fool of myself.

I met your brother yesterday, who tells me you are coming to town. I hope you will give me a hail. I long for a jaw with you, and have much to speak to you about.

You will have seen the eclaircissement about the Eocene monkeys of England. By a touch of the conjuring wand they have been metamorphosed--a la Darwin--into Hyracotherian pigs. (142/2. "On the Hyracotherian Character of the Lower Molars of the supposed Macacus from the Eocene Sand of Kyson, Suffolk." "Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume X., 1862, page 240. In this note Owen stated that the teeth which he had named Macacus ("Ann. Mag." 1840, page 191) most probably belonged to Hyracotherium cuniculus. See "A Catalogue of British Fossil Vertebrata," A.S. Woodward and C.D. Sherborn, 1890, under Hyracotherium, page 356; also Zittel's "Handbuch der Palaeontologie" Abth. I., Bd. IV., Leipzig, 1891-93, page 703.) Would you believe it? This even is a gross blunder. They are not pigs.

143. TO HUGH FALCONER. Down, October 1st [1862]

On my return home yesterday I found your letter and MS., which I have read with extreme interest. Your note and every word in your paper are expressed with the same kind feeling which I have experienced from you ever since I have had the happiness of knowing you. I value scientific praise, but I value incomparably higher such kind feeling as yours. There is not a single word in your paper to which I could possibly object: I should be mad to do so; its only fault is perhaps its too great kindness. Your case seems the most striking one which I have met with of the persistence of specific characters. It is very much the more striking as it relates to the molar teeth, which differ so much in the species of the genus, and in which consequently I should have expected variation. As I read on I felt not a little dumbfounded, and thought to myself that whenever I came to this subject I should have to be savage against myself; and I wondered how savage you would be. I trembled a little. My only hope was that something could be made out of the bog N. American forms, which you rank as a geographical race; and possibly hereafter out of the Sicilian species. Guess, then, my satisfaction when I found that you yourself made a loophole (143/1. This perhaps refers to a passage ("N.H. Review," 1863, page 79) in which Falconer allows the existence of intermediate forms along certain possible lines of descent. Falconer's reference to the Sicilian elephants is in a note on page 78; the bog-elephant is mentioned on page 79.), which I never, of course, could have guessed at; and imagine my still greater satisfaction at your expressing yourself as an unbeliever in the eternal immutability of species. Your final remarks on my work are too generous, but have given me not a little pleasure. As for criticisms, I have only small ones. When you speak of "moderate range of variation" I cannot but think that you ought to remind your readers (though I daresay previously done) what the amount is, including the case of the American bog-mammoth. You speak of these animals as having been exposed to a vast range of climatal changes from before to after the Glacial period. I should have thought, from analogy of sea-shells, that by migration (or local extinction when migration not possible) these animals might and would have kept under nearly the same climate.

A rather more important consideration, as it seems to me, is that the whole proboscidean group may, I presume, be looked at as verging towards extinction: anyhow, the extinction has been complete as far as Europe and America are concerned. Numerous considerations and facts have led me in the "Origin" to conclude that it is the flourishing or dominant members of each order which generally give rise to new races, sub-species, and species; and under this point of view I am not at all surprised at the constancy of your species. This leads me to remark that the sentence at the bottom of page [80] is not applicable to my views (143/2. See Falconer at the bottom of page 80: it is the old difficulty--how can variability co-exist with persistence of type? In our copy of the letter the passage is given as occurring on page 60, a slip of the pen for page 80.), though quite applicable to those who attribute modification to the direct action of the conditions of life. An elephant might be more individually variable than any known quadruped (from the effects of the conditions of life or other innate unknown causes), but if these variations did not aid the animal in better resisting all hostile influences, and therefore making it increase in numbers, there would be no tendency to the preservation and accumulation of such variations--i.e. to the formation of a new race. As the proboscidean group seems to be from utterly unknown causes a failing group in many parts of the world, I should not have anticipated the formation of new races.

You make important remarks versus Natural Selection, and you will perhaps be surprised that I do to a large extent agree with you. I could show you many passages, written as strongly as I could in the "Origin," declaring that Natural Selection can do nothing without previous variability; and I have tried to put equally strongly that variability is governed by many laws, mostly quite unknown. My title deceives people, and I wish I had made it rather different. Your phyllotaxis (143/3. Falconer, page 80: "The law of Phyllotaxis...is nearly as constant in its manifestation as any of the physical laws connected with the material world.") will serve as example, for I quite agree that the spiral arrangement of a certain number of whorls of leaves (however that may have primordially arisen, and whether quite as invariable as you state), governs the limits of variability, and therefore governs what Natural Selection can do. Let me explain how it arose that I laid so much stress on Natural Selection, and I still think justly. I came to think from geographical distribution, etc., etc., that species probably change; but for years I was stopped dead by my utter incapability of seeing how every part of each creature (a woodpecker or swallow, for instance) had become adapted to its conditions of life. This seemed to me, and does still seem, the problem to solve; and I think Natural Selection solves it, as artificial selection solves the adaptation of domestic races for man's use. But I suspect that you mean something further,--that there is some unknown law of evolution by which species necessarily change; and if this be so, I cannot agree. This, however, is too large a question even for so unreasonably long a letter as this. Nevertheless, just to explain by mere valueless conjectures how I imagine the teeth of your elephants change, I should look at the change as indirectly resulting from changes in the form of the jaws, or from the development of tusks, or in the case of the primigenius even from correlation with the woolly covering; in all cases Natural Selection checking the variation. If, indeed, an elephant would succeed better by feeding on some new kinds of food, then any variation of any kind in the teeth which favoured their grinding power would be preserved. Now, I can fancy you holding up your hands and crying out what bosh! To return to your concluding sentence: far from being surprised, I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the "Origin" will be proved rubbish; but I expect and hope that the framework will stand. (143/4. Falconer, page 80: "He [Darwin] has laid the foundations of a great edifice: but he need not be surprised if, in the progress of erection, the superstructure is altered by his successors...")

I had hoped to have called on you on Monday evening, but was quite knocked up. I saw Lyell yesterday morning. He was very curious about your views, and as I had to write to him this morning I could not help telling him a few words on your views. I suppose you are tired of the "Origin," and will never read it again; otherwise I should like you to have the third edition, and would gladly send it rather than you should look at the first or second edition. With cordial thanks for your generous kindness.

144. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Royal Gardens, Kew, November 7th, 1862

I am greatly relieved by your letter this morning about my Arctic essay, for I had been conjuring up some egregious blunder (like the granitic plains of Patagonia).. Certes, after what you have told me of Dawson, he will not like the letter I wrote to him days ago, in which I told him that it was impossible to entertain a strong opinion against the Darwinian hypothesis without its giving rise to a mental twist when viewing matters in which that hypothesis was or might be involved. I told him I felt that this was so with me when I opposed you, and that all minds are subject to such obliquities!--the Lord help me, and this to an LL.D. and Principal of a College! I proceeded to discuss his Geology with the effrontery of a novice; and, thank God, I urged the very argument of your letter about evidence of subsidence--viz., not all submerged at once, and glacial action being subaerial and not oceanic. Your letter hence was a relief, for I felt I was hardly strong enough to have launched out as I did to a professed geologist.

(144/1. [On the subject of the above letter, see one of earlier date by Sir J.D. Hooker (November 2nd, 1862) given in the present work (Letter 354) with Darwin's reply (Letter 355).])

145. TO HUGH FALCONER. Down, November 14th [1862]

I have read your paper (145/1. "On the disputed Affinity of the Mammalian Genus Plagiaulax, from the Purbeck beds."--"Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XVIII., page 348, 1862.) with extreme interest, and I thank you for sending it, though I should certainly have carefully read it, or anything with your name, in the Journal. It seems to me a masterpiece of close reasoning: although, of course, not a judge of such subjects, I cannot feel any doubt that it is conclusive. Will Owen answer you? I expect that from his arrogant view of his own position he will not answer. Your paper is dreadfully severe on him, but perfectly courteous, and polished as the finest dagger. How kind you are towards me: your first sentence (145/2. "One of the most accurate observers and original thinkers of our time has discoursed with emphatic eloquence on the Imperfection of the Geological Record.") has pleased me more than perhaps it ought to do, if I had any modesty in my composition. By the way, after reading the first whole paragraph, I re-read it, not for matter, but for style; and then it suddenly occurred to me that a certain man once said to me, when I urged him to publish some of his miscellaneous wealth of knowledge, "Oh, he could not write,--he hated it," etc. You false man, never say that to me again. Your incidental remark on the remarkable specialisation of Plagiaulax (145/3. "If Plagiaulax be regarded through the medium of the view advocated with such power by Darwin, through what a number of intermediate forms must not the genus have passed before it attained the specialised condition in which the fossils come before us!") (which has stuck in my gizzard ever since I read your first paper) as bearing on the number of preceding forms, is quite new to me, and, of course, is in accordance to my notions a most impressive argument. I was also glad to be reminded of teeth of camel and tarsal bones. (145/4. Op. cit. page 353. A reference to Cuvier's instance "of the secret relation between the upper canine-shaped incisors of the camel and the bones of the tarsus.") Descent from an intermediate form, Ahem!

Well, all I can say is that I have not been for a long time more interested with a paper than with yours. It gives me a demoniacal chuckle to think of Owen's pleasant countenance when he reads it.

I have not been in London since the end of September; when I do come I will beat up your quarters if I possibly can; but I do not know what has come over me. I am worse than ever in bearing any excitement. Even talking of an evening for less than two hours has twice recently brought on such violent vomiting and trembling that I dread coming up to London. I hear that you came out strong at Cambridge (145/5. Prof. Owen, in a communication to the British Association at Cambridge (1862) "On a tooth of Mastodon from the Tertiary marls, near Shanghai," brought forward the case of the Australian Mastodon as a proof of the remarkable geographical distribution of the Proboscidia. In a subsequent discussion he frankly abandoned it, in consequence of the doubts then urged regarding its authenticity. (See footnote, page 101, in Falconer's paper "On the American Fossil Elephant," "Nat. Hist. Review," 1863.)), and am heartily glad you attacked the Australian Mastodon. I never did or could believe in him. I wish you would read my little Primula paper in the "Linnean Journal," Volume VI. Botany (No. 22), page 77 (I have no copy which I can spare), as I think there is a good chance that you may have observed similar cases. This is my real hobby-horse at present. I have re-tested this summer the functional difference of the two forms in Primula, and find all strictly accurate. If you should know of any cases analogous, pray inform me. Farewell, my good and kind friend.

146. TO J.D. HOOKER

(146/1. The following letter is interesting in connection with a letter addressed to Sir J.D. Hooker, March 26th, 1862, No. 136, where the value of Natural Selection is stated more strongly by Sir Joseph than by Darwin. It is unfortunate that Sir Joseph's letter, to which this is a reply, has not been found.)

Down, November 20th [1862].

Your last letter has interested me to an extraordinary degree, and your truly parsonic advice, "some other wise and discreet person," etc., etc., amused us not a little. I will put a concrete case to show what I think A. Gray believes about crossing and what I believe. If 1,000 pigeons were bred together in a cage for 10,000 years their number not being allowed to increase by chance killing, then from mutual intercrossing no varieties would arise; but, if each pigeon were a self-fertilising hermaphrodite, a multitude of varieties would arise. This, I believe, is the common effect of crossing, viz., the obliteration of incipient varieties. I do not deny that when two marked varieties have been produced, their crossing will produce a third or more intermediate varieties. Possibly, or probably, with domestic varieties, with a strong tendency to vary, the act of crossing tends to give rise to new characters; and thus a third or more races, not strictly intermediate, may be produced. But there is heavy evidence against new characters arising from crossing wild forms; only intermediate races are then produced. Now, do you agree thus far? if not, it is no use arguing; we must come to swearing, and I am convinced I can swear harder than you, therefore I am right. Q.E.D.

If the number of 1,000 pigeons were prevented increasing not by chance killing, but by, say, all the shorter-beaked birds being killed, then the WHOLE body would come to have longer beaks. Do you agree?

Thirdly, if 1,000 pigeons were kept in a hot country, and another 1,000 in a cold country, and fed on different food, and confined in different-size aviary, and kept constant in number by chance killing, then I should expect as rather probable that after 10,000 years the two bodies would differ slightly in size, colour, and perhaps other trifling characters; this I should call the direct action of physical conditions. By this action I wish to imply that the innate vital forces are somehow led to act rather differently in the two cases, just as heat will allow or cause two elements to combine, which otherwise would not have combined. I should be especially obliged if you would tell me what you think on this head.

But the part of your letter which fairly pitched me head over heels with astonishment, is that where you state that every single difference which we see might have occurred without any selection. I do and have always fully agreed; but you have got right round the subject, and viewed it from an entirely opposite and new side, and when you took me there I was astounded. When I say I agree, I must make the proviso, that under your view, as now, each form long remains adapted to certain fixed conditions, and that the conditions of life are in the long run changeable; and second, which is more important, that each individual form is a self-fertilising hermaphrodite, so that each hair-breadth variation is not lost by intercrossing. Your manner of putting the case would be even more striking than it is if the mind could grapple with such numbers--it is grappling with eternity--think of each of a thousand seeds bringing forth its plant, and then each a thousand. A globe stretching to the furthest fixed star would very soon be covered. I cannot even grapple with the idea, even with races of dogs, cattle, pigeons, or fowls; and here all admit and see the accurate strictness of your illustration.

Such men as you and Lyell thinking that I make too much of a Deus of Natural Selection is a conclusive argument against me. Yet I hardly know how I could have put in, in all parts of my book, stronger sentences. The title, as you once pointed out, might have been better. No one ever objects to agriculturalists using the strongest language about their selection, yet every breeder knows that he does not produce the modification which he selects. My enormous difficulty for years was to understand adaptation, and this made me, I cannot but think, rightly, insist so much on Natural Selection. God forgive me for writing at such length; but you cannot tell how much your letter has interested me, and how important it is for me with my present book in hand to try and get clear ideas. Do think a bit about what is meant by direct action of physical conditions. I do not mean whether they act; my facts will throw some light on this. I am collecting all cases of bud-variations, in contradistinction to seed-variations (do you like this term, for what some gardeners call "sports"?); these eliminate all effects of crossing. Pray remember how much I value your opinion as the clearest and most original I ever get.

I see plainly that Welwitschia (146/2. Sir Joseph's great paper on Welwitschia mirabilis was published in the "Linn. Soc. Trans." 1863.) will be a case of Barnacles.

I have another plant to beg, but I write on separate paper as more convenient for you to keep. I meant to have said before, as an excuse for asking for so much from Kew, that I have now lost TWO seasons, by accursed nurserymen not having right plants, and sending me the wrong instead of saying that they did not possess.

147. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 24th [November, 1862]

I have just received enclosed for you, and I have thought that you would like to read the latter half of A. Gray's letter to me, as it is political and nearly as mad as ever in our English eyes. You will see how the loss of the power of bullying is in fact the sore loss to the men of the North from disunion.

I return with thanks Bates' letter, which I was glad to see. It was very good of you writing to him, for he is evidently a man who wants encouragement. I have now finished his paper (but have read nothing else in the volume); it seems to me admirable. To my mind the act of segregation of varieties into species was never so plainly brought forward, and there are heaps of capital miscellaneous observations.

I hardly know why I am a little sorry, but my present work is leading me to believe rather more in the direct action of physical conditions. I presume I regret it, because it lessens the glory of Natural Selection, and is so confoundedly doubtful. Perhaps I shall change again when I get all my facts under one point of view, and a pretty hard job this will be. (147/1. This paragraph was published in "Life and Letters," II., page 390. It is not clear why a belief in "direct action" should diminish the glory of Natural Selection, since the changes so produced must, like any other variations, pass through the ordeal of the survival of the fittest. On the whole question of direct action see Mr. Adam Sedgwick's "Presidential Address to the Zoological Section of the British Association," 1899.)

148. TO H.W. BATES. Down, November 25th [1862?]

I should think it was not necessary to get a written agreement. (148/1. Mr. Bates' book, "A Naturalist on the Amazons," was published in 1863.) I have never had one from Murray. I suppose you have a letter with terms; if not, I should think you had better ask for one to prevent misunderstandings. I think Sir C. Lyell told me he had not any formal agreements. I am heartily glad to hear that your book is progressing. Could you find me some place, even a footnote (though these are in nine cases out of ten objectionable), where you could state, as fully as your materials permit, all the facts about similar varieties pairing,--at a guess how many you caught, and how many now in your collection? I look at this fact as very important; if not in your book, put it somewhere else, or let me have cases.

I entirely agree with you on the enormous advantage of thoroughly studying one group.

I really have no criticism to make. (148/2. Mr. Bates' paper on mimetic butterflies was read before the Linnean Society, November 21st, 1861, and published in the "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXIII., 1862, page 495, under the title of "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley.") Style seems to me very good and clear; but I much regret that in the title or opening passage you did not blow a loud trumpet about what you were going to show. Perhaps the paper would have been better more divided into sections with headings. Perhaps you might have given somewhere rather more of a summary on the progress of segregation of varieties, and not referred your readers to the descriptive part, excepting such readers as wanted minute detail. But these are trifles: I consider your paper as a most admirable production in every way. Whenever I come to variation under natural conditions (my head for months has been exclusively occupied with domestic varieties), I shall have to study and re-study your paper, and no doubt shall then have to plague you with questions. I am heartily glad to hear that you are well. I have been compelled to write in a hurry; so excuse me.

149. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 7th [1862]

I was on the point of adding to an order to Williams & Norgate for your Lectures (149/1. "A Course of Six Lectures to Working Men," published in six pamphlets by Hardwicke, and later as a book. See Letter 156.) when they arrived, and much obliged I am. I have read them with interest, and they seem to me very good for this purpose and capitally written, as is everything which you write. I suppose every book nowadays requires some pushing, so that if you do not wish these lectures to be extensively circulated, I suppose they will not; otherwise I should think they would do good and spread a taste for the natural sciences. Anyhow, I have liked them; but I get more and more, I am sorry to say, to care for nothing but Natural History; and chiefly, as you once said, for the mere species question. I think I liked No. III. the best of all. I have often said and thought that the process of scientific discovery was identical with everyday thought, only with more care; but I never succeeded in putting the case to myself with one-tenth of the clearness with which you have done. I think your second geological section will puzzle your non-scientific readers; anyhow, it has puzzled me, and with the strong middle line, which must represent either a line of stratification or some great mineralogical change, I cannot conceive how your statement can hold good.

I am very glad to hear of your "three-year-old" vigour [?]; but I fear, with all your multifarious work, that your book on Man will necessarily be delayed. You bad man; you say not a word about Mrs. Huxley, of whom my wife and self are always truly anxious to hear.

P.S. I see in the "Cornhill Magazine" a notice of a work by Cohn, which apparently is important, on the contractile tissue of plants. (149/2. "Ueber contractile Gewebe im Pflanzenreiche." "Abhand. der Schlesischen Gesellschaft fur vaterlandische Cultur," Heft I., 1861.) You ought to have it reviewed. I have ordered it, and must try and make out, if I can, some of the accursed german, for I am much interested in the subject, and experimented a little on it this summer, and came to the conclusion that plants must contain some substance most closely analogous to the supposed diffused nervous matter in the lower animals; or as, I presume, it would be more accurate to say with Cohn, that they have contractile tissue.

Lecture VI., page 151, line 7 from top--wetting FEET or bodies? (Miss Henrietta Darwin's criticism.) (149/3. Lecture VI., page 151: Lamarck "said, for example, that the short-legged birds, which live on fish, had been converted into the long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish without wetting their feet."

Their criticisms on Lectures IV. and VI. are on a separate piece of undated paper, and must belong to a letter of later date; only three lectures were published by December 7th, 1862.)

Lecture IV., page 89--Atavism.

You here and there use atavism = inheritance. Duchesne, who, I believe, invented the word, in his Strawberry book confined it, as every one has since done, to resemblance to grandfather or more remote ancestor, in contradistinction to resemblance to parents.

150. TO JOHN SCOTT

(150/1. The following is the first of a series of letters addressed to the late John Scott, of which the major part is given in our Botanical chapters. We have been tempted to give this correspondence fully not only because of its intrinsic scientific interest, but also because they are almost the only letters which show Darwin in personal relation with a younger man engaged in research under his supervision.)

[1862?]

To the best of my judgment, no subject is so important in relation to theoretical natural science, in several respects, and likewise in itself deserving investigation, as the effects of changed or unnatural conditions, or of changed structure on the reproductive system. Under this point of view the relation of well-marked but undoubted varieties in fertilising each other requires far more experiments than have been tried. See in the "Origin" the brief abstract of Gartner on Verbascum and Zea. Mr. W. Crocker, lately foreman at Kew and a very good observer, is going at my suggestion to work varieties of hollyhock. (150/2. Altheae species. These experiments seem not to have been carried out.) The climate would be too cold, I suppose, for varieties of tobacco. I began on cabbages, but immediately stopped from early shedding of their pollen causing too much trouble. Your knowledge would suggest some [plants]. On the same principle it would be well to test peloric flowers with their own pollen, and with pollen of regular flowers, and try pollen of peloric on regular flowers--seeds being counted in each case. I have now got one seedling from many crosses of a peloric Pelargonium by peloric pollen; I have two or three seedlings from a peloric flower by pollen of regular flower. I have ordered a peloric Antirrhinum (150/3. See "Variation of Animals and Plants," Edition I., Volume II., page 70.) and the peloric Gloxinia, but I much fear I shall never have time to try them. The Passiflora cases are truly wonderful, like the Crinum cases (see "Origin"). (150/4. "Origin," Edition VI., page 238.) I have read in a German paper that some varieties of potatoes (name not given) cannot be fertilised by [their] own pollen, but can by pollen of other varieties: well worth trying. Again, fertility of any monster flower, which is pretty regularly produced; I have got the wonderful Begonia frigida (150/5. The species on which Sir J.D. Hooker wrote in the "Gardeners' Chronicle," February 25th, 1860. See "Life and Letters," II., page 275.) from Kew, but doubt whether I have heat to set its seeds. If an unmodified Celosia could be got, it would be well to test with the modified cockscomb. There is a variation of columbine [Aquilegia] with simple petals without nectaries, etc., etc. I never could think what to try; but if one could get hold of a long-cultivated plant which crossed with a distinct species and yielded a very small number of seeds, then it would be highly good to test comparatively the wild parent-form and its varying offspring with this third species: for instance, if a polyanthus would cross with some species of Primula, then to try a wild cowslip with it. I believe hardly any primulas have ever been crossed. If we knew and could get the parent of the carnation (150/6. Dianthus caryophyllus, garden variety.), it would be very good for this end. Any member of the Lythraceae raised from seed ought to be well looked after for dimorphism. I have wonderful facts, the result of experiment, on Lythrum salicaria.

151. TO JOHN SCOTT. Down, December 11th [1862]

I have read your paper with much interest. (151/1. "On the Nature and Peculiarities of the Fern-spore." "Bot. Soc. Edin." Read June 12th, 1862.) You ask for remarks on the matter, which is alone really important. Shall you think me impertinent (I am sure I do not mean to be so) if I hazard a remark on the style, which is of more importance than some think? In my opinion (whether or no worth much) your paper would have been much better if written more simply and less elaborated--more like your letters. It is a golden rule always to use, if possible, a short old Saxon word. Such a sentence as "so purely dependent is the incipient plant on the specific morphological tendency" does not sound to my ears like good mother-English--it wants translating. Here and there you might, I think, have condensed some sentences. I go on the plan of thinking every single word which can be omitted without actual loss of sense as a decided gain. Now perhaps you will think me a meddling intruder: anyhow, it is the advice of an old hackneyed writer who sincerely wishes you well. Your remark on the two sexes counteracting variability in product of the one is new to me. (151/2. Scott (op. cit., page 214): "The reproductive organs of phoenogams, as is well-known, are always products of two morphologically distinct organs, the stamens producing the pollen, the carpels producing the ovules...The embryo being in this case the modified resultant of two originally distinct organs, there will necessarily be a greater tendency to efface any individual peculiarities of these than would have been the case had the embryo been the product of a single organ." A different idea seems to have occurred to Mr. Darwin, for in an undated letter to Scott he wrote: "I hardly know what to say on your view of male and female organs and variability. I must think more over it. But I was amused by finding the other day in my portfolio devoted to bud-variation a slip of paper dated June, 1860, with some such words as these, 'May not permanence of grafted buds be due to the two sexual elements derived from different parts not having come into play?' I had utterly forgotten, when I read your paper that any analogous notion had ever passed through my mind--nor can I now remember, but the slip shows me that it had." It is interesting that Huxley also came to a conclusion differing from Scott's; and, curiously enough, Darwin confused the two views, for he wrote to Scott (December 19th): "By an odd chance, reading last night some short lectures just published by Prof. Huxley, I find your observation, independently arrived at by him, on the confluence of the two sexes causing variability." Professor Huxley's remarks are in his "Lectures to Working Men on our Knowledge, etc." No. 4, page 90: "And, indeed, I think that a certain amount of variation from the primitive stock is the necessary result of the method of sexual propagation itself; for inasmuch as the thing propagated proceeds from two organisms of different sexes and different makes and temperaments, and, as the offspring is to be either of one sex or the other, it is quite clear that it cannot be an exact diagonal of the two, or it would be of no sex at all; it cannot be an exact intermediate form between that of each of its parents--it must deviate to one side or the other.") But I cannot avoid thinking that there is something unknown and deeper in seminal generation. Reflect on the long succession of embryological changes in every animal. Does a bud ever produce cotyledons or embryonic leaves? I have been much interested by your remark on inheritance at corresponding ages; I hope you will, as you say, continue to attend to this. Is it true that female Primula plants always produce females by parthenogenesis? (151/3. It seems probable that Darwin here means vegetative reproduction.) If you can answer this I should be glad; it bears on my Primula work. I thought on the subject, but gave up investigating what had been observed, because the female bee by parthenogenesis produces males alone. Your paper has told me much that in my ignorance was quite new to me. Thanks about P. scotica. If any important criticisms are made on the Primula to the Botanical Society, I should be glad to hear them. If you think fit, you may state that I repeated the crossing experiments on P. sinensis and cowslip with the same result this spring as last year--indeed, with rather more marked difference in fertility of the two crosses. In fact, had I then proved the Linum case, I would not have wasted time in repetition. I am determined I will at once publish on Linum...

I was right to be cautious in supposing you in error about Siphocampylus (no flowers were enclosed). I hope that you will make out whether the pistil presents two definite lengths; I shall be astounded if it does. I do not fully understand your objections to Natural Selection; if I do, I presume they would apply with full force to, for instance, birds. Reflect on modification of Arab-Turk horse into our English racehorse. I have had the satisfaction to tell my publisher to send my "Journal" and "Origin" to your address. I suspect, with your fertile mind, you will find it far better to experiment on your own choice; but if, on reflection, you would like to try some which interest me, I should be truly delighted, and in this case would write in some detail. If you have the means to repeat Gartner's experiments on variations of Verbascum or on maize (see the "Origin"), such experiments would be pre-eminently important. I could never get variations of Verbascum. I could suggest an experiment on potatoes analogous with the case of Passiflora; even the case of Passiflora, often as it has been repeated, might be with advantage repeated. I have worked like a slave (having counted about nine thousand seeds) on Melastoma, on the meaning of the two sets of very different stamens, and as yet have been shamefully beaten, and I now cry for aid. I could suggest what I believe a very good scheme (at least, Dr. Hooker thought so) for systematic degeneration of culinary plants, and so find out their origin; but this would be laborious and the work of years.

152. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 12th [December, 1862]

My good old Friend--

How kind you have been to give me so much of your time! Your letter is of real use, and has been and shall be well considered. I am much pleased to find that we do not differ as much as I feared. I begin my book with saying that my chief object is to show the inordinate scale of variation; I have especially studied all sorts of variations of the individual. On crossing I cannot change; the more I think, the more reason I have to believe that my conclusion would be agreed to by all practised breeders. I also greatly doubt about variability and domestication being at all necessarily correlative, but I have touched on this in "Origin." Plants being identical under very different conditions has always seemed to me a very heavy argument against what I call direct action. I think perhaps I will take the case of 1,000 pigeons (152/1. See Letter 146.) to sum up my volume; I will not discuss other points, but, as I have said, I shall recur to your letter. But I must just say that if sterility be allowed to come into play, if long-beaked be in the least degree sterile with short-beaked, my whole case is altered. By the way, my notions on hybridity are becoming considerably altered by my dimorphic work. I am now strongly inclined to believe that sterility is at first a selected quality to keep incipient species distinct. If you have looked at Lythrum you will see how pollen can be modified merely to favour crossing; with equal readiness it could be modified to prevent crossing.

It is this which makes me so much interested with dimorphism, etc. (152/2. This gives a narrow impression of Darwin's interest in dimorphism. The importance of his work was (briefly put) the proof that sterility has no necessary connection with specific difference, but depends on sexual differentiation independent of racial differences. See "Life and Letters," III., page 296. His point of view that sterility is a selected quality is again given in a letter to Huxley ("Life and Letters," II., page 384), but was not upheld in his later writings (see "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 245). The idea of sterility being a selected quality is interesting in connection with Romanes' theory of physiological selection. (See Letters 209-214.))

One word more. When you pitched me head over heels by your new way of looking at the back side of variation, I received assurance and strength by considering monsters--due to law: horribly strange as they are, the monsters were alive till at least when born. They differ at least as much from the parent as any one mammal from another.

I have just finished a long, weary chapter on simple facts of variation of cultivated plants, and am now refreshing myself with a paper on Linum for the Linnean Society.

153. TO W.B. TEGETMEIER

(153/1. The following letter also bears on the question of the artificial production of sterility.)

Down, 27th [December, 1862].

The present plan is to try whether any existing breeds happen to have acquired accidentally any degree of sterility; but to this point hereafter. The enclosed MS. will show what I have done and know on the subject. Please at some future time carefully return the MS. to me. If I were going to try again, I would prefer Turbit with Carrier or Dragon.

I will suggest an analogous experiment, which I have had for two years in my experimental book with "be sure and try," but which, as my health gets yearly weaker and weaker and my other work increases, I suppose I shall never try. Permit me to add that if 5 pounds would cover the expenses of the experiment, I should be delighted to give it, and you could publish the result if there be any result. I crossed the Spanish cock (your bird) and white Silk hen and got plenty of eggs and chickens; but two of them seemed to be quite sterile. I was then sadly overdone with work, but have ever since much reproached myself that I did not preserve and carefully test the procreative power of these hens. Now, if you are inclined to get a Spanish cock and a couple of white Silk hens, I shall be most grateful to hear whether the offspring breed well: they will prove, I think, not hardy; if they should prove sterile, which I can hardly believe, they will anyhow do for the pot. If you do try this, how would it do to put a Silk cock to your curious silky Cochin hen, so as to get a big silk breed; it would be curious if you could get silky fowl with bright colours. I believe a Silk hen crossed by any other breed never gives silky feathers. A cross from Silk cock and Cochin Silk hen ought to give silky feathers and probably bright colours.

I have been led lately from experiments (not published) on dimorphism to reflect much on sterility from hybridism, and partially to change the opinion given in "Origin." I have now letters out enquiring on the following point, implied in the experiment, which seems to me well worth trying, but too laborious ever to be attempted. I would ask every pigeon and fowl fancier whether they have ever observed, in the same breed, a cock A paired to a hen B which did not produce young. Then I would get cock A and match it to a hen of its nearest blood; and hen B to its nearest blood. I would then match the offspring of A (viz., a, b, c, d, e) to the offspring of B (viz., f, g, h, i, j), and all those children which were fertile together should be destroyed until I found one--say a, which was not quite fertile with--say, i. Then a and i should be preserved and paired with their parents A and B, so as to try and get two families which would not unite together; but the members WITHIN each family being fertile together. This would probably be quite hopeless; but he who could effect this would, I believe, solve the problem of sterility from hybridism. If you should ever hear of individual fowls or pigeons which are sterile together, I should be very grateful to hear of the case. It is a parallel case to those recorded of a man not impotent long living with a woman who remained childless; the husband died, and the woman married again and had plenty of children. Apparently (by no means certainly) this first man and woman were dissimilar in their sexual organisation. I conceive it possible that their offspring (if both had married again and both had children) would be sexually dissimilar, like their parents, or sterile together. Pray forgive my dreadful writing; I have been very unwell all day, and have no strength to re-write this scrawl. I am working slowly on, and I suppose in three or four months shall be ready.

I am sure I do not know whether any human being could understand or read this shameful scrawl.

154. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December, 28th [1862]

I return enclosed: if you write, thank Mr. Kingsley for thinking of letting me see the sound sense of an Eastern potentate. (154/1. Kingsley's letter to Huxley, dated December 20th, 1862, contains a story or parable of a heathen Khan in Tartary who was visited by a pair of proselytising Moollahs. The first Moollah said: "Oh! Khan, worship my God. He is so wise that he made all things." But Moollah No. 2 won the day by pointing out that his God is "so wise that he makes all things make themselves.") All that I said about the little book (154/2. The six "Lectures to Working Men," published in six pamphlets and in book-form in 1863. Mr. Huxley considered that Mr. Darwin's argument required the production by man's selection of breeds which should be mutually infertile, and thus resemble distinct species physiologically as well as morphologically.) is strictly my opinion; it is in every way excellent, and cannot fail to do good the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given do not go nearly so far. We differ so much that it is no use arguing. To get the degree of sterility you expect in recently formed varieties seems to me simply hopeless. It seems to me almost like those naturalists who declare they will never believe that one species turns into another till they see every stage in process.

I have heard from Tegetmeier, and have given him the result of my crosses of the birds which he proposes to try, and have told him how alone I think the experiment could be tried with the faintest hope of success--namely, to get, if possible, a case of two birds which when paired were unproductive, yet neither impotent. For instance, I had this morning a letter with a case of a Hereford heifer, which seemed to be, after repeated trials, sterile with one particular and far from impotent bull, but not with another bull. But it is too long a story--it is to attempt to make two strains, both fertile, and yet sterile when one of one strain is crossed with one of the other strain. But the difficulty...would be beyond calculation. As far as I see, Tegetmeier's plan would simply test whether two existing breeds are now in any slight degree sterile; which has already been largely tested: not that I dispute the good of re-testing.

155. TO HUGH FALCONER

(155/1. The original letter is dated "December 10th," but this must, we think, be a slip of the pen for January 10th. It contains a reference to No. VI. of the "Lectures to Working Men" which, as Mr. Leonard Huxley is good enough to inform us, was not delivered until December 15th, and therefore could not have been seen by Mr. Darwin on December 10th. The change of date makes comprehensible the reference to Falconer's paper "On the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico (E. Columbi, Falc.)," which appeared in the January number of the "Natural History Review." It is true that he had seen advanced sheets of Falconer's paper ("Life and Letters," II., page 389), but the reference here is to the complete paper.

In the present volume we have thought it right to give some expression to the attitude of Darwin towards Owen. Professor Owen's biographer has clearly felt the difficulty of making a statement on Owen's attitude towards Darwinism, and has ("Life of Sir Richard Owen," Volume II., page 92) been driven to adopt the severe indictment contained in the "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page xviii. Darwin was by no means alone in his distrust of Owen; and to omit altogether a reference to the conduct which led up to the isolation of Owen among his former friends and colleagues would be to omit a part of the history of science of the day. And since we cannot omit to notice Darwin's point of view, it seems right to give the facts of a typical case illustrating the feeling with which he regarded Owen. This is all the more necessary since the recently published biography of Sir R. Owen gives no hint, as far as we are aware, of even a difference of opinion with other scientific men.

The account which Falconer gives in the above-mentioned paper in the "Nat. Hist. Review" (January, 1863) would be amusing if the matter were less serious. In 1857 Falconer described ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." XIII.) a new species of fossil elephant from America, to which he gave the name Elephas Columbi, a designation which was recognised and adopted by Continental writers. In 1858 (Brit. Assoc. Leeds) Owen made use of the name "Elephas texianus," Blake" for the species which Falconer had previously named E. Columbi, but without referring to Falconer's determination; he gave no authority, "thus by the established usage in zoology producing it as his own." In 1861 Owen in his Palaeontology, 2nd edition, 1861, describes the elephant as E. texianus, Blake. To Mr. Blake's name is appended an asterisk which refers to a footnote to Bollaert's "Antiquities of S. America," 2nd edition. According to Falconer (page 46) no second edition of Bollaert had appeared at the time of writing (August, 1862), and in the first edition (1860) he was "unable to detect the occurrence of the name even, of E. texianus, anywhere throughout the volume"; though Bollaert mentions the fact that he had deposited, in the British Museum, the tooth of a fossil elephant from Texas.

In November, 1861, Blake wrote a paper in the "Geologist" in which the new elephant no longer bears his own name as authority, but is described as "Elephas texianus, Owen, E. Columbi, Falconer." Finally, in another paper the name of Owen is dropped and the elephant is once more his own. As Falconer remarks, "the usage of science does not countenance such accommodating arrangements, when the result is to prejudice a prior right."

It may be said, no doubt, that the question who first described a given species is a petty one; but this view has a double edge, and applies most strongly to those who neglect the just claims of their predecessors.

Down, January 5th [1863].

I finished your Elephant paper last night, and you must let me express my admiration at it. (155/2. "On the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico (E. Columbi, Falc.), etc." "Nat. Hist. Rev." 1863, page 81. (Cf. Letter to Lyell. "Life and Letters," II., page 389; also "Origin," Edition VI., page 306.) See Letter 143.) All the points strike me as admirably worked out, and very many most interesting. I was particularly struck with your remarks on the character of the ancient Mammalian Fauna of N. America (155/3. Falconer, page 62. This passage is marked in Darwin's copy.); it agrees with all I fancied was the case, namely a temporary irruption of S. American forms into N. America, and conversely, I chuckled a little over the specimen of M. Andium "hesitating" between the two groups. (155/4. In speaking of the characters of Mastodon Andium, Falconer refers to a former paper by himself ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XIII. 1857, page 313), in which he called attention "to the exceptional character of certain specimens of M. Andium, as if hesitating between [the groups] Tetralophodon and Trilophodon" (ibid., page 100).) I have been assured by Mr. Wallace that abundant Mastodon remains have been found at Timor, and that is rather close to Australia. I rejoice that you have smashed that case. (155/5. In the paper in the "Nat. Hist. Review" (loc. cit.) Falconer writes: "It seems more probable that some unintentional error has got mixed up with the history of this remarkable fossil; and until further confirmatory evidence is adduced, of an unimpeachable character, faith cannot be reposed in the reality of the asserted Australian Mastodon" (page 101).) It is indeed a grand paper. I will say nothing more about your allusions to me, except that they have pleased me quite as much in print as in MS. You must have worked very hard; the labour must have been extreme, but I do hope that you will have health and strength to go on. You would laugh if you could see how indignant all Owen's mean conduct about E. Columbi made me. (155/6. See Letter 157.) I did not get to sleep till past 3 o'clock. How well you lash him, firmly and severely, with unruffled temper, as if you were performing a simple duty. The case is come to such a pass, that I think every man of science is bound to show his feelings by some overt act, and I shall watch for a fitting opportunity.

P.S.--I have kept back for a day the enclosed owing to the arrival of your most interesting letter. I knew it was a mere chance whether you could inform me on the points required; but no one other person has so often responded to my miscellaneous queries. I believe I have now in my greenhouse L. trigynum (155/7. Linum trigynum.), which came up from seed purchased as L. flavum, from which it is wholly different in foliage. I have just sent in a paper on Dimorphism of Linum to the Linnean Society (155/8. "On the Existence of the Forms, and on their reciprocal Sexual Relation, in several species of the genus Linum.--"Journ. Linn. Soc." Volume VII., page 69, 1864.), and so I do not doubt your memory is right about L. trigynum: the functional difference in the two forms of Linum is really wonderful. I assure you I quite long to see you and a few others in London; it is not so much the eczema which has taken the epidermis a dozen times clean off; but I have been knocked up of late with extraordinary facility, and when I shall be able to come up I know not. I particularly wish to hear about the wondrous bird: the case has delighted me, because no group is so isolated as Birds. I much wish to hear when we meet which digits are developed; when examining birds two or three years ago, I distinctly remember writing to Lyell that some day a fossil bird would be found with the end of wing cloven, i.e. the bastard-wing and other part, both well developed. Thanks for Von Martius, returned by this post, which I was glad to see. Poor old Wagner (Probably Johann Andreas Wagner, author of "Zur Feststellung des Artbegriffes, mit besonderer Bezugnahme auf die Ansichten von Nathusius, Darwin, Is. Geoffroy and Agassiz," "Munchen Sitzungsb." (1861), page 301, and of numerous papers on zoological and palaeozoological subjects.) always attacked me in a proper spirit, and sent me two or three little brochures, and I thanked him cordially. The Germans seem much stirred up on the subject. I received by the same post almost a little volume on the "Origin."

I cannot work above a couple of hours daily, and this plays the deuce with me.

P.S. 2nd.--I have worked like a slave and been baffled like a slave in trying to make out the meaning of two very different sets of stamens in some Melastomaceae. (155/9. Several letters on the Melastomaceae occur in our Botanical section.) I must tell you one fact. I counted 9,000 seeds, one by one, from my artificially fertilised pods. There is something very odd, but I am as yet beaten. Plants from two pollens grow at different rates! Now, what I want to know is, whether in individuals of the same species, growing together, you have ever noticed any difference in the position of the pistil or in the size and colour of the stamens?

156. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 18th [1862]

I have read Nos. IV, and V. (156/1. "On our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature," being six Lectures to Working Men delivered at the Museum of Practical Geology by Prof. Huxley, 1863. These lectures, which were given once a week from November 10th, 1862, onwards, were printed from the notes of Mr. J.A. Mays, a shorthand writer, who asked permission to publish them on his own account; Mr. Huxley stating in a prefatory "Notice" that he had no leisure to revise the lectures.) They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down No. IV. with this reflection, "What is the good of writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad, I may as well shut up shop altogether. You put capitally and most simply and clearly the relation of animals and plants to each other at page 122.

Be careful about Fantails: their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging in the bound volume dated 1863 is slightly different. The passage here is, "...If you couple a male and female hybrid...the result is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will get no offspring at all." Darwin maintains elsewhere that Huxley, from not knowing the botanical evidence, made too much of this point. See "Life and Letters," II., page 384.) seems a little too strong--viz., ninety-nine out of a hundred, unless you except plants.

Page 118: You say the answer to varieties when crossed being at all sterile is "absolutely a negative." (156/3. Huxley, page 112: "Can we find any approximation to this [sterility of hybrids] in the different races known to be produced by selective breeding from a common stock? Up to the present time the answer to that question is absolutely a negative one.") Do you mean to say that Gartner lied, after experiments by the hundred (and he a hostile witness), when he showed that this was the case with Verbascum and with maize (and here you have selected races): does Kolreuter lie when he speaks about the varieties of tobacco? My God, is not the case difficult enough, without its being, as I must think, falsely made more difficult? I believe it is my own fault--my d--d candour: I ought to have made ten times more fuss about these most careful experiments. I did put it stronger in the third edition of the "Origin." If you have a new edition, do consider your second geological section: I do not dispute the truth of your statement; but I maintain that in almost every case the gravel would graduate into the mud; that there would not be a hard, straight line between the mass of gravel and mud; that the gravel, in crawling inland, would be separated from the underlying beds by oblique lines of stratification. A nice idea of the difficulty of Geology your section would give to a working man! Do show your section to Ramsay, and tell him what I say; and if he thinks it a fair section for a beginner I am shut up, and "will for ever hold my tongue." Good-night.

157. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, [January] 10th [1863]

You will be weary of notes from me about the little book of yours. It is lucky for me that I expressed, before reading No. VI. (157/1. "Lectures to Working Men," No. VI., is a critical examination of the position of the "Origin of Species" in relation to the complete theory of the "causes of the phenomena of organic nature."), my opinion of its absolute excellence, and of its being well worth wide distribution and worth correction (not that I see where you could improve), if you thought it worth your valuable time. Had I read No. VI., even a rudiment of modesty would, or ought to, have stopped me saying so much. Though I have been well abused, yet I have had so much praise, that I have become a gourmand, both as to capacity and taste; and I really did not think that mortal man could have tickled my palate in the exquisite manner with which you have done the job. So I am an old ass, and nothing more need be said about this. I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further with further safety and truth. Of course I do not wholly agree about sterility. I hate beyond all things finding myself in disagreement with any capable judge, when the premises are the same; and yet this will occasionally happen. Thinking over my former letter to you, I fancied (but I now doubt) that I had partly found out the cause of our disagreement, and I attributed it to your naturally thinking most about animals, with which the sterility of the hybrids is much more conspicuous than the lessened fertility of the first cross. Indeed, this could hardly be ascertained with mammals, except by comparing the products of [their] whole life; and, as far as I know, this has only been ascertained in the case of the horse and ass, which do produce fewer offspring in [their] lifetime than in pure breeding. In plants the test of first cross seems as fair as test of sterility of hybrids. And this latter test applies, I will maintain to the death, to the crossing of varieties of Verbascum, and varieties, selected varieties, of Zea. (157/2. See Letter 156.) You will say Go to the Devil and hold your tongue. No, I will not hold my tongue; for I must add that after going, for my present book, all through domestic animals, I have come to the conclusion that there are almost certainly several cases of two or three or more species blended together and now perfectly fertile together. Hence I conclude that there must be something in domestication,--perhaps the less stable conditions, the very cause which induces so much variability,--which eliminates the natural sterility of species when crossed. If so, we can see how unlikely that sterility should arise between domestic races. Now I will hold my tongue. Page 143: ought not "Sanscrit" to be "Aryan"? What a capital number the last "Natural History Review" is! That is a grand paper by Falconer. I cannot say how indignant Owen's conduct about E. Columbi has made me. I believe I hate him more than you do, even perhaps more than good old Falconer does. But I have bubbled over to one or two correspondents on this head, and will say no more. I have sent Lubbock a little review of Bates' paper in "Linn. Transact." (157/3. The unsigned review of Mr. Bates' work on mimetic butterflies appeared in the "Nat. Hist. Review" (1863), page 219.) which L. seems to think will do for your "Review." Do inaugurate a great improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do; I will heap blessings on your head. Do not waste your time in answering this.

158. TO JOHN LUBBOCK [LORD AVEBURY]. Down, January 23rd [1863]

I have no criticism, except one sentence not perfectly smooth. I think your introductory remarks very striking, interesting, and novel. (158/1. "On the Development of Chloeon (Ephemera) dimidiatum, Part I. By John Lubbock. "Trans. Linn. Soc." Volume XXIV., pages 61-78, 1864 [Read January 15th, 1863].) They interested me the more, because the vaguest thoughts of the same kind had passed through my head; but I had no idea that they could be so well developed, nor did I know of exceptions. Sitaris and Meloe (158/2. Sitaris and Meloe, two genera of coleopterous insects, are referred to by Lubbock (op. cit., pages 63-64) as "perhaps...the most remarkable cases...among the Coleoptera" of curious and complicated metamorphoses.) seem very good. You have put the whole case of metamorphosis in a new light; I dare say what you remark about poverty of fresh-water is very true. (158/3. "We cannot but be struck by the poverty of the fresh-water fauna when compared with that of the ocean" (op. cit., page 64).) I think you might write a memoir on fresh-water productions. I suggest that the key-note is that land-productions are higher and have advantage in general over marine; and consequently land-productions have generally been modified into fresh-water productions, instead of marine productions being directly changed into fresh-water productions, as at first seems more probable, as the chance of immigration is always open from sea to rivers and ponds.

My talk with you did me a deal of good, and I enjoyed it much.

159. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 13th [1863]

I send a very imperfect answer to [your] question, which I have written on foreign paper to save you copying, and you can send when you write to Thomson in Calcutta. Hereafter I shall be able to answer better your question about qualities induced in individuals being inherited; gout in man--loss of wool in sheep (which begins in the first generation and takes two or three to complete); probably obesity (for it is rare with poor); probably obesity and early maturity in short-horn cattle, etc., etc.

160. TO A. DE CANDOLLE. Down, January 14th [1863]

I thank you most sincerely for sending me your Memoir. (160/1. Etude sur l'Espece a l'occasion d'une revision de la Famille des Cupuliferes. "Biblioth. Univ. (Arch. des Sc. Phys. et Nat.)," Novembre 1862.) I have read it with the liveliest interest, as is natural for me; but you have the art of making subjects, which might be dry, run easily. I have been fairly astonished at the amount of individual variability in the oaks. I never saw before the subject in any department of nature worked out so carefully. What labour it must have cost you! You spoke in one letter of advancing years; but I am very sure that no one would have suspected that you felt this. I have been interested with every part; though I am so unfortunate as to differ from most of my contemporaries in thinking that the vast continental extensions (160/2. See Letters 47, 48.) of Forbes, Heer, and others are not only advanced without sufficient evidence, but are opposed to much weighty evidence. You refer to my work in the kindest and most generous spirit. I am fully satisfied at the length in belief to which you go, and not at all surprised at the prudent reservations which you make. I remember well how many years it cost me to go round from old beliefs. It is encouraging to me to observe that everyone who has gone an inch with me, after a period goes a few more inches or even feet. But the great point, as it seems to me, is to give up the immutability of specific forms; as long as they are thought immutable, there can be no real progress in "Epiontology." (160/3. See De Candolle, loc. cit., page 67: he defines "Epiontologie" as the study of the distribution and succession of organised beings from their origin up to the present time. At present Epiontology is divided into geography and palaeontology, "mais cette division trop inegale et a limites bien vagues disparaitra probablement.") It matters very little to any one except myself, whether I am a little more or less wrong on this or that point; in fact, I am sure to be proved wrong in many points. But the subject will have, I am convinced, a grand future. Considering that birds are the most isolated group in the animal kingdom, what a splendid case is this Solenhofen bird-creature with its long tail and fingers to its wings! I have lately been daily and hourly using and quoting your "Geographical Botany" in my book on "Variation under Domestication."

161. TO HORACE DOBELL. Down, February 16th [1863]

Absence from home and consequent idleness are the causes that I have not sooner thanked you for your very kind present of your Lectures. (161/1. "On the Germs and Vestiges of Disease," (London) 1861.) Your reasoning seems quite satisfactory (though the subject is rather beyond my limit of thought and knowledge) on the V.M.F. not being "a given quantity." (161/2. "It has been too common to consider the force exhibited in the operations of life (the V.M.F.) as a given quantity, to which no accessions can be made, but which is apportioned to each living being in quantity sufficient for its necessities, according to some hidden law" (op. cit., page 41.) And I can see that the conditions of life must play a most important part in allowing this quantity to increase, as in the budding of a tree, etc. How far these conditions act on "the forms of organic life" (page 46) I do not see clearly. In fact, no part of my subject has so completely puzzled me as to determine what effect to attribute to (what I vaguely call) the direct action of the conditions of life. I shall before long come to this subject, and must endeavour to come to some conclusion when I have got the mass of collected facts in some sort of order in my mind. My present impression is that I have underrated this action in the "Origin." I have no doubt when I go through your volume I shall find other points of interest and value to me. I have already stumbled on one case (about which I want to consult Mr. Paget)--namely, on the re-growth of supernumerary digits. (161/3. See Letters 178, 270.) You refer to "White on Regeneration, etc., 1785." I have been to the libraries of the Royal and the Linnean Societies, and to the British Museum, where the librarians got out your volume and made a special hunt, and could discover no trace of such a book. Will you grant me the favour of giving me any clue, where I could see the book? Have you it? if so, and the case is given briefly, would you have the great kindness to copy it? I much want to know all particulars. One case has been given me, but with hardly minute enough details, of a supernumerary little finger which has already been twice cut off, and now the operation will soon have to be done for the third time. I am extremely much obliged for the genealogical table; the fact of the two cousins not, as far as yet appears, transmitting the peculiarity is extraordinary, and must be given by me.

162. TO C. LYELL. [February 17th, 1863.]

The same post that brought the enclosed brought Dana's pamphlet on the same subject. (162/1. The pamphlet referred to was published in "Silliman's Journal," Volume XXV., 1863, pages 65 and 71, also in the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," Volume XI., pages 207-14, 1863: "On the Higher Subdivisions in the Classification of Mammals." In this paper Dana maintains the view that "Man's title to a position by himself, separate from the other mammals in classification, appears to be fixed on structural as well as physical grounds" (page 210). His description is as follows:--

I. ARCHONTIA (vel DIPODA) Man (alone).

II. MEGASTHENA. III. MICROSTHENA. Quadrumana. Cheiroptera. Carnivora. Insectivora. Herbivora. Rodentia. Mutilata. Bruta (Edentata).

IV. OOTICOIDEA. Marsupialia. Monotremata.)

The whole seems to me utterly wild. If there had not been the foregone wish to separate men, I can never believe that Dana or any one would have relied on so small a distinction as grown man not using fore-limbs for locomotion, seeing that monkeys use their limbs in all other respects for the same purpose as man. To carry on analogous principles (for they are not identical, in crustacea the cephalic limbs are brought close to mouth) from crustacea to the classification of mammals seems to me madness. Who would dream of making a fundamental distinction in birds, from fore-limbs not being used at all in [some] birds, or used as fins in the penguin, and for flight in other birds?

I get on slowly with your grand work, for I am overwhelmed with odds and ends and letters.

163. TO J.D. HOOKER

(163/1. The following extract refers to Owen's paper in the "Linn. Soc. Journal," June, 1857, in which the classification of the Mammalia by cerebral characters was proposed. In spite of the fact that men and apes are placed in distinct Sub-Classes, Owen speaks (in the foot-note of which Huxley made such telling effect) of the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus as the anatomist's difficulty. (See Letter 119.))

July 5th, 1857.

What a capital number of the "Linnean Journal!" Owen's is a grand paper; but I cannot swallow Man making a division as distinct from a chimpanzee as an Ornithorhynchus from a horse; I wonder what a chimpanzee would say to this? (163/2. According to Owen the sub-class Archencephala contains only the genus Homo: the Gyrencephala contains both chimpanzee and horse, the Lyencephala contains Ornithorhynchus.)

164. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down [February?] 26th, 1863

I have just finished with very great interest "Man's Place." (164/1. "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," 1863 (preface dated January 1863).) I never fail to admire the clearness and condensed vigour of your style, as one calls it, but really of your thought. I have no criticisms; nor is it likely that I could have. But I think you could have added some interesting matter on the character or disposition of the young ourangs which have been kept in France and England. I should have thought you might have enlarged a little on the later embryological changes in man and on his rudimentary structure, tail as compared with tail of higher monkeys, intermaxillary bone, false ribs, and I daresay other points, such as muscles of ears, etc., etc. I was very much struck with admiration at the opening pages of Part II. (and oh! what a delicious sneer, as good as a dessert, at page 106) (164/2. Huxley, op. cit., page 106. After saying that "there is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence--that propounded by Mr. Darwin," and after a few words on Lamarck, he goes on: "And though I have heard of the announcement of a formula touching 'the ordained continuous becoming of organic forms,' it is obvious that it is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible, and that a qua-qua-versal proposition of this kind, which may be read backwards or forwards, or sideways, with exactly the same amount of significance, does not really exist, though it may seem to do so." The "formula" in question is Owen's.): but my admiration is unbounded at pages 109 to 112. I declare I never in my life read anything grander. Bacon himself could not have charged a few paragraphs with more condensed and cutting sense than you have done. It is truly grand. I regret extremely that you could not, or did not, end your book (not that I mean to say a word against the Geological History) with these pages. With a book, as with a fine day, one likes it to end with a glorious sunset. I congratulate you on its publication; but do not be disappointed if it does not sell largely: parts are highly scientific, and I have often remarked that the best books frequently do not get soon appreciated: certainly large sale is no proof of the highest merit. But I hope it may be widely distributed; and I am rejoiced to see in your note to Miss Rhadamanthus (164/3. This refers to Mr. Darwin's daughter (now Mrs. Litchfield), whom Mr. Huxley used to laugh at for the severity of her criticisms.) that a second thousand is called for of the little book. What a letter that is of Owen's in the "Athenaeum" (164/4. A letter by Owen in the "Athenaeum," February 21st, 1863, replying to strictures on his treatment of the brain question, which had appeared in Lyell's "Antiquity of Man."); how cleverly he will utterly muddle and confound the public. Indeed he quite muddled me, till I read again your "concise statement" (164/5. This refers to a section (pages 113-18) in "Man's Place in Nature," headed "A succinct History of the Controversy respecting the Cerebral Structure of Man and the Apes." Huxley follows the question from Owen's attempt to classify the mammalia by cerebral characters, published by the "Linn. Soc." in 1857, up to his revival of the subject at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association in 1862. It is a tremendous indictment of Owen, and seems to us to conclude not unfittingly with a citation from Huxley's article in the "Medical Times," October 11th, 1862. Huxley here points out that special investigations have been made into the question at issue "during the last two years" by Allen Thomson, Rolleston, Marshall, Flower, Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, and that "all these able and conscientious observers" have testified to the accuracy of his statements, "while not a single anatomist, great or small, has supported Professor Owen." He sums up the case once more, and concludes: "The question has thus become one of personal veracity. For myself I will accept no other issue than this, grave as it is, to the present controversy.") (which is capitally clear), and then I saw that my suspicion was true that he has entirely changed his ground to size of Brain. How candid he shows himself to have taken the slipped Brain! (164/6. Owen in the "Athenaeum," February 21st, 1863, admits that in the brain which he used in illustration of his statements "the cerebral hemispheres had glided forward and apart behind so as to expose a portion of the cerebellum.") I am intensely curious to see whether Lyell will answer. (164/7. Lyell's answer was in the "Athenaeum" March 7th, 1863.) Lyell has been, I fear, rather rash to enter on a subject on which he of course knows nothing by himself. By heavens, Owen will shake himself, when he sees what an antagonist he has made for himself in you. With hearty admiration, Farewell.

I am fearfully disappointed at Lyell's excessive caution (164/8. In the "Antiquity of Man": see "Life and Letters," III., page 8.) in expressing any judgment on Species or [on the] origin of Man.

165. TO JOHN SCOTT. Down, March 6th, 1863

I thank you for your criticisms on the "Origin," and which I have not time to discuss; but I cannot help doubting, from your expression of an "INNATE...selective principle," whether you fully comprehend what is meant by Natural Selection. Certainly when you speak of weaker (i.e. less well adapted) forms crossing with the stronger, you take a widely different view from what I do on the struggle for existence; for such weaker forms could not exist except by the rarest chance. With respect to utility, reflect that 99/100ths part of the structure of each being is due to inheritance of formerly useful structures. Pray read what I have said on "correlation." Orchids ought to show us how ignorant we are of what is useful. No doubt hundreds of cases could be advanced of which no explanation could be offered; but I must stop. Your letter has interested me much. I am very far from strong, and have great fear that I must stop all work for a couple of months for entire rest, and leave home. It will be ruin to all my work.

166. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 23rd [1863]

The more I think of Falconer's letter (166/1. Published in the "Athenaeum" April 4th, 1863, page 459. The writer asserts that Lyell did not make it clear that certain material made use of in the "Antiquity of Man" was supplied by the original work of Mr. Prestwich and himself. (See "Life and Letters," III., page 19.)) the more grieved I am; he and Prestwich (the latter at least must owe much to the "Principles") assume an absurdly unwarrantable position with respect to Lyell. It is too bad to treat an old hero in science thus. I can see from a note from Falconer (about a wonderful fossil Brazilian Mammal, well called Meso- or Typo-therium) that he expects no sympathy from me. He will end, I hope, by being sorry. Lyell lays himself open to a slap by saying that he would come to show his original observations, and then not distinctly doing so; he had better only have laid claim, on this one point of man, to verification and compilation.

Altogether, I much like Lyell's letter. But all this squabbling will greatly sink scientific men. I have seen a sneer already in the "Times."

167. TO H.W. BATES. At Rev. C. Langton, Hartfield, Tunbridge Wells, April 30th [1863]

You will have received before this the note which I addressed to Leicester, after finishing Volume I., and you will have received copies of my little review (167/1. "Nat. Hist. Review," 1863, page 219. A review of Bates' paper on Mimetic Butterflies.) of your paper...I have now finished Volume II., and my opinion remains the same--that you have written a truly admirable work (167/2. "The Naturalist on the Amazons," 1863.), with capital original remarks, first-rate descriptions, and the whole in a style which could not be improved. My family are now reading the book, and admire it extremely; and, as my wife remarks, it has so strong an air of truthfulness. I had a letter from a person the other day, unknown to you, full of praise of the book. I do hope it may get extensively heard of and circulated; but to a certain extent this, I think, always depends on chance.

I suppose the clicking noise of surprise made by the Indian is that which the end of the tongue, applied to the palate of the mouth and suddenly withdrawn, makes?

I have not written since receiving your note of April 20th, in which you confided in me and told me your prospects. I heartily wish they were better, and especially more certain; but with your abilities and powers of writing it will be strange if you cannot add what little you require for your income. I am glad that you have got a retired and semi-rural situation. What a grand ending you give to your book, contrasting civilisation and wild life! I quite regret that I have finished it: every evening it was a real treat to me to have my half-hour in the grand Amazonian forest, and picture to myself your vivid descriptions. There are heaps of facts of value to me in a natural history point of view. It was a great misfortune that you were prevented giving the discussion on species. But you will, I hope, be able to give your views and facts somewhere else.

168. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 15th [1863]

Your letter received this morning interested me more than even most of your letters, and that is saying a good deal. I must scribble a little on several points. About Lyell and species--you put the whole case, I do believe, when you say that he is "half-hearted and whole-headed." (168/1. Darwin's disappointment with the cautious point of view taken up by Lyell in the "Antiquity of Man" is illustrated in the "Life and Letters," III., pages 11, 13. See also Letter 164, page 239.) I wrote to A. Gray that, when I saw such men as Lyell and he refuse to judge, it put me in despair, and that I sometimes thought I should prefer that Lyell had judged against modification of species rather than profess inability to decide; and I left him to apply this to himself. I am heartily rejoiced to hear that you intend to try to bring L. and F. (168/2. Falconer claimed that Lyell had not "done justice to the part he took in resuscitating the cave question." See "Life and Letters," III., page 14.) together again; but had you not better wait till they are a little cooled? You will do Science a real good service. Falconer never forgave Lyell for taking the Purbeck bones from him and handing them over to Owen.

With respect to island floras, if I understand rightly, we differ almost solely how plants first got there. I suppose that at long intervals, from as far back as later Tertiary periods to the present time, plants occasionally arrived (in some cases, perhaps, aided by different currents from existing currents and by former islands), and that these old arrivals have survived little modified on the islands, but have become greatly modified or become extinct on the continent. If I understand, you believe that all islands were formerly united to continents, and then received all their plants and none since; and that on the islands they have undergone less extinction and modification than on the continent. The number of animal forms on islands, very closely allied to those on continents, with a few extremely distinct and anomalous, does not seem to me well to harmonise with your supposed view of all having formerly arrived or rather having been left together on the island.

169. TO ASA GRAY. Down, May 31st [1863?]

I was very glad to receive your review (169/1. The review on De Candolle's work on the Oaks (A. Gray's "Scientific Papers," I., page 130).) of De Candolle a week ago. It seems to me excellent, and you speak out, I think, more plainly in favour of derivation of species than hitherto, though doubtfully about Natural Selection. Grant the first, I am easy about the second. Do you not consider such cases as all the orchids next thing to a demonstration against Heer's view of species arising suddenly by monstrosities?--it is impossible to imagine so many co-adaptations being formed all by a chance blow. Of course creationists would cut the enigma.

170. TO T.H. HUXLEY. June 27th [1863?]

What are you doing now? I have never yet got hold of the "Edinburgh Review," in which I hear you are well abused. By the way, I heard lately from Asa Gray that Wyman was delighted at "Man's Place." (170/1. "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," by T.H. Huxley, 1863.) I wonder who it is who pitches weakly, but virulently into you, in the "Anthropological Review." How quiet Owen seems! I do at last begin to believe that he will ultimately fall in public estimation. What nonsense he wrote in the "Athenaeum" (170/2. "Athenaeum," March 28th, 1863. See "Life and Letters," III., page 17.) on Heterogeny! I saw in his Aye-Aye (170/3. See Owen in the "Trans. Zool. Soc." Volume V. The sentence referred to seems to be the following (page 95): "We know of no changes in progress in the Island of Madagascar, necessitating a special quest of wood-boring larvae by small quadrupeds of the Lemurine or Sciurine types of organisation.') paper (I think) that he sneers at the manner in which he supposes that we should account for the structure of its limbs; and asks how we know that certain insects had increased in the Madagascar forests. Would it not be a good rebuff to ask him how he knows there were trees at all on the leafless plains of La Plata for his Mylodons to tear down? But I must stop, for if I once begin about [him] there will be no end. I was disappointed in the part about species in Lyell. (170/4. Lyell's "Antiquity of Man." See "Life and Letters," III., page 11.) You and Hooker are the only two bold men. I have had a bad spring and summer, almost constantly very unwell; but I am crawling on in my book on "Variation under Domestication.")

171. TO C. LYELL. Down, August 14th [1863]

Have you seen Bentham's remarks on species in his address to the Linnean Society? (171/1. Presidential address before the Linnean Society by G. Bentham ("Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc." Volume VII., page xi., 1864).) they have pleased me more than anything I have read for some time. I have no news, for I have not seen a soul for months, and have had a bad spring and summer, but have managed to do a good deal of work. Emma is threatening me to take me to Malvern, and perhaps I shall be compelled, but it is a horrid waste of time; you must have enjoyed North Wales, I should think, it is to me a most glorious country...

If you have not read Bates' book (171/2. Henry Walter Bates, "The Naturalist on the River Amazons," 2 volumes, London, 1863. In a letter to Bates, April 18th, 1863, Darwin writes, "It is the best work of natural history travels ever published in England" ("Life and Letters," II., page 381.), I think it would interest you. He is second only to Humboldt in describing a tropical forest. (171/3. Quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page 381.). Talking of reading, I have never got the "Edinburgh" (171/4. The "Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man," by Sir Charles Lyell, and works by other authors reviewed in the "Edinburgh Review." Volume CXVIII., July 1863. The writer sums up his criticism as follows: "Glancing at the work of Sir Charles Lyell as a whole, it leaves the impression on our minds that we have been reading an ingenious academical thesis, rather than a work of demonstration by an original writer...There is no argument in it, and only a few facts which have not been stated elsewhere by Sir C. Lyell himself or by others" (loc. cit., page 294).), in which, I suppose, you are cut up.

172. TO H. FALCONER. December 26th [1863]

Thank you for telling me about the Pliocene mammal, which is very remarkable; but has not Owen stated that the Pliocene badger is identical with the recent? Such a case does indeed well show the stupendous duration of the same form. I have not heard of Suess' pamphlet (172/1. Probably Suess's paper "Ueber die Verschiedenheit und die Aufeinanderfolge der tertiaren Land-faunen in der Niederung von Wien." "Sitz.-Ber. Wien Akad." XLVII., page 306, 1863.), and should much like to learn the title, if it can be procured; but I am on different subjects just at present. I should rather like to see it rendered highly probable that the process of formation of a new species was short compared to its duration--that is, if the process was allowed to be slow and long; the idea is new to me. Heer's view that new species are suddenly formed like monsters, I feel a conviction from many reasons is false.

173. TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, January 1st, 1864

I am still unable to write otherwise than by dictation. In a letter received two or three weeks ago from Asa Gray he writes: "I read lately with gusto Wallace's expose of the Dublin man on Bees' cells, etc." (173/1. "Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's paper on the Bee's Cell and on the Origin of Species" ("Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." XII., 1863, page 303). Prof. Haughton's paper was read before the Natural History Society of Dublin, November 21st, 1862, and reprinted in the "Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." XI., 1863, page 415. See Letters 73, 74, 75.) Now, though I cannot read at present, I much want to know where this is published, that I may procure a copy. Further on, Asa Gray says (after speaking of Agassiz's paper on Glaciers in the "Atlantic Magazine" and his recent book entitled "Method of Study"): "Pray set Wallace upon these articles." So Asa Gray seems to think much of your powers of reviewing, and I mention this as it assuredly is laudari a laudato. I hope you are hard at work, and if you are inclined to tell me, I should much like to know what you are doing. It will be many months, I fear, before I shall do anything.

174. TO J.L.A. DE QUATREFAGES. Down, March 27th [1864?]

I had heard that your work was to be translated, and I heard it with pleasure; but I can take no share of credit, for I am not an active, only an honorary member of the Society. Since writing I have finished with extreme interest to the end your admirable work on metamorphosis. (174/1. Probably "Metamorphoses of Man and the Lower Animals." Translated by H. Lawson, 1864.) How well you are acquainted with the works of English naturalists, and how generously you bestow honour on them! Mr. Lubbock is my neighbour, and I have known him since he was a little boy; he is in every way a thoroughly good man; as is my friend Huxley. It gave me real pleasure to see you notice their works as you have done.

175. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, April 11th [1864]

I am very much obliged for your present of your "Comp. Anatomy." (175/1. "Lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy," 1864.) When strong enough I am sure I shall read it with greatest interest. I could not resist the last chapter, of which I have read a part, and have been much interested about the "inspired idiot." (175/2. In reference to Oken (op. cit., page 282) Huxley says: "I must confess I never read his works without thinking of the epithet of 'inspired idiot' applied to our own Goldsmith.") If Owen wrote the article "Oken" (175/3. The article on Oken in the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is signed "R.O.": Huxley wrote to Darwin (April 18th, 1864), "There is not the smallest question that Owen wrote both the article 'Oken' and the 'Archetype' Book" (Huxley's "Life," I., page 250). Mr. Huxley's statements amount to this: (1) Prof. Owen accuses Goethe of having in 1820 appropriated Oken's theory of the skull, and of having given an apocryphal account of how the idea occurred to himself in 1790. (2) in the same article, page 502, Owen stated it to be questionable whether the discoverer of the true theory of the segmental constitution of the skull (i.e. himself) was excited to his labours, or "in any way influenced by the a priori guesses of Oken." On this Huxley writes, page 288: "But if he himself had not been in any way influenced by Oken, and if the 'Programm' [of Oken] is a mere mass of 'a priori guesses,' how comes it that only three years before Mr. Owen could write thus? 'Oken, ce genie profond et penetrant, fut le premier qui entrevit la verite, guide par l'heureuse idee de l'arrangement des os craniens en segments, comme ceux du rachis, appeles vertebres...'" Later on Owen wrote: "Cela servira pour exemple d'une examen scrupuleux des faits, d'une appreciation philosophique de leurs relations et analogies, etc." (From "Principes d'Osteologie comparee, ou Recherches sur l'Archetype," etc., pages 155, 1855). (3) Finally Huxley says, page 289, plainly: "The fact is that, so far from not having been 'in any way influenced' by Oken, Prof. Owen's own contributions to this question are the merest Okenism, remanie.") and the French work on the Archetype (points you do not put quite clearly), he never did a baser act...You are so good a Christian that you will hardly understand how I chuckle over this bit of baseness. I hope you keep well and hearty; I honour your wisdom at giving up at present Society for Science. But, on the other hand, I feel it in myself possible to get to care too much for Natural Science and too little for other things. I am getting better, I almost dare to hope permanently; for my sickness is decidedly less--for twenty-seven days consecutively I was sick many times daily, and lately I was five days free. I long to do a little work again. The magnificent (by far the most magnificent, and too magnificent) compliment which you paid me at the end of your "Origin of Species" (175/4. A title applied to the "Lectures to Working Men," that "green little book" referred to in Letter 156. Speaking of Mr. Darwin's work he says (page 156): "I believe that if you strip it of its theoretical part, it still remains one of the greatest encyclopaedias of biological doctrine that any one man ever brought forth; and I believe that, if you take it as the embodiment of an hypothesis, it is destined to be the guide of biological and psychological speculation for the next three or four generations.') I have met with reprinted from you two or three times lately.

LETTER 175A. TO ERASMUS DARWIN. Down, June 30th, 1864.

(175A.1. The preceding letter contains a reference to the prolonged period of ill-health which Darwin suffered in 1863 and 1864, and in this connection the present letter is of interest.

The Copley Medal was given to him in 1864.)

I had not heard a word about the Copley Medal. Please give Falconer my cordial thanks for his interest about me. I enclose the list of everything published by me except a few unimportant papers. Ask Falconer not to mention that I sent the list, as some one might say I had been canvassing, which is an odious imputation. The origin of the Voyage in the "Beagle" was that Fitz-Roy generously offered to give up half his cabin to any one who would volunteer to go as naturalist. Beaufort wrote to Cambridge, and I volunteered. Fitz-Roy never persuaded me to give up the voyage on account of sickness, nor did I ever think of doing so, though I suffered considerably; but I do not believe it was the cause of my subsequent ill-health, which has lost me so many years, and therefore I should not think the sea-sickness was worth notice. It would save you trouble to forward this with my kindest remembrances to Falconer.

(176/1. The following letter was the beginning of a correspondence with Mr. B.D. Walsh, whom C.V. Riley describes as "one of the ablest and most thorough entomologists of our time.")

176. B.D. WALSH TO CHARLES DARWIN. Rock Island, Illinois, U.S., April 29th, 1864

(176/2. The words in square brackets are restorations of parts torn off the original letter.)

More than thirty years ago I was introduced to you at your rooms in Christ's College by A.W. Grisebach, and had the pleasure of seeing your noble collection of British Coleoptera. Some years afterwards I became a Fellow of Trinity, and finally gave up my Fellowship rather than go into Orders, and came to this country. For the last five or six years I have been paying considerable attention to the insect fauna of the U.S., some of the fruits of which you will see in the enclosed pamphlets. Allow me to take this opportunity of thanking you for the publication of your "Origin of Species," which I read three years ago by the advice of a botanical friend, though I had a strong prejudice against what I supposed then to be your views. The first perusal staggered me, the second convinced me, and the oftener I read it the more convinced I am of the general soundness of your theory.

As you have called upon naturalists that believe in your views to give public testimony of their convictions, I have directed your attention on the outside of one or two of my pamphlets to the particular passages in which [I] have done so. You will please accept these papers from me in token of my respect and admiration.

As you may see from the latest of these papers, I [have] recently made the remarkable discover that there [are the] so-called "three sexes" not only in social insects but [also in the] strictly solitary genus Cynips.

When is your great work to make its appearance? [I should be] much pleased to receive a few lines from you.

177. TO B.D. WALSH. Down, October 21st [1864]

Ill-health has prevented me from sooner thanking you for your very kind letter and several memoirs.

I have been very much pleased to see how boldly and clearly you speak out on the modification of species. I thank you for giving me the pages of reference; but they were superfluous, for I found so many original and profound remarks that I have carefully looked through all the papers. I hope that your discovery about the Cynips (177/1. "On Dimorphism in the hymenopterous genus Cynips," "Proc. Entom. Soc. Philadelphia," March, 1864. Mr. Walsh's view is that Cynips quercus aciculata is a dimorphous form of Cynips q. spongifica, and occurs only as a female. Cynips q. spongifica also produces spongifica females and males from other galls at a different time of year.) will hold good, for it is a remarkable one, and I for one have often marvelled what could be the meaning of the case. I will lend your paper to my neighbour Mr. Lubbock, who I know is much interested in the subject. Incidentally I shall profit by your remarks on galls. If you have time I think a rather hopeless experiment would be worth trying; anyhow, I should have tried it had my health permitted. It is to insert a minute grain of some organic substance, together with the poison from bees, sand-wasps, ichneumons, adders, and even alkaloid poisons into the tissues of fitting plants for the chance of monstrous growths being produced. (177/2. See "Life and Letters," III., page 346, for an account of experiments attempted in this direction by Mr. Darwin in 1880. On the effects of injuring plant-tissues, see Massart, "La Cicatrisation, etc." in Tome LVII. of the "Memoires Couronnes" of the Brussels Academy.)

My health has long been poor, and I have lately suffered from a long illness which has interrupted all work, but I am now recommencing a volume in connection with the "Origin."

P.S.--If you write again I should very much like to hear what your life in your new country is.

What can be the meaning or use of the great diversity of the external generative organs in your cases, in Bombus, and the phytophagous coleoptera?

What can there be in the act of copulation necessitating such complex and diversified apparatus?

178. TO W.H. FLOWER. Down, July 11th, 1864

I am truly obliged for all the trouble which you have taken for me, and for your very interesting note. I had only vaguely heard it said that frogs had a rudiment of a sixth toe; had I known that such great men had looked to the point I should not have dreamed of looking myself. The rudiment sent to you was from a full-grown frog; so that if these bones are the two cuneiforms they must, I should think, be considered to be in a rudimentary condition. This afternoon my gardener brought in some tadpoles with the hind-legs alone developed, and I looked at the rudiment. At this age it certainly looks extremely like a digit, for the extremity is enlarged like that of the adjoining real toe, and the transverse articulation seems similar. I am sorry that the case is doubtful, for if these batrachians had six toes, I certainly think it would have thrown light on the truly extraordinary strength of inheritance in polydactylism in so many animals, and especially on the power of regeneration in amputated supernumerary digits. (178/1. In the first edition of "Variation under Domestication" the view here given is upheld, but in the second edition (Volume I., page 459) Darwin withdrew his belief that the development of supernumerary digits in man is "a case of reversion to a lowly-organised progenitor provided with more than five digits." See Letters 161, 270.)

179. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [October 22nd, 1864]

The Lyells have been here, and were extremely pleasant, but I saw them only occasionally for ten minutes, and when they went I had an awful day [of illness]; but I am now slowly getting up to my former standard. I shall soon be confined to a living grave, and a fearful evil it is.

I suppose you have read Tyndall. (179/1. Probably Tyndall "On the Conformation of the Alps" ("Phil. Mag." 1864, page 255).) I have now come round again to Ramsay's view, (179/2. "Phil. Mag." 1864, page 293.) for the third or fourth time; but Lyell says when I read his discussion in the "Elements," I shall recant for the fifth time. (179/3. This refers to a discussion on the "Connection of the predominance of Lakes with Glacial Action" ("Elements," Edition VI., pages 168-74). Lyell adheres to the views expressed in the "Antiquity of Man" (1863) against Ramsay's theory of the origin of lake basins by ice action.) What a capital writer Tyndall is!

In your last note you ask what the Bardfield oxlip is. It is P. elatior of Jacq., which certainly looks, when growing, to common eyes different from the common oxlip. I will fight you to the death that as primrose and cowslip are different in appearance (not to mention odour, habitat and range), and as I can now show that, when they cross, the intermediate offspring are sterile like ordinary hybrids, they must be called as good species as a man and a gorilla.

I agree that if Scott's red cowslip grew wild or spread itself and did not vary [into] common cowslip (and we have absolutely no proof of primrose or cowslip varying into each other), and as it will not cross with the cowslip, it would be a perfectly good species. The power of remaining for a good long period constant I look at as the essence of a species, combined with an appreciable amount of difference; and no one can say there is not this amount of difference between primrose and oxlip.

(PLATE: HUGH FALCONER, 1844. From a photograph by Hill & Adamson.)

180. HUGH FALCONER TO W. SHARPEY

(180/1. Falconer had proposed Darwin for the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (which was awarded to him in 1864), but being detained abroad, he gave his reasons for supporting Darwin for this honour in a letter to Sharpey, the Secretary of the Royal Society. A copy of the letter here printed seems to have been given to Erasmus Darwin, and by him shown to his brother Charles.)

Montauban, October 25th, 1864.

Busk and myself have made every effort to be back in London by the 27th inst., but we have been persecuted by mishaps--through the breakdown of trains, diligences, etc., so that we have been sadly put out in our reckoning--and have lost some of the main objects that brought us round by this part of France--none of which were idle or unimportant.

Busk started yesterday for Paris from Bruniquel, to make sure of being present at the meeting of the Royal Council on Thursday. He will tell you that there were strong reasons for me remaining behind him. But as I seconded the proposal of Mr. Darwin for the Copley Medal, in default of my presence at the first meeting, I beg that you will express my great regrets to the President and Council at not being there, and that I am very reluctantly detained. I shall certainly be in London (D.V.) by the second meeting on the 3rd proximo. Meanwhile I solicit the favour of being heard, through you, respecting the grounds upon which I seconded Mr. Darwin's nomination for the Copley Medal.

Referring to the classified list which I drew up of Mr. Darwin's scientific labours, ranging through the wide field of (1) Geology, (2) Physical Geography, (3) Zoology, (4) physiological Botany, (5) genetic Biology, and to the power with which he has investigated whatever subject he has taken up,--Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit,--I am of opinion that Mr. Darwin is not only one of the most eminent naturalists of his day, but that hereafter he will be regarded as one of the great naturalists of all countries and of all time. His early work on the structure and distribution of coral reefs constitutes an era in the investigation of the subject. As a monographic labour, it may be compared with Dr. Wells' "Essay upon Dew," as original, exhaustive, and complete--containing the closest observation with large and important generalisations.

Among the zoologists his monographs upon the Balanidae and Lepadidae, Fossil and Recent, in the Palaeontographical and Ray Societies' publications, are held to be models of their kind.

In physiological Botany, his recent researches upon the dimorphism of the genital organs in certain plants, embodied in his papers in the "Linnean Journal," on Primula, Linum, and Lythrum, are of the highest order of importance. They open a new mine of observation upon a field which had been barely struck upon before. The same remark applies to his researches on the structure and various adaptations of the orchideous flower to a definite object connected with impregnation of the plants through the agency of insects with foreign pollen. There has not yet been time for their due influence being felt in the advancement of the science. But in either subject they constitute an advance per saltum. I need not dwell upon the value of his geological researches, which won for him one of the earlier awards of the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society, the best of judges on the point.

And lastly, Mr. Darwin's great essay on the "Origin of Species" by Natural Selection. This solemn and mysterious subject had been either so lightly or so grotesquely treated before, that it was hardly regarded as being within the bounds of legitimate philosophical investigation. Mr. Darwin, after twenty years of the closest study and research, published his views, and it is sufficient to say that they instantly fixed the attention of mankind throughout the civilised world. That the efforts of a single mind should have arrived at success on a subject of such vast scope, and encompassed with such difficulties, was more than could have been reasonably expected, and I am far from thinking that Charles Darwin has made out all his case. But he has treated it with such power and in such a philosophical and truth-seeking spirit, and illustrated it with such an amount of original and collated observation as fairly to have brought the subject within the bounds of rational scientific research. I consider this great essay on genetic Biology to constitute a strong additional claim on behalf of Mr. Darwin for the Copley Medal. (180/2. The following letter (December 3rd, 1864), from Mr. Huxley to Sir J.D. Hooker, is reprinted, by the kind permission of Mr. L. Huxley, from his father's "Life," I., page 255. Sabine's address (from the "Reader") is given in the "Life and Letters," III., page 28. In the "Proceedings of the Royal Society" the offending sentence is slightly modified. It is said, in Huxley's "Life" (loc. cit., note), that the sentence which follows it was introduced to mitigate the effect:--

"I wish you had been at the anniversary meeting and dinner, because the latter was very pleasant, and the former, to me, very disagreeable. My distrust of Sabine is, as you know, chronic; and I went determined to keep careful watch on his address, lest some crafty phrase injurious to Darwin should be introduced. My suspicions were justified, the only part of the address [relating] to Darwin written by Sabine himself containing the following passage:

"'Speaking generally and collectively, we have expressly omitted it [Darwin's theory] from the grounds of our award.'

"Of course this would be interpreted by everybody as meaning that after due discussion, the council had formally resolved not only to exclude Darwin's theory from the grounds of the award, but to give public notice through the president that they had done so, and, furthermore, that Darwin's friends had been base enough to accept an honour for him on the understanding that in receiving it he should be publicly insulted!

"I felt that this would never do, and therefore, when the resolution for printing the address was moved, I made a speech, which I took care to keep perfectly cool and temperate, disavowing all intention of interfering with the liberty of the president to say what he pleased, but exercising my constitutional right of requiring the minutes of council making the award to be read, in order that the Society might be informed whether the conditions implied by Sabine had been imposed or not.

"The resolution was read, and of course nothing of the kind appeared. Sabine didn't exactly like it, I believe. Both Busk and Falconer remonstrated against the passage to him, and I hope it will be withdrawn when the address is printed. If not, there will be an awful row, and I for one will show no mercy.")

In forming an estimate of the value and extent of Mr. Darwin's researches, due regard ought to be had to the circumstances under which they have been carried out--a pressure of unremitting disease, which has latterly left him not more than one or two hours of the day which he could call his own.

181. TO HUGH FALCONER. Down, November 4th [1864]

What a good kind friend you are! I know well that this medal must have cost you a deal of trouble. It is a very great honour to me, but I declare the knowledge that you and a few other friends have interested themselves on the subject is the real cream of the enjoyment to me; indeed, it is to me worth far more than many medals. So accept my true and cordial thanks. I hope that I may yet have strength to do a little more work in Natural Science, shaky and old though I be. I have chuckled and triumphed over your postscript about poor M. Brulle and his young pupils (181/1. The following is the postscript in a letter from Falconer to Darwin November 3rd [1864]: "I returned last night from Spain via France. On Monday I was at Dijon, where, while in the Museum, M. Brulle, Professor of Zoology, asked me what was my frank opinion of Charles Darwin's doctrine? He told me in despair that he could not get his pupils to listen to anything from him except a la Darwin! He, poor man, could not comprehend it, and was still unconvinced, but that all young Frenchmen would hear or believe nothing else.") About a week ago I had a nearly similar account from Germany, and at the same time I heard of some splendid converts in such men as Leuckart, Gegenbauer, etc. You may say what you like about yourself, but I look at a man who treats natural history in the same spirit with which you do, exactly as good, for what I believe to be the truth, as a convert.

182. TO HUGH FALCONER. Down, November 8th [1864]

Your remark on the relation of the award of the medal and the present outburst of bigotry had not occurred to me. It seems very true, and makes me the more gratified to receive it. General Sabine (182/1. See "Life and Letters," III., page 28.) wrote to me and asked me to attend at the anniversary, but I told him it was really impossible. I have never been able to conjecture the cause; but I find that on my good days, when I can write for a couple of hours, that anything which stirs me up like talking for half or even a quarter of an hour, generally quite prostrates me, sometimes even for a long time afterwards. I believe attending the anniversary would possibly make me seriously ill. I should enjoy attending and shaking you and a few of my other friends by the hand, but it would be folly even if I did not break down at the time. I told Sabine that I did not know who had proposed and seconded me for the medal, but that I presumed it was you, or Hooker or Busk, and that I felt sure, if you attended, you would receive the medal for me; and that if none of you attended, that Lyell or Huxley would receive it for me. Will you receive it, and it could be left at my brother's?

Again accept my cordial and enduring thanks for all your kindness and sympathy.

183. TO B.D. WALSH. Down, December 4th [1864]

I have been greatly interested by your account of your American life. What an extraordinary and self-contained life you have led! and what vigour of mind you must possess to follow science with so much ardour after all that you have undergone! I am very much obliged to you for your pamphlet on Geographical Distribution, on Agassiz, etc. (183/1. Mr. Walsh's paper "On certain Entomological Speculations of the New England School of Entomologists" was published in the "Proc. Entomolog. Soc. of Philadelphia," September 1864, page 207.) I am delighted at the manner in which you have bearded this lion in his den. I agree most entirely with all that you have written. What I meant when I wrote to Agassiz to thank him for a bundle of his publications, was exactly what you suppose. (183/2. Namely, that Mr. Darwin, having been abused as an atheist, etc., by other writers, probably felt grateful to a writer who was willing to allow him "a spirit as reverential as his own." ("Methods of Study," Preface, page iv.) I confess, however, I did not fully perceive how he had misstated my views; but I only skimmed through his "Methods of Study," and thought it a very poor book. I am so much accustomed to be utterly misrepresented that it hardly excites my attention. But you really have hit the nail on the head capitally. All the younger good naturalists whom I know think of Agassiz as you do; but he did grand service about glaciers and fish. About the succession of forms, Pictet has given up his whole views, and no geologist now agrees with Agassiz. I am glad that you have attacked Dana's wild notions; [though] I have a great respect for Dana...If you have an opportunity, read in "Trans. Linn. Soc." Bates on "Mimetic Lepidoptera of Amazons." I was delighted with his paper.

I have got a notice of your views about the female Cynips inserted in the "Natural History Review" (183/3. "Nat. Hist. Review," January 1865, page 139. A notice by "J.L." (probably Lord Avebury) on Walsh's paper "On Dimorphism in the Hymenopterous Genus Cynips," in the "Proc. Entomolog. Soc. of Philadelphia," March, 1864.): whether the notice will be favourable, I do not know, but anyhow it will call attention to your views...

As you allude in your paper to the believers in change of species, you will be glad to hear that very many of the very best men are coming round in Germany. I have lately heard of Hackel, Gegenbauer, F. Muller, Leuckart, Claparede, Alex. Braun, Schleiden, etc. So it is, I hear, with the younger Frenchmen.

184. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 19th [1865]

It is working hours, but I am trying to take a day's holiday, for I finished and despatched yesterday my Climbing paper. For the last ten days I have done nothing but correct refractory sentences, and I loathe the whole subject like tartar emetic. By the way, I am convinced that you want a holiday, and I think so because you took the devil's name in vain so often in your last note. Can you come here for Sunday? You know how I should like it, and you will be quiet and dull enough here to get plenty of rest. I have been thinking with regret about what you said in one of your later notes, about having neglected to make notes on the gradation of character in your genera; but would it be too late? Surely if you looked over names in series the facts would come back, and you might surely write a fine paper "On the gradation of important characters in the genera of plants." As for unimportant characters, I have made their perfect gradation a very prominent point with respect to the means of climbing, in my paper. I begin to think that one of the commonest means of transition is the same individual plant having the same part in different states: thus Corydalis claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf-climber. Now I am sure I remember some cases with plants in which important parts such as the position of the ovule differ: differences in the spire of leaves on lateral and terminal branches, etc.

There was not much in last "Natural History Review" which interested me except colonial floras (184/1. "Nat. Hist. Review," 1865, page 46. A review of Grisebach's "Flora of the British West Indian Islands" and Thwaites' "Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniae." The point referred to is given at page 57: "More than half the Flowering Plants belong to eleven Orders in the case of the West Indies, and to ten in that of Ceylon, whilst with but one exception the Ceylon Orders are the same as the West Indian." The reviewer speculates on the meaning of the fact "in relation to the hypothesis of an intertropical cold epoch, such as Mr. Darwin demands for the migration of the Northern Flora to the Southern hemisphere.") and the report on the sexuality of cryptogams. I suppose the former was by Oliver; how extremely curious is the fact of similarity of Orders in the Tropics! I feel a conviction that it is somehow connected with Glacial destruction, but I cannot "wriggle" comfortably at all on the subject. I am nearly sure that Dana makes out that the greatest number of crustacean forms inhabit warmer temperate regions.

I have had an enormous letter from Leo Lesquereux (after doubts, I did not think it worth sending you) on Coal Flora: he wrote some excellent articles in "Silliman" again [my] "Origin" views; but he says now after repeated reading of the book he is a convert! But how funny men's minds are! he says he is chiefly converted because my books make the Birth of Christ, Redemption by Grace, etc., plain to him!

185. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 9th [1865]

I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and this slow progress or even personal annihilation sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or rather I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years, with every continent swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas. Sic transit gloria mundi, with a vengeance...

186. TO B.D. WALSH. Down, March 27th [1865]

I have been much interested by your letter. I received your former paper on Phytophagic variety (186/1. For "Phytophagic Varieties and Phytophagic Species" see "Proc. Entomolog. Soc. Philadelphia," November 1864, page 403, also December 1865. The part on gradation is summarised at pages 427, 428. Walsh shows that a complete gradation exists between species which are absolutely unaffected by change of food and cases where "difference of food is accompanied by marked and constant differences, either colorational, or structural, or both, in the larva, pupa and imago states."), most of which was new to me. I have since received your paper on willow-galls; this has been very opportune, as I wanted to learn a little about galls. There was much in this paper which has interested me extremely, on gradations, etc., and on your "unity of coloration." (186/2. "Unity of coloration": this expression does not seem to occur in the paper of November 1864, but is discussed at length in that of December 1865, page 209.) This latter subject is nearly new to me, though I collected many years ago some such cases with birds; but what struck me most was when a bird genus inhabits two continents, the two sections sometimes display a somewhat different type of colouring. I should like to hear whether this does not occur with widely ranging insect-genera? You may like to hear that Wichura (186/3. Max Wichura's "Die Bastarde befruchtung im Pflanzenreich, etc:" Breslau 1865. A translation appeared in the "Bibliotheque Universelle," xxiii., page 129: Geneva 1865.) has lately published a book which has quite convinced me that in Europe there is a multitude of spontaneous hybrid willows. Would it not be very interesting to know how the gall-makers behaved with respect to these hybrids? Do you think it likely that the ancestor of Cecidomyia acquired its poison like gnats (which suck men) for no especial purpose (at least not for gall-making)? Such notions make me wish that some one would try the experiments suggested in my former letter. Is it not probable that guest-flies were aboriginally gall-makers, and bear the same relation to them which Apathus probably does to Bombus? (186/4. Apathus (= Psithyrus) lives in the nests of Bombus. These insects are said to be so like humble bees that "they were not distinguished from them by the early entomologists:" Dr. Sharp in "Cambridge Nat. Hist. (Insects," Part II.), page 59.) With respect to dimorphism, you may like to hear that Dr. Hooker tells me that a dioecious parasitic plant allied to Rafflesia has its two sexes parasitic on two distinct species of the same genus of plants; so look out for some such case in the two forms of Cynips. I have posted to you copies of my papers on dimorphism. Leersia (186/5. Leersia oryzoides was for a long time thought to produce only cleistogamic and therefore autogamous flowers. See "Variation of Animals and Plants," Edition II., Volume II., page 69.) does behave in a state of nature in the provoking manner described by me. With respect to Wagner's curious discovery my opinion is worth nothing; no doubt it is a great anomaly, but it does not appear to me nearly so incredible as to you. Remember how allied forms in the Hydrozoa differ in their so-called alternate generations; I follow those naturalists who look at all such cases as forms of gemmation; and a multitude of organisms have this power or traces of this power at all ages from the germ to maturity. With respect to Agassiz's views, there were many, and there are still not a few, who believe that the same species is created on many spots. I wrote to Bates, and he will send you his mimetic paper; and I dare say others: he is a first-rate man.

Your case of the wingless insects near the Rocky Mountains is extremely curious. I am sure I have heard of some such case in the Old World: I think on the Caucasus. Would not my argument about wingless insular insects perhaps apply to truly Alpine insects? for would it not be destruction to them to be blown from their proper home? I should like to write on many points at greater length to you, but I have no strength to spare.

187. TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, September 22nd [1865]

I am much obliged for your extract (187/1. Mr. Wallace had sent Darwin a note about a tufted cock-blackbird, which transmitted the character to some of its offspring.); I never heard of such a case, though such a variation is perhaps the most likely of any to occur in a state of nature, and to be inherited, inasmuch as all domesticated birds present races with a tuft or with reversed feathers on their heads. I have sometimes thought that the progenitor of the whole class must have been a crested animal.

Do you make any progress with your journal of travels? I am the more anxious that you should do so as I have lately read with much interest some papers by you on the ourang-outan, etc., in the "Annals," of which I have lately been reading the later volumes. I have always thought that journals of this nature do considerable good by advancing the taste for Natural History: I know in my own case that nothing ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt's "Personal Narrative." I have not yet received the last part of the "Linnean Transactions," but your paper (187/2. Probably on the variability and distribution of the butterflies of the Malayan region: "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXV., 1866.) at present will be rather beyond my strength, for though somewhat better, I can as yet do hardly anything but lie on the sofa and be read aloud to. By the way, have you read Tylor and Lecky? (187/3. Tylor, "Early History of Mankind;" Lecky's "Rationalism.") Both these books have interested me much. I suppose you have read Lubbock. (187/4. Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times," page 479: "...the theory of Natural Selection, which with characteristic unselfishness he ascribes unreservedly to Mr. Darwin.") In the last chapter there is a note about you in which I most cordially concur. I see you were at the British Association but I have heard nothing of it except what I have picked up in the "Reader." I have heard a rumour that the "Reader" is sold to the Anthropological Society. If you do not begrudge the trouble of another note (for my sole channel of news through Hooker is closed by his illness) I should much like to hear whether the "Reader" is thus sold. I should be very sorry for it, as the paper would thus become sectional in its tendency. If you write, tell me what you are doing yourself. The only news which I have about the "Origin" is that Fritz Muller published a few months ago a remarkable book (187/5. "Fur Darwin.") in its favour, and secondly that a second French edition is just coming out.

188. TO F. MULLER. Down, January 11th [1866]

I received your interesting letter of November 5th some little time ago, and despatched immediately a copy of my "Journal of Researches." I fear you will think me troublesome in my offer; but have you the second German edition of the "Origin?" which is a translation, with additions, of the third English edition, and is, I think, considerably improved compared with the first edition. I have some spare copies which are of no use to me, and it would be a pleasure to me to send you one, if it would be of any use to you. You would never require to re-read the book, but you might wish to refer to some passage. I am particularly obliged for your photograph, for one likes to have a picture in one's mind of any one about whom one is interested. I have received and read with interest your paper on the sponge with horny spicula. (188/1. "Ueber Darwinella aurea, einen Schwamm mit sternformigen Hornnadeln."--"Archiv. Mikrosk. Anat." I., page 57, 1866.) Owing to ill-health, and being busy when formerly well, I have for some years neglected periodical scientific literature, and have lately been reading up, and have thus read translations of several of your papers; amongst which I have been particularly glad to read and see the drawings of the metamorphoses of Peneus. (188/2. "On the Metamorphoses of the Prawns," by Dr. Fritz Muller.--"Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume XIV., page 104 (with plate), 1864. Translated by W.S. Dallas from "Wiegmann's Archiv," 1863 (see also "Facts and Arguments for Darwin," passim, translated by W.S. Dallas: London, 1869).) This seems to me the most interesting discovery in embryology which has been made for years.

I am much obliged to you for telling me a little of your plans for the future; what a strange, but to my taste interesting life you will lead when you retire to your estate on the Itajahy!

You refer in your letter to the facts which Agassiz is collecting, against our views, on the Amazons. Though he has done so much for science, he seems to me so wild and paradoxical in all his views that I cannot regard his opinions as of any value.

189. TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, January 22nd, 1866

I thank you for your paper on pigeons (189/1. "On the Pigeons of the Malay Archipelago" (The "Ibis," October, 1865). Mr. Wallace points out (page 366) that "the most striking superabundance of pigeons, as well as of parrots, is confined to the Australo-Malayan sub-region in which...the forest-haunting and fruit-eating mammals, such as monkeys and squirrels, are totally absent." He points out also that monkeys are "exceedingly destructive to eggs and young birds."), which interested me, as everything that you write does. Who would ever have dreamed that monkeys influenced the distribution of pigeons and parrots! But I have had a still higher satisfaction, for I finished your paper yesterday in the "Linnean Transactions." (189/2. "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXV.: a paper on the geographical distribution and variability of the Malayan Papilionidae.) It is admirably done. I cannot conceive that the most firm believer in species could read it without being staggered. Such papers will make many more converts among naturalists than long-winded books such as I shall write if I have strength. I have been particularly struck with your remarks on dimorphism; but I cannot quite understand one point (page 22), (189/3. The passage referred to in this letter as needing further explanation is the following: "The last six cases of mimicry are especially instructive, because they seem to indicate one of the processes by which dimorphic forms have been produced. When, as in these cases, one sex differs much from the other, and varies greatly itself, it may happen that individual variations will occasionally occur, having a distant resemblance to groups which are the objects of mimicry, and which it is therefore advantageous to resemble. Such a variety will have a better chance of preservation; the individuals possessing it will be multiplied; and their accidental likeness to the favoured group will be rendered permanent by hereditary transmission, and each successive variation which increases the resemblance being preserved, and all variations departing from the favoured type having less chance of preservation, there will in time result those singular cases of two or more isolated and fixed forms bound together by that intimate relationship which constitutes them the sexes of a single species. The reason why the females are more subject to this kind of modification than the males is, probably, that their slower flight, when laden with eggs, and their exposure to attack while in the act of depositing their eggs upon leaves, render it especially advantageous for them to have some additional protection. This they at once obtain by acquiring a resemblance to other species which, from whatever cause, enjoy a comparative immunity from persecution." Mr. Wallace has been good enough to give us the following note on the above passage: "The above quotation deals solely with the question of how certain females of the polymorphic species (Papilio Memnon, P. Pammon, and others) have been so modified as to mimic species of a quite distinct section of the genus; but it does not attempt to explain why or how the other very variable types of female arose, and this was Darwin's difficulty. As the letter I wrote in reply is lost, and as it is rather difficult to explain the matter clearly without reference to the coloured figures, I must go into some little detail, and give now what was probably the explanation I gave at the time. The male of Papilio Memnon is a large black butterfly with the nervures towards the margins of the wings bordered with bluish gray dots. It is a forest insect, and the very dark colour renders it conspicuous; but it is a strong flier, and thus survives. To the female, however, this conspicuous mass of colour would be dangerous, owing to her slower flight, and the necessity for continually resting while depositing her eggs on the leaves of the food-plant of the larva. She has accordingly acquired lighter and more varied tints. The marginal gray-dotted stripes of the male have become of a brownish ash and much wider on the fore wings, while the margin of the hind wings is yellowish, with a more defined spot near the anal angle. This is the form most nearly like the male, but it is comparatively rare, the more common being much lighter in colour, the bluish gray of the hind wings being often entirely replaced by a broad band of yellowish white. The anal angle is orange-yellow, and there is a bright red spot at the base of the fore wings. Between these two extremes there is every possible variation. Now, it is quite certain that this varying mixture of brown, black, white, yellow, and red is far less conspicuous amid the ever-changing hues of the forest with their glints of sunshine everywhere penetrating so as to form strong contrasts and patches of light and shade. Hence ALL the females--one at one time and one at another--get SOME protection, and that is sufficient to enable them to live long enough to lay their eggs, when their work is finished. Still, under bad conditions they only just managed to survive, and as the colouring of some of these varying females very much resembled that of the protected butterflies of the P. coon group (perhaps at a time when the tails of the latter were not fully developed) any rudiments of a prolongation of the wing into a tail added to the protective resemblance, and was therefore preserved. The woodcuts of some of these forms in my "Malay Archipelago" (i., page 200) will enable those who have this book at hand better to understand the foregoing explanation."), and should be grateful for an explanation, for I want fully to understand you. How can one female form be selected and the intermediate forms die out, without also the other extreme form also dying out from not having the advantages of the first selected form? for, as I understand, both female forms occur on the same island. I quite agree with your distinction between dimorphic forms and varieties; but I doubt whether your criterion of dimorphic forms not producing intermediate offspring will suffice, for I know of a good many varieties which must be so called that will not blend or intermix, but produce offspring quite like either parent.

I have been particularly struck with your remarks on geographical distribution in Celebes. It is impossible that anything could be better put, and would give a cold shudder to the immutable naturalists.

And now I am going to ask a question which you will not like. How does your journal get on? It will be a shame if you do not popularise your researches.