Skip to main content

Full text of "More letters of Charles Darwin : a record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters"

See other formats 


.UViWiVtV-S: 


ex   LiBRlS 
BERTRAM  C  A  WINOLG    K'     K  SG    FRS   FSA 


MORE    LETTERS    OF 
CHARLES    DARWIN 


u  'oMksrG't 


V  /,,r,-/,.>  f  '  /inn/,  '    /,i. >.>i>/<  rf  <i//i<rnt< 


MORE  LETTERS  OF 
CHARLES   DARWIN 

A  RECORD  OF  HIS  WORK 
IN  A  SERIES  OF  HITHERTO 
UNPUBLISHED     LETTERS 

EDITED  BY  FRANCIS  DARWIN,  FELLOW  OF 
CHRIST'S  COLLEGE,  AND  A.  C.  SEWARD,  FELLOW 
OF    EMMANUEL    COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE       . 


IN    TWO    VOLUMES 
ILLUSTRATED 


VOL.   I 


LONDON 
JOHN    MURRAY,    ALBEMARLE    STREET 

1903 

[All  rights  reserved] 


PRINTED    BY 

HAZELL,    WATSON   AND   VINEY,    LD., 

LONDON   AND   AYLESBURY. 


AUG19 


'957 


DEDICATED,    WITH    AFFECTION    AND    RESPECT,    TO 

SIR    JOSEPH    HOOKER 


1  you  will  never  know  how  much  I  owe  to  you  for  your 
constant  kindness  and  encouragement" 

Charles  Darwin  to  Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  St'pt.  14,  1862 


PREFACE 

THE  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin  was 
published  in  1887.  Since  that  date,  through 
the  kindness  of  various  correspondents,  additional 
letters  have  been  received  ;  among  them  may  be  men- 
tioned those  written  by  Mr.  Darwin  to  Mr.  Belt, 
Lady  Derby,  Hugh  Falconer,  Mr.  Francis  Galton, 
Huxley,  Lyell,  Mr.  John  Morley,  Max  Mailer,  Owen, 
Lord  Playfair,  John  Scott,  Thwaites,  Sir  William 
Turner,  John  Jenner  Weir.  But  the  material  for  our 
work  consisted  in  chief  part  of  a  mass  of  letters  which, 
for  want  of  space  or  for  other  reasons,  were  not  printed 
in  the  Life  and  Letters.  We  would  draw  particular 
attention  to  the  correspondence  with  Sir  Joseph 
Hooker.  To  him  Mr.  Darwin  wrote  with  complete 
freedom,  and  this  has  given  something  of  a  personal 
charm  to  the  most  technical  of  his  letters.  There 
is  also  much  correspondence,  hardly  inferior  in  bio- 
graphical interest,  with  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Fritz 
Muller,  Mr.  Huxley,  and  Mr.  Wallace.  From  this 
unused  material  we  have  been  able  to  compile  an 
almost  complete  record  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work  in  a 
series  of  letters  now  published  for  the  first  time. 
We  have,  however,  in  a  few  instances,  repeated 
paragraphs,  or  in  one  or  two  cases  whole  letters,  from 
the  Life  and  Letters,  where  such  repetition  seemed 
necessary  for  the  sake  of  clearness  or  continuity. 


viii  I'REFACE 


Our  two  volumes  contain  practically  all  the  matter 
that  it  now  seems  desirable  to  publish.  But  at  some 
future  time  others  may  find  interesting  data  in  what 
remains  imprinted  ;  this  is  certainly  true  of  a  short 
series  of  letters  dealing  with  the  Cirripedes,  which 
are  omitted  solely  for  want  of  space.1 

We  are  fortunate  in  being  permitted,  by  Sir 
Joseph  Hooker  and  by  Mr.  Wallace,  to  publish 
certain  letters  from  them  to  Mr.  Darwin.  We  have 
also  been  able  to  give  a  few  letters  from  Sir  Charles 
Lyell,  Hugh  Falconer,  Edward  Forbes,  Dr.  Asa 
Gray,  Professor  Hyatt,  Fritz  Miiller,  Mr.  Francis 
Galton,  and  Sir  T.  Lauder  Brunton.  To  the  two 
last  named,  also  to  Mrs.  Lyell  (the  biographer  of  Sir 
Charles),  Mrs.  Asa  Gray  and  Mrs.  Hyatt,  we  desire 
to  express  our  grateful  acknowledgments. 

The  present  volumes  have  been  prepared,  so  as  to 
give  as  full  an  idea  as  possible  of  the  course  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  work.  The  volumes  therefore  necessarily 
contain  many  letters  of  a  highly  technical  character,  but 
none,  we  hope,  which  are  not  essentially  interesting. 
With  a  view  to  saving  space,  we  have  confined  our- 
selves to  elucidating  the  letters  by  full  annotations, 
and  have  for  the  same  reason — though  with  some 
regret — omitted  in  most  cases  the  beginnings  and 
endings  of  the  letters.  For  the  main  facts  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  life,  we  refer  our  readers  to  the  abstract  of 
his  private  Diary,  given  in  the  present  volume. 

Mr.  Darwin  generally  wrote  his  letters  when  he 
was  tired  or  hurried,  and  this  often  led  to  the  omission 
of  words.       We    have    usually    inserted    the    articles, 

1  Those  addressed  to  the  late  Albany  Hancock  have  already  appeared 
in  the  Transactions  of  the  Tyneside  Nat.  Field  Club,  VIIL,  p.  250. 


PREFACE  IX 


and  this  without  any  indication  of  their  absence  in 
the  originals.  Where  there  seemed  any  possibility  of 
producing  an  alteration  of  meaning  (and  in  many  cases 
where  there  is  no  such  possibility)  we  have  placed 
the  introduced  words  in  square  brackets.  We  may 
say  once  for  all  that  throughout  the  book  square 
brackets  indicate  words  not  found  in  the  originals.1 
Dots  indicate  omissions,  but  many  omissions  are  made 
without  being  so  indicated. 

The  selection  and  arrangement  of  the  letters  have 
not  been  easy.  Our  plan  has  been  to  classify  the 
letters  according  to  subject — into  such  as  deal  with 
Evolution,  Geographical  Distribution,  Botany,  etc.,  and 
in  each  group  to  place  the  letters  chronologically. 
But  in  several  of  the  chapters  we  have  adopted  sec- 
tional headings,  which  we  believe  will  be  a  help  to 
the  reader.  The  great  difficulty  lay  in  deciding  in 
which  of  the  chief  groups  a  given  letter  should  be 
placed.  If  the  MS.  had  been  cut  up  into  paragraphs, 
there  would  have  been  no  such  difficulty  ;  but  we  feel 
strongly  that  a  letter  should  as  far  as  possible  be 
treated  as  a  whole.  We  have  in  fact  allowed  this 
principle  to  interfere  with  an  accurate  classification,  so 
that  the  reader  will  find,  for  instance,  in  the  chapters 
on  Evolution,  questions  considered  which  might  equally 
well  have  come  under  Geographical  Distribution 
or  Geology,  or  questions  in  the  chapter  on  Man 
which  might  have  been  placed  under  the  heading 
Evolution.  In  the  same  way,  to  avoid  mutilation, 
we  have  allowed  references  to  one  branch  of  science 

'  Except  in  a  few  places  where  brackets  are  used  to  indicate  passages 
previously  published.      In  all  such  cases  the  meaning  of  the  symbol  is 


explained. 


PREFACE 


to  remain  in  letters  mainly  concerned  with  another 
subject.  For  these  irregularities  we  must  ask  the 
reader's  patience,  and  beg  him  to  believe  that  some 
pains  have  been  devoted  to  arrangement. 

l\Ir.  Darwin,  who  was  careful  in  other  things, 
generally  omitted  the  date  in  familiar  correspondence, 
and  it  is  often  only  by  treating  a  letter  as  a  detective 
studies  a  crime  that  we  can  make  sure  of  its  date. 
Fortunately,  however,  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  and  others 
of  Darwin's  correspondents  were  accustomed  to 
add  the  date  on  which  the  letters  were  received. 
This  sometimes  leads  to  an  inaccuracy  which  needs 
a  word  of  explanation.  Thus  a  letter  which  Mr. 
Darwin  dated  "Wednesday"  might  beheaded  by  us 
"Wednesday  [Jan.  3rd,  1867],"  the  latter  half  being 
the  date  on  which  the  letter  was  received ;  if  it 
had  been  dated  by  the  writer  it  would  have  been 
"Wednesday,  Jan.  2nd,  1867." 

In  thanking  those  friends — especially  Sir  Joseph 
Hooker  and  Mr.  Wallace — who  have  looked  through 
some  of  our  proof-sheets,  we  wish  to  make-it  clear  that 
they  are  not  in  the  smallest  degree  responsible  for  our 
errors  or  omissions  ;  the  weight  of  our  shortcomings 
rests  on  us  alone. 

We  desire  to  express  our  gratitude  to  those 
who  have  so  readily  supplied  us  with  information, 
especially  to  Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  Professor  Judd, 
Professor  Newton,  Dr.  Sharp,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer, 
and  Mr.  Wallace.  And  we  have  pleasure  in  men- 
tioning Mr.  H.  W.  Rutherford,  of  the  University 
Library,  to  whose  conscientious  work  as  a  copyist 
we  are  much  indebted. 

Finally,  it  is  a  pleasure  to  express  our  obligation 


PREFACE  xi 


to  those  who  have  helped  us  in  the  matter  of  illus- 
trations. The  portraits  of  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  Mr.  Huxley, 
Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Mr.  Romanes,  are  from  their 
respective  Biographies,  and  for  permission  to  make 
use  of  them  we  have  to  thank  Mrs.  Gray,  Mr.  L. 
Huxley,  Mrs.  Lyell,  and  Mrs.  Romanes,  as  well  as 
the  publishers  of  the  books  in  question.  For  the 
reproduction  of  the  early  portrait  of  Mr.  Darwin  we 
are  indebted  to  Miss  Wedgwood  ;  for  the  interesting 
portraits  of  Hugh  Falconer  and  Edward  Forbes  we 
have  to  thank  Mr.  Irvine  Smith,  who  obtained  for  us 
the  negatives  ;  these  being  of  paper,  and  nearly  sixty 
years  old,  rendered  their  reproduction  a  work  of  some 
difficulty.  We  also  thank  Messrs.  Elliott  &  Fry 
for  very  kindly  placing  at  our  disposal  a  negative,  of 
the  fine  portrait,  which  forms  the  frontispiece  to 
Vol.  II.  For  the  opportunity  of  making  facsimiles 
of  diagrams  in  certain  of  the  letters,  we  are  once 
more  indebted  to  Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  who  has  most 
generously  given  the  original  letters  to  Mr.  Darwin's 
family. 


Cambridge,  October,  1902. 


CONTENTS    OF    VOLUME    I 


OUTLINE   OF   CHARLES   DARWIN'S   LIFE,   ETC.         .  .      xvii 


CHAPTER   I 

AN      AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL      FRAGMENT,      AND      EARLY 

LETTERS,    1809— 1842 I 


CHAPTER    II 
EVOLUTION,    1844— 1858 37 

CHAPTER    III 
EVOLUTION,    1859— 1863 Il8 

CHAPTER    IV 
EVOLUTION,    1864— 1869 245 

CHAPTER    V 
EVOLUTION,    1870-1882  .  .  .  .  319 

CHAPTER    VI 
GEOGRAPHICAL   DISTRIBUTION,    1843 — 186/  .  .  .      400 


ILLUSTRATIONS    IN    VOLUME    I 


Charles  and  Catherine  Darwin,  1816      .        .        .    Frontispiece 

From  a  coloured  chalk  drawing  by  Sharples,  in  pos- 
session of  Miss  Wedgwood,  of  Leith  Hill  Place. 

Mrs.  Darwin,  1881  .        .        .  ...     To  face  page    30 

From  a  photograph  by  Barraud. 

Edward  Forbes,  1844(F) „  „       5 : 

From  a  photograph  by  Hill  &  Adamson. 

Thomas  Henry  Huxley,  1857       ....  „  ,,73 

From  a  photograph  by  Maull  &  Fox. 
(Huxley's  Life,  Vol.   I.) 

Professor  Henslow „         „     18S 

From  a  photograph. 

Hugh  Falconer,  1844 ,,         „     252 

From  a  photograph  by  Hill  &  ADAMSON. 

Joseph  Dalton  Hooker,  1870  (?)  .  .  „  „     316 

From  a  photograph  by  Wallich. 

Asa  Gray,  1867 ,.  ,,455 

From  a  photograph. 

(Letters  of  Asa  Gray,  Vol.   I.) 


OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES   DARWIN'S    LIFE 

Based  on  his   Diary,  dated  August  1838 

References  to  the  Journals  in  which  Mr.  Darwin's  papers  were 
published  will  be  found  in  his  Life  and  Letters  III.,  Appendix  II.  We  are 
greatly  indebted  to  Mr.  C.  F.  Cox,  of  New  York,  for  calling  our  attention 
to  mistakes  in  the  Appendix,  and  we  take  this  opportunity  of  correcting 
them. 

Appendix  Ii.,  List  ii. —  Mr.  Romanes  spoke  on  Mr.  Darwin's  essay 
on  Instinct  at  a  meeting  of  the  Linnean  Society,  Dec.  6th,  1883,  and 
some  account  of  it  is  given  in  Nature  of  the  same  date.  But  it  was  not 
published  by  the  Linnean  Society. 

Appendix  11.,  List  iii. — "  Origin  of  saliferous  deposits.  Salt  lakes  of 
Patagonia  and  La  Plata"  (1838).  This  is  the  heading  of  an  extract  from 
Darwin's  volume  on  South  America  reprinted  in  the  Quarterly  Journal 
of  the  Geological  Society,  Vol.  II.,  Pt.  ii.,  Miscellanea,  pp.  127-8,  1846. 

The  paper  on  "  Analogy  of  the  Structure  of  some  Volcanic  Rocks, 
etc.,"  was  published  in  1845,  not  in  185 1. 

A  paper  "  On  the  Fertilisation  of  British  Orchids  by  Insect  Agency," 
in  the  Entomologist's  Weekly  Intelligencer  viii.,  and  Card.  C/irou., 
June  9th,   i860,  should  be  inserted  in  the  bibliography. 

1809.     Feb.  1 2th:   Born  at  Shrewsbury. 

1 81 7.  Death  of  his  mother. 

181 8.  Went  to  Shrewsbury  School. 

1825.  Left  Shrewsbury  School. 

1826.  Oct.:    Went    to    Edinburgh    Liniversity.      Read    two 

papers  before  the   Plinian   Society   of  Edinburgh 
"at  the  close  of  1826  or  early  in   1827." 

1827.  Entered  at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge. 

1828.  Began  residence  at  Cambridge. 

1831.     Jan.:   Passed  his  examination  for  B.A.,  and   kept  the 
two  following  terms. 
Aug. :  Geological  tour  with  Sedgwick. 
Sept.  nth  :  Went  to  Plymouth  to  see  the  Bea 
Oct.  2nd  :  "Took  leave  of  my  home." 

xvii  I) 


wiii      OUTLINE    OF    I   HARLES    DARWIN*S    LIFE 


[831.     Dec.    27th:    "Sailed   from    England  on    our  circum- 


navigation. 


1S32.     Jan.     16th:     "First    landed    on    a    tropical    shore" 
(Santiago). 

1833.  Dec.  6th  :  "  Sailed  for  last  time  from  Rio  Plata." 

1834.  June    10th:    "Sailed    for    last  time    from    Tierra  del 

Fucgo." 

1835.  Sept.     5th  :    "  Sailed     from    west    shores    of    South 

America." 
Nov.  1 6th  :    Letters  to  Professor  Henslow,  read  at  a 

meeting  of  the  Cambridge  Philosophical  Society. 
Nov.  1 8th:    Paper  read  before  the  Geological  Society 

on  Notes  made  during  a  Survey  of  the  East  and 

West  Coasts  of  South  America  in  years  1832-35. 

1836.  May  31st  :  Anchored  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope. 
Oct.  2nd  :  Anchored  at  Falmouth. 

Oct.   4th  :    Reached  Shrewsbury  after  an  absence  of 

five  years  and  two  days. 
Dec.  13th  :  Went  to  live  at  Cambridge. 

1837.  Jan.  4th  :  Paper  on  Recent  Elevation  in  Chili  read. 
March  13th  :  Settled  at  36,  Great  Marlborough  Street. 

„        14th  :   Paper  on  Rliea  read. 
May :  Read  papers  on  Coral  Formation,  and  on  the 

Pampas,  to  the  Geological  Society. 
July :    Opened   first    note-book  on   Transmutation  of 

Species. 
March  1 3th  to  Nov. :  Occupied  with  his  Journal. 
Oct.  and  Nov. :  Preparing  the  scheme  for  the  Zoology 

of  the  Voyage  of  the  Beagle. 
Working  at  Geology  of  South  America. 
Nov.  1  st :  Read  the  paper  on  Earthworms  before  the 

Geological  Society. 

1838.  Worked    at     the    Geology    of    South    America    and 

Zoology  of  Voyage. 
"  Some  little  species  theory." 
March  7th  :  Read  paper  on  the  Connexion  of  certain 

Volcanic   Phenomena  and   on   the    Formation  of 

Mountain  Chains,  to  the  Geological  Society. 
May  :  Health  began  to  break  down. 
June   23rd  :    Started    for  Glen   Roy.      The   paper  on 

Glen  Roy  was  written  in  August  and  September. 


OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES    DARWIN'S    LIFE         xix 


1838.  Oct  5th  :  Began  Coral  paper. 

Nov.   11th:    Engaged    to    be    married    to    his   cousin, 

Emma  Wedgwood. 
Dec.  31st:  "Entered  12  Upper  Gower  Street." 

1839.  Jan.  29th:  Married  at  Maer. 

Feb.  and  March  :  Some  work  on  Corals  and  <  n  Species 

Theory. 
March  (part)  and  April :  Working  at  Coral  paper. 
Papers   on   a  Rock  seen  on  an    Iceberg,   and  on   the 

Parallel  Roads  of  Glen   Roy. 
Published  Journal  and  Remarks,  being  vol.  iii.  of  the 

Narrative   of  the.    Surveying  Voyages  of  H.M.S. 

"Adventure"  and  "Beagle"  etc. 
For  the  rest  of  the  year,  Corals  and  Zoology  of  the 

Voyage. 
Publication   of  the  Zoology  of  the    Voyage  of  H.M.S. 

"Beagle,"  Part  II.  (Mammalia). 

1840.  Worked  at  Corals  and  the  Zoology  of  the  Voyage. 
Contributed  Geological  introduction  to  Part  I.  of  the 

Zoology  of  the  Voyage  (Fossil  Mammalia  by  Owen). 

1 841.  Publication  of  Part  III.  of  the  Zoology)  of  the  Voyage 

(Birds). 
Read  paper  on  Boulders  and  Glacial  Deposits  of  South 

America,  to  Geological  Society. 
Published  paper  on  a  remarkable  bar  of  Sandstone  off 

Pernambuco,  on  the  coast  of  Brazil. 
Publication  of  Part  IV.  of  Zoology  of  t lie  Voyage  1  Fish) 

1842.  May  6th  :  Last  proof  of  the  Coral  book  corrected. 
June  :  Examined  Glacier  action  in  Wales. 

"  Wrote  pencil  sketch  of  my  Species  Theory." 
July  :  Wrote  paper  on  Glaciers  of  Caernarvonshire. 
Oct. :  Began  his  book  on  Volcanic  Islands. 

1843.  Working  at  Volcanic  Islands  and  "some  Species  work." 

1844.  Feb.  13th:   Finished  Volcanic  Islands. 

July  to  Sept  :  Wrote  an  enlarged   version  of  Species 

Theory. 
Papers  on  Sagitta,  and  on  Planaria. 
July  27th  :  Began  his  book  on  the  Geology  of  South 

America. 

1845.  Paper  on  the  Analogy  of  the  Structure   of  Volcanic 

Rocks  with  that  of  Glaciers.     J 'roc.  K.  Soc.  Ed  in. 


XX  OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES    DARWIN'S    I.Ill 

[845.     April  25th  to  Aug.  25th  :  Working  at  second  edition 
of  Naturalists  Voyage. 

1846.  Oct.  1st:  Finished  last  proof  of  Geological  Observations 

on  South  .  \  in  erica. 
Papers  on  Atlantic  Dust,  and  on  Geology  of  Falkland 

Islands,  communicated  to  the  Geological  Society. 
Paper  on  Arthrobalanus. 

1847.  Working  at  Cirripcdes. 

Review     of    Waterhouse's    Natural    History    of  the 
Mammalia. 

1848.  Mar.  20th  ;  Finished  Scientific  Instructions  in  Geology 

for  the  Admiralty  Manual. 
Working  at  Cirripedes. 
Paper  on  Erratic  Boulders. 

1849.  Health  especially  bad. 
Working  at  Cirripedes. 

Mar. — June  :  Water-cure  at  Malvern. 

1850.  Working  at  Cirripedes. 

Published  Monographs  of  Recent  and  Fossil  Lepadidse. 

1852.  Working  at  Cirripedes. 

1853.  Nov.  30th  :  "  Royal  Medal  given  to  me." 

1854.  Published     Monographs    on    Recent    and    on    Fossil 

Balanidae  and  Verrucidae. 
Sept.  9th  :  Finished  packing  up  all  my  Cirripedes. 

„  "  Began  sorting  notes  for  Species  Theory." 

1855.  Mar.— April:  Experiments  on  the  effect  of  saltwater 

on  seeds. 
Papers  on  Icebergs  and  on  Vitality  of  Seeds. 

1856.  May  14th:  "Began,  by  Lyell's  advice,  writing  Species 

Sketch"    (described    in    Life  and  Letters   as  the 

"Unfinished  Book"). 
Dec.  16th  :  Finished  Chap.  III. 
Paper  read  to  Linnean  Society,  On  Sea-water  and  the 

Germination  of  Seeds. 

1857.  Sept.  29th  :  Finished  Chapters  VII.  and  VIII. 
Sept.  30th  to  Dec.  29th  :  Working  on  Hybridism. 
Paper  on  the  Agency  of  Bees  in  the  Fertilisation  of 

Papilionaceous  Flowers. 

1858.  March  9th  :  "  Finished  Instinct  chapter." 

June  iSth:    Received     Mr.    Wallace's    sketch    of    his 
evolutionary  theory. 


OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES    DARWIN    S    LIFE         XXI 

1858.  July  1st :  Joint  paper  of  Darwin  and  Wallace  read  at 

the  Linnean  Society. 
July  20th  to  July  27th  :  "  Began   Abstract  of  Species 

book,"  i.e.,  the  Origin  of  Species,  at  Sandown,  I.W. 
Paper  on  Bees  and  Fertilisation  of  Flowers. 

1859.  May    25th:    Began    proof-sheets    of    the    Origin    of 

Species. 

Nov.  24th:   Publication    of   the    Origin:    1250   copies 
printed. 

Oct.  2nd  to  Dec.   9th  :    At  the  water-cure  establish- 
ment, Ilkley,  Yorkshire. 
i860.     Jan.    7th:    Publication    of   Edit.    ii.    of    Origin    (3000 
copies). 

Jan.  9th  :  "  Looking  over  MS.  on  Variation." 

Paper  on  the  Fertilisation  of  British  Orchids. 

July    and    again    in     Sept.  :     Made    observations    on 
Drosera. 

Paper  on  Moths  and  Flowers. 

Publication  of  A  Naturalist's  Voyage. 

1 861.  Up  to  July  at  work  on   Variation  under  Domestication. 
April  30th  :  Publication  of  Edit.   iii.  of  Origin  (2000 

copies). 
July  to  the  end  of  year,  at  work  on  Orchids. 
Nov  :  Primula  paper  read  at  Linnean  Society. 
Papers  on  Pumilio  and  on  Fertilisation  of   Vinca. 

1862.  May  15th  :  Orchid  book  published. 
Working  at  Variation. 

Paper  on  Catasetum  (Linnean  Society). 
Contribution  to   Chapter    III.   of  Jenyns'   Memoir   of 
Henslow. 

1863.  Working  at  Variation  under  Domestication. 

Papers     on     Yellow     Rain,     the     Pampas,    and    on 

Cirripedes. 
A  review  of  Bates'  paper  on  Mimetic  Butterflies. 
Severe  illness  to  the  end  of  year. 

1864.  Illness  continued  until  April. 

Paper  on  Liuuiu  published  by  the  Linnean  Society. 

May  25th  :   Paper  on  Lythrum  finished. 

Sept.  13th  :   Paper  on  Climbing  Plants  finished. 

Work  on  Variation  under  Domestication. 

Nov.  30th  :  Copley  medal  awarded  to  him. 


xxii       OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES    DARWIN'S    LIFE 

1865.  Jan.  1st:  Continued  at  work  on  Variation  until  April 

22nd.     The  work  was  interrupted  by  illness  until 

late  in  the  autumn. 
Feb.  :  Read  paper  on  Climbing  Plants. 
Dec.  25  th  :  Began  again  on  Variation. 

1866.  Continued  work  at  Variation  under  Domestication. 
March  1st  to  May  10th  :  At  work  on  Edit.  iv.  of  the 

Origin. 
Published  June  (1250  copies). 
Read    paper    on     Cytisils    scoparius    to   the    Linnean 

Society. 
Dec.  22nd  :  Began  the  last  chapter  of  Variation  under 

Domestication. 

1867.  Nov.    15th:     Finished    revises    of     Variation     imder 

Domestication. 
Dec. :  Began  papers  on  Illegitimate  Unions  of  Dimor- 
phic and  Trimorphic  Plants,  and  on  Primula. 

1 868.  Jan.  30th  :  Publication  of  Variation  under  Domestication. 
Feb.  4th  :  Began  work  on  Man. 

Feb.  10th  :  New  edition  of  Variation  under  Domesti- 
cation. 

Read  papers  on  Illegitimate  Unions  of  Dimorphic  and 
Trimorphic  Plants,  and  on   Verbascum. 

1869.  Feb.    10th  :    "Finished    fifth    edition    of   Origin;    has 

taken  me  forty-six  days."  Edit.  V.  published  in  May. 
Working  at  the  Descent  of  Man. 
Papers   on    the   Fertilisation   of   Orchids,  and  on  the 

Fertilisation  of  Winter-flowering  Plants. 

1870.  Working  at  the  Descent  of  Man. 
Paper  on  the  Pampas  Woodpecker. 

1 87 1.  Jan.  17th  :  Began  the  Expression  of  the  Emotions. 
Feb.  24th  :  Descent  of  Man  published  (2500  copies). 
April  27th:   Finished  the  rough  copy  of  Expression. 
June  1 8th:  Began  Edit.  IV.  of  Origin. 

Paper  on  the  Fertilisation  of  Leschenaultia. 

1872.  Jan.  10th  :   Finished  proofs  of  Edit.  IV.  of  the  Origin, 

and  "  again  rewriting  Expression." 
Aug.  22nd  :  Finished  last  proofs  of  Expression. 

„     23rd  :  Began  working  at  Drosera. 
Nov.  :    Expression   published   (7000  copies,   and   2000 

more  printed  at  the  end  of  the  year). 


OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES    DARWIN'S    LIFE      xxiii 

1872.  Nov.    8th:    "At   Murray's    sale    5267   copies    sold    to 

London  booksellers." 

1873.  Jan.:  Correcting  the  Climbing  Plants  paper  for  pub- 

lication as  a  book. 
Feb.  3rd  :   At  work  on  Cross-fertilisation. 
Feb.  to  Sept. :   Contributions  to  Nature. 
June  14th  :  "  Began  Drosera  again." 
Nov.  20th  :  Began  Descent  of  Man,  Edit.  II. 

1874.  Descent  of  Man,  Edit.  II.,    in   one  volume,  published 

(Preface  dated  September). 
Coral  Reefs,  Edit.  II.,  published. 
April  1st :   Began  Insectivorous  Plants. 
Feb.  to  May  :  Contributed  notes  to  Nature. 

1 875.  July  2nd  :  Insectivorous  Plants  published  (3000  copies)  ; 

2700  copies  sold  immediately. 

July  6th  :  "  Correcting  2nd  edit,  of  Variation  under 
Domestication ."     It  was  published  in  the  autumn. 

Sept.  1st  (approximately):  began  on  Cross  and  Self- 
Fertilisation. 

Nov.  :  Vivisection  Commission. 

1876.  May  5th  :  "  Finished  MS.,  first  time  over,  of  Cross  and 

Self-Fertilisation" 
May  to  June  :    Correction  of  Fertilisation  of  Orchids, 
Edit.  II. 
„  -,         Wrote  his  Autobiographical  Sketch. 

May  and  Nov. :  Contributions  to  Nature. 
Aug.  19th  :  First  proofs  of  Cross  and  Self-Fertilisation. 
Nov.    10th:     Cross    and    Self-Fertilisation    published 
( 1 500  copies). 

1877.  "  All  the  early  part  of  summer  at  work  on   Different 

Forms  of  Flowers" 
July:  Publication  of  Different  Forms  of  Flowers  (1250 

copies). 
During  the  rest  of  the  year  at  work  on  the  bloom  on 

leaves,  movements  of  plants,  "and  a  little  on  worms." 
Nov. :  LL.D.  at  Cambridge. 

Second  edition  of  Fertilisation  of  Orchids  published. 
Contributions    to    Nature,   Gardeners'    Chronicle,    and 

Mind. 

1878.  The  whole  year  at  work  on  movements  of  plants,  and 

on  the  bloom  on  leaves. 


xxiv      OUTLINE    OF    CHARLES    DARWIN'S    LIFE 

1878.  May:  Contribution  to  X  attire. 

Second  edition  of  Different  Forms  of  Flowers. 
Wrote  prefatory  letter  to  Kerner's  Flowers  and  their 
Unbidden  Guests. 

1879.  The  whole  year  at  work    on    movements    of    plants, 

except  for  "  about   six   weeks  "in  the  spring  and 
early     summer    given    to    the    Life    of   Erasmus 
Darwin,  which  was  published  in  the  autumn. 
Contributions  to  Arature.^ 

1880.  "All  spring  finishing   MS.  of  Power  of  Movement  in 

Plants  and  proof  sheets." 
"  Began  in  autumn  on  Worms." 
Prefatory  notice  written   for  Meldola's  translation  of 

Weismann's  book. 
Nov.  6th  :   1 500  copies  of  Power  of  Movement  sold  at 

Murray's  sale. 
Contributions  to  Xatitre. 

1 88 1.  During  all   the    early  part    of  the    year   at  work  on 

the    "  Worm    book."      Several    contributions    to 

Nature. 
Oct.  10th  :  The  book  on  Earthworms  published  :  2000 

copies  sold  at  once. 
Nov. :  At  work  on  the  action  of  carbonate  of  ammonia 

on  plants. 

1882.  No  entries  in  the  Diary. 

Feb.  :  At  work  correcting  the  sixth  thousand  of  the 

Earthworms. 
Mar.   6th   and  Mar.   16th  :    Papers    on    the  action    of 

Carbonate  of  Ammonia  on  roots,  etc.,  read  at  the 

Linnean  Society. 
April  6th  :  Note  to  Nature  on  Dispersal  of  Bivalves. 
April  1 8th  :  Van  Dyck's  paper  on  Syrian  Dogs,  with  a 

preliminary  notice  by  Charles  Darwin,  read  before 

the  Zoological  Society. 
April  19th  :  Charles  Darwin  died  at  Down. 


CHARLES     DARWIN 


CHAPTER     I 

AN   AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL   FRAGMENT,   AND   EARLY   LETTERS 

1809 — 1842 

In  the  process  of  removing  the  remainder  of  Mr.  Darwin's  books  and 
papers  from  Down,  the  following'  autobiographical  notes,  written  in  1S58, 
came  to  light.  They  seem  to  us  worth  publishing — both  as  giving  some 
new  facts,  and  also  as  illustrating  the  interest  which  he  clearly  f(?lt  in 
his  own  development.  Many  words  are  omitted  in  the  manuscript,  and 
some  names  incorrectly  spelled  ;  the  corrections  which  have  been  made 
are  not  always  indicated. 

My  earliest  recollection,  the  date  of  which  I  can  approxi- 
mately tell,  and  which  must  have  been  before  I  was  four 
years  old,  was  when  sitting  on  Caroline's  l  knee  in  the  drawing 
room,  whilst  she  was  cutting  an  orange  for  mc,  a  cow  ran  by 
the  window  which  made  me  jump,  so  that  I  received  a  bad 
cut,  of  which  I  bear  the  scar  to  this  day.  Of  this  scene  I 
recollect  the  place  where  I  sat  and  the  cause  of  the  fright, 
but  not  the  cut  itself,  and  I  think  my  memory  is  real,  and  not 
as  often  happens  in  similar  cases,  [derived]  from  hearing  the 
thing  often  repeated,  [when]  one  obtains  so  vivid  an  image, 
that  it  cannot  be  separated  from  memory  :  because  I  clearly 
remember  which  way  the  cow  ran,  which  would  not  probably 
have  been  told  me.  My  memory  here  is  an  obscure  picture, 
in  which  from  not  recollecting  any  pain  I  am  scarcely 
conscious  of  its  reference  to  myself. 

1 8 1 3.  When  I  was  four  years  and  a  half  old  I  went  to 
the   sea,  and  stayed   there  some  weeks.     I   remember  many 

1   His  sister,  Caroline  Darwin,  1800-88. 

1  1 


2  AN    AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL    FRAGMENT      [Chap.  I 

things,  but  with  the  exception  of  the  maidservants  (and 
these  are  not  individualised)  I  recollect  none  of  my  family 
who  were  there.  I  remember  either  myself  or  Catherine 
being  naughty,  and  being  shut  up  in  a  room  and  trying  to 
break  the  windows.  I  have  an  obscure  picture  of  a  house 
before  my  eyes,  and  of  a  neighbouring  small  shop,  where  the 
owner  gave  me  one  fig,  but  which  to  my  great  joy  turned 
out  to  be  two  :  this  fig  was  given  me  that  the  man  might 
kiss  the  maidservant.  I  remember  a  common  walk  to  a  kind 
of  well,  on  the  road  to  which'  was  a  cottage  shaded  with 
damascene1  trees,  inhabited  by  an  old  man,  called  a  hermit, 
with  white  hair,  who  used  to  give  us  damascenes.  I  know  not 
whether  the  damascenes,  or  the  reverence  and  indistinct  fear 
for  this  old  man  produced  the  greatest  effect  on  my  memory. 
I  remember  when  going  there  crossing  in  the  carriage  a  broad 
ford,  and  fear  and  astonishment  of  white  foaming  water  has 
made  a  vivid  impression.  I  think  memory  of  events  com- 
mences abruptly  ;  that  is,  I  remember  these  earliest  things 
quite  as  clearly  as  others  very  much  later  in  life,  which  were 
equally  impressed  on  me.  Some  very  early  recollections  are 
connected  with  fear  at  Parkfield  and  with  poor  Betty  Harvey. 
I  remember  with  horror  her  story  of  people  being  pushed  into 
the  canal  by  the  towing  rope,  by  going  the  wrong  side  of  the 
horse.  I  had  the  greatest  horror  of  this  story — keen  instinct 
against  death.  Some  other  recollections  are  those  of  vanity 
— namely,  thinking  that  people  were  admiring  me,  in  one 
instance  for  perseverance  and  another  for  boldness  in  climb- 
ing a  low  tree,  and  what  is  odder,  a  consciousness,  as  if 
instinctive,  that  I  was  vain,  and  contempt  of  myself.  My 
supposed  admirer  was  old  Peter  Haile  the  bricklayer,  and 
the  tree  the  mountain  ash  on  the  lawn.  All  my  recollections 
seem  to  be  connected  most  closely  with  myself  ;  now 
Catherine2  seems  to  recollect  scenes  where  others  were  the 
chief  actors.  When  my  mother  died  I  was  8|  years  old,  and 
[Catherine]  one  year  less,  yet  she  remembers  all  particulars 
and  events  of  each  day  whilst  I  scarcely  recollect  anything 
(and  so  with  very  many  other  cases)  except  being  sent  for, 
the  memory  of  going  into  her  room,  my  father  meeting  me — 

1  Damson  is  derived  from  Damascene  ;  the  fruit  was  formerly  known 
as  a  "  Damask  Prune." 

'  His  sister,  Catherine  Darwin,  1810-66. 


iSo9— 1842]  SCHOOL  3 

crying  afterwards.  I  recollect  my  mother's  gown  and  scarcely 
anything  of  her  appearance,  except  one  or  two  walks  with 
her.  I  have  no  distinct  remembrance  of  any  conversation, 
and  those  only  of  a  very  trivial  nature.  I  remember  her 
saying  "if  she  did  ask  me  to  do  something,"  which  I  said 
she  had,  "  it  was  solely  for  my  good." 

Catherine  remembers  my  mother  crying,  when  she  heard  of 
my  grandmother's  death.  Also  when  at  Parkfield  how  Aunt 
Sarah  and  Aunt  Kitty  used  to  receive  her.  Susan,  like  me, 
only  remembers  affairs  personal.  It  is  sufficiently  odd  this 
[difference]  in  subjects  remembered.  Catherine  says  she  does 
not  remember  the  impression  made  upon  her  by  external 
things,  as  scenery,  but  for  things  which  she  reads  she  has  an 
excellent  memory,  i.c,  for  ideas.  Now  her  sympathy  being 
ideal,  it  is  part  of  her  character,  and  shows  how  easily  her 
kind  of  memory  was  stamped,  a  vivid  thought  is  repeated, 
a  vivid  impression  forgotten. 

I  remember  obscurely  the  illumination  after  the  battle 
of  Waterloo,  and  the  Militia  exercising  about  that  period, 
in  the  field  opposite  our  house. 

18 1 7.  At  8^  years  old  I  went  to  Mr.  Case's  School.1  I 
remember  how  very  much  I  was  afraid  of  meeting  the  dogs 
in  Barker  Street,  and  how  at  school  I  could  not  get  up  my 
courage  to  fight.  I  was  very  timid  by  nature.  I  remember  I 
took  great  delight  at  school  in  fishing  for  newts  in  the  quarry 
pool.  I  had  thus  young  formed  a  strong  taste  for  collecting, 
chiefly  seals,  franks,  etc.,  but  also  pebbles  and  minerals — one 
which  was  given  me  by  some  boy  decided  this  taste.  I 
believe  shortly  after  this,  or  before,  I  had  smattered  in  botany, 
and  certainly  when  at  Mr.  Case's  School  I  was  very  fond  of 
gardening,  and  invented  some  great  falsehoods  about  being 
able  to  colour  crocuses2  as  I  liked.  At  this  time  I  felt  very 
strong  friendship  for  some  boys.  It  was  soon  after  I  began 
collecting  stones,  i.c,  when  9  or  10,  that  I  distinctly  recollect 
the  desire  I  had  of  being  able  to  know  something  about  every 
pebble  in  front  of  the  hall  door — it  was  my  earliest  and 
only  geological  aspiration  at  that  time.     I  was  in  those  days 

1  A  day-school  at  Shrewsbury  kept  by  Rev.  G.  Case,  minister  of  the 
Unitarian  Chapel  {Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  I.,  p.  27  ct  seq.). 

''  The  story  is  given  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  28,  the  details  being 
slightly  different. 


4  AN    AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL    FRAGMENT       [Chap.  I 

a  very  great  story-teller — for  the  pure  pleasure  of  exciting 
attention  and  surprise.  I  stole  fruit  and  hid  it  for  these 
same  motives,  and  injured  trees  by  barking  them  for  similar 
ends.  I  scarcely  ever  went  out  walking  without  saying  I 
had  seen  a  pheasant  or  some  strange  bird  (natural  history 
taste)  ;  these  lies,  when  not  detected,  I  presume,  excited 
my  attention,  as  I  recollect  them  vividly,  not  connected  with 
shame,  though  some  I  do,  but  as  something  which  by  having 
produced  a  great  effect  on  my  mind,  gave  pleasure  like  a 
tragedy.  I  recollect  when  1  was  at  Mr.  Case's  inventing  a 
whole  fabric  to  show  how  fond  I  was  of  speaking  the  truth  ! 
My  invention  is  still  so  vivid  in  my  mind,  that  I  could 
almost  fancy  it  was  true,  did  not  memory  of  former  shame 
tell  me  it  was  false.  I  have  no  particularly  happy  or  un- 
happy recollections  of  this  time  or  earlier  periods  of  my  life. 
I  remember  well  a  walk  I  took  with  a  boy  named  Ford 
across  some  fields  to  a  farmhouse  on  the  Church  Stretton 
road.  I  do  not  remember  any  mental  pursuits  excepting 
those  of  collecting  stones,  etc.,  gardening,  and  about  this 
time  often  going  with  my  father  in  his  carriage,  telling  him 
of  my  lessons,  and  seeing  game  and  other  wild  birds,  which 
was  a  great  delight  to  me.     I  was  born  a  naturalist. 

When  I  was  gh  years  old  (July  1818)  I  went  with 
Erasmus  to  see  Liverpool :  it  has  left  no  impressions  on 
my  mind,  except  most  trifling  ones — fear  of  the  coach 
upsetting,  a  good  dinner,  and  an  extremely  vague  memory 
of  ships. 

In  Midsummer  of  this  year  I  went  to  Dr.  Butler's  School.1 
I  well  recollect  the  first  going  there,  which  oddly  enough  I 
cannot  of  going  to  Mr.  Case's,  the  first  school  of  all.  I 
remember  the  year  181 8  well,  not  from  having  first  gone 
to  a  public  school,  but  from  writing  those  figures  in  my 
school  book,  accompanied  with  obscure  thoughts,  now  ful- 
filled, whether  I  should  recollect  in  future  life  that  year. 

In  September  (1818)  I  was  ill  with  the  scarlet  fever. 
I  well  remember  the  wretched  feeling  of  being  delirious. 

1 8 19,  July  (ioi  years  old).  Went  to  the  sea  at  Plas 
Edwards-  and  stayed  there  three  weeks,  which  now  appears 

1  Darwin  entered  Dr.  Butler's  school  in  Shrewsbury  in  the  summer 
of  1818,  and  remained  there  till   1825  (Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  30). 
'  Plas  Edwards,  at  Towyn,  on  the  Welsh  coast. 


i8o9— 1842]  EDINBURGH  5 

to  me  like  three  months.  I  remember  a  certain  shady 
green  road  (where  I  saw  a  snake)  and  a  waterfall,  with  a 
degree  of  pleasure,  which  must  be  connected  with  the  pleasure 
from  scenery,  though  not  directly  recognised  as  such.  The 
sandy  plain  before  the  house  has  left  a  strong  impression, 
which  is  obscurely  connected  with  an  indistinct  remembrance 
of  curious  insects,  probably  a  Cimcx  mottled  with  red,  and 
Zygczna,  the  burnet-moth.  I  was  at  that  time  very  pas- 
sionate (when  I  swore  like  a  trooper)  and  quarrelsome.  The 
former  passion  has  I  think  nearly  wholly  but  slowly  died 
away.  When  journeying  there  by  stage  coach  I  remember 
a  recruiting  officer  (I  think  I  should  know  his  face  to  this 
day)  at  tea  time,  asking  the  maid-servant  for  toasted  bread 
and  butter.  I  was  convulsed  with  laughter  and  thought  it 
the  quaintest  and  wittiest  speech  that  ever  passed  from  the 
mouth  of  man.  Such  is  wit  at  ioi  years  old.  The  memory 
now  flashes  across  me  of  the  pleasure  I  had  in  the  evening  on 
a  blowy  day  walking  along  the  beach  by  myself  and  seeing 
the  gulls  and  cormorants  wending  their  way  home  in  a  wild 
and  irregular  course.  Such  poetic  pleasures,  felt  so  keenly 
in  after  years,  I  should  not  have  expected  so  early  in  life. 

1820,  July.  Went  a  riding  tour  (on  old  Dobbin)  with 
Erasmus  to  Pistyll  Rhiadr1;  of  this  I  recollect  little,  an 
indistinct  picture  of  the  fall,  but  I  well  remember  my 
astonishment  on  hearing  that  fishes  could  jump  up   it. 

The  autobiographical  fragment  here  comes  to  an  end.  The  next 
letters  give  some  account  of  Darwin  as  an  Edinburgh  student.  He  has 
described  (Life  and  Letters,  I.,  pp.  35-45)  his  failure  to  be  interested  in 
the  official  teaching  of  the  University,  his  horror  at  the  operating  theatre, 
and  his  gradually  increasing  dislike  of  medical  study,  which  finally 
determined  his  leaving  Edinburgh,  and  entering  Cambridge  with  a  view 
to  taking  Orders. 

To  R.  W.  Darwin.  Letter  1 

Sunday  Morning  [Edinburgh,   October,  1S25]. 

My  dear  Father 

As  I  suppose  Erasmus  2  has  given  all  the  particulars 
of  the  journey,  I  will  say  no  more  about  it,  except  that 
altogether    it    has    cost    me    7    pounds.      We    got    into    our 

1  Pistyll  Rhiadr  proceeds  from  Llyn  Pen  Rhiadr  down  the  Llyfnant 
to  the  Dovey. 

3  Erasmus  Alvey  Darwin  (1804-81),  elder  brother  of  Charles  Darwin. 


6  I  ARI.V    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  i    lodgings    yesterday    evening,    which    are    very    comfortable 
and     near    the    College.      Our     Landlady,    by    name    Mrs. 
Mackay,  is   a    nice    clean    old    body— exceedingly   civil    and 
attentive.      She  lives    in    "u,  Lothian  Street,  Edinburgh,"1 
and  only  four   flights  of  steps  from  the  ground-floor,  which 
is  very  moderate  to  some  other  lodgings  that  we  were  nearly 
taking.     The  terms  are  £i  6s.  for  two  very  nice  and  light 
bedrooms  and  a  sitting-room  ;  by  the  way,  light  bedrooms  are 
very  scarce  articles  in  Edinburgh,  since  most  of  them  are  little 
holes  in  which  there  is  neither'  air  nor  light.     We  called  on 
Dr.  Hanley  the  first  morning,  whom  I  think  we  never  should 
have  found,  had  it  not  been  for  a  good-natured  Dr.  of  Divinity 
who  took  us  into  his  library  and  showed  us  a  map,  and  gave 
us   directions  how  to  find  him.     Indeed,  all  the  Scotchmen 
are  so  civil    and    attentive,  that  it    is    enough    to    make    an 
Englishman  ashamed  of  himself.     I  should  think  Dr.  Butler 
or  any  other  fat  English  Divine  would  take  two  utter  strangers 
into  his  library  and  show  them  the  way  !     When  at  last  we 
found  the  Doctor,  and  having  made  all  the  proper  speeches 
on  both  sides,  we  all  three  set  out  and  walked  all  about  the 
town,  which  we  admire  excessively  ;    indeed   Bridge   Street 
is  the    most  extraordinary  thing  I  ever  saw,  and  when   we 
first  looked  over  the  sides,  we  could  hardly  believe  our  eyes, 
when  instead  of  a  fine  river,  we  saw  a  stream  of  people.     We 
cpend  all  our  mornings  in  promenading  about  the  town,  which 
we  know  pretty  well,  and  in  the  evenings  we  go  to  the  play 
to  hear  Miss  Stephens,2  which  is  quite  delightful ;  she  is  very 
popular  here,  being  encored  to  such  a  degree,  that  she  can 
hardly  get  on  with  the  play.     On  Monday  we  are  going  to 


1  In  a  letter  printed  in  the  Edinburgh  Evening  Despatch  of  May  22nd, 
1 888,  the  writer  suggested  that  a  tablet  should  be  placed  on  the  house, 
1 1 ,  I.othian  Street.  This  suggestion  was  carried  out  in  1888  by  Mr.  Ralph 
Richardson  (Clerk  of  the  Commissary  Court,  Edinburgh),  who  obtained 
permission  from  the  proprietors  to  affix  a  tablet  to  the  house,  setting  forth 
that  Charles  Darwin  resided  there  as  an  Edinburgh  University  student. 
We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  \Y.  K.  Dickson  for  obtaining  for  us  this 
information,  and  to  Mr.  Ralph  Richardson  for  kindly  supplying  us  with 
particulars.  See  Mr.  Richardson's  Inaugural  Address,  Trans.  Edinb. 
Geol.  Soc,  1894-95,  p.  85;  also  Memorable  Edinburgh  Houses,  by 
\\  ilmot   Harrison,   1898. 

5  Probably  Catherine  Stephens,  who  was  born  in  1794,  and  died,  as 
the  Countess  of  Essex,  in  18S2. 


1809-1842]  EDINBURGH  7 

Der  F1  (I  do  not  know  how  to  spell  the  rest  of  the  word).  Letter  1 
Before  we  got  into  our  lodgings,  we  were  staying  at  the  Star 
Hotel  in  Princes  St.,  where  to  my  surprise  I  met  with  an 
old  schoolfellow,  whom  I  like  very  much  ;  he  is  just  come 
back  from  a  walking  tour  in  Switzerland  and  is  now  going 
to  study  for  his  [degree?]  The  introductory  lectures  begin 
next  Wednesday,  and  we  were  matriculated  for  them  on 
Saturday  ;  we  pay  10s.,  and  write  our  names  in  a  book,  and 
the  ceremony  is  finished  ;  but  the  Library  is  not  free  to  us 
till  we  get  a  ticket  from  a  Professor.  We  just  have  been 
to  Church  and  heard  a  sermon  of  only  20  minutes.  I 
expected,  from  Sir  Walter  Scott's  account,  a  soul-cutting 
discourse  of  2  hours  and  a  half. 

I  remain  yr    affectionate  son, 

C.   Darwin. 

To  Caroline  Darwin.  Letter  2 

Jan.  6th,  1826.  Edinburgh. 
Many  thanks  for  your  very  entertaining  letter,  which  was 
a  great  relief  after  hearing  a  long  stupid  lecture  from  Duncan 
on  Materia  Medica,  but  as  you  know  nothing  either  of  the 
Lectures  or  Lecturers,  I  will  give  you  a  short  account  of 
them.  Dr.  Duncan  is  so  very  learned  that  his  wisdom  has  left 
no  room  for  his  sense,  and  he  lectures,  as  I  have  already 
said,  on  the  Materia  Medica,  which  cannot  be  translated 
into  any  word  expressive  enough  of  its  stupidity.  These  few 
last  mornings,  however,  he  has  shown  signs  of  improvement, 
and  I  hope  he  will  "go  on  as  well  as  can  be  expected."  His 
lectures  begin  at  eight  in  the  morning.  Dr.  Hope  begins  at 
ten  o'clock,  and  I  like  both  him  and  his  lectures  very  much 
(after  which  Erasmus  goes  to  "  Mr.  Sizars  on  Anatomy,"  who 
is  a  charming  Lecturer).  At  12  the  Hospital,  after  which 
I  attend  Monro  on  Anatomy.  I  dislike  him  and  his  lectures 
so  much,  that  I  cannot  speak  with  decency  about  them. 
Thrice  a  week  we  have  what  is  called  Clinical  lectures, 
which  means  lectures  on  the  sick   people  in  the   Hospital — 

1  "Der  F"  is  doubtless  Der  Freischiitz,  which  appeared  in  1820,  and 
of  which  a  selection  was  given  in  London,  under  Weber's  direction,  in 
1825.  The  last  of  Weber's  compositions,  "From  Chindara's  warbling 
fount,"  wns  written  for  Miss  Stephens,  who  sang  it  to  his  accompaniment 
"the  last  time  his  finders  touched  the  key-board."  (See  Diet,  of  Music, 
"  Stephens  "  and  "  Weber.") 


8  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  2  these  I  like  very  much.  I  said  this  account  should  be  short, 
but  I  am  afraid  it  has  been  too  long,  like  the  lectures  them- 
selves. 

1  will  be  a  good  boy  and  tell  something  about  Johnson 
again  (not  but  what  I  am  very  much  surprised  that  Papa 
should  so  forget  himself  as  call  me,  a  Collegian  in  the 
University  of  Edinburgh,  a  boy).  He  has  changed  his 
lodgings  for  the  third  time  ;  he  has  got  very  cheap  ones, 
but  I  am  afraid  it  will  not  answer,  for  they  must  make  up 
by  cheating.  I  hope  you  like  Erasmus'  official  news,  he 
means  to  begin  every  letter  so.  You  mentioned  in  your 
letter  that  Emma  was  staying  with  you:  if  she  is  not  gone, 
ask  her  to  tell  Jos  that  I  have  not  succeeded  in  getting 
any  titanium,  but  that  I  will  try  again.  ...  I  want  to  know 
how  old  I  shall  be  next  birthday — I  believe  17,  and  if  so, 
1  shall  be  forced  to  go  abroad  for  one  year,  since  it  is 
necessary  that  I  shall  have  completed  my  21st  year  before 
I  take  my  degree.  Now  you  have  no  business  to  be  frowning 
and  puzzling  over  this  letter,  for  I  did  not  promise  to  write 
a  good  hand  to  you. 

Lettcr3  To  J.  S.  Henslow. 

Extracts   from    Darwin's   letters   to    Henslow  were  read  before  the 

Cambridge  Philosophical  Society  on  Nov.  16th,  1835.    Some  of  the  letters 

were  subsequently  printed,  in  an  8vo  pamphlet  of  31  pp.,  dated  Dec.  1st, 

1835,  for  private  distribution  among  the  members  of  the  Society.     A 

German  translation  by  W.  Preyer  appeared  in  the  Deutsche  Rundschau, 

June  iSyi. 

[15th  Aug.,   1S32.     Monte  Video.] 

We  are  now  beating  up  the  Rio  Plata,  and  I  take  the 
opportunity  of  beginning  a  letter  to  you.  I  did  not  send 
off  the  specimens  from  Rio  Janeiro,  as  I  grudged  the  time 
it  would  take  to  pack  them  up.  They  are  now  ready  to  be 
sent  off  and  most  probably  go  by  this  packet.  If  so  they 
go  to  Falmouth  (where  Fitz-Roy  has  made  arrangements) 
and  so  will  not  trouble  your  brother's  agent  in  London. 
When  I  left  England  I  was  not  fully  aware  how  essential 
a  kindness  you  offered  me  when  you  undertook  to  receive 
my  boxes.  I  do  not  know  what  I  should  do  without  such 
head-quarters.  And  now  for  an  apologetical  prose  about  my 
collection  :  I  am  afraid  you  will  say  it  is  very  small,  but 
I   have   not  been  idle,  and  you  must  recollect  what  a  very 


i8og— 1842]  VOYAGE  9 

small  show  hundreds  of  species  make.  The  box  contains  Letter  3 
a  good  many  geological  specimens ;  I  am  well  aware  that 
the  greater  number  are  too  small.  But  I  maintain  that  no 
person  has  a  right  to  accuse  me,  till  he  has  tried  carrying 
rocks  under  a  tropical  sun.  I  have  endeavoured  to  get 
specimens  of  every  variety  of  rock,  and  have  written  notes 
upon  all.  If  you  think  it  worth  your  while  to  examine 
any  of  them  I  shall  be  very  glad  of  some  mineralogical 
information,  especially  on  any  numbers  between  1  and  254 
which  include  Santiago  rocks.  By  my  catalogue  I  shall 
know  which  you  may  refer  to.  As  for  my  plants,  "  pudet 
pigetque  mihi."  All  I  can  say  is  that  when  objects  are 
present  which  I  can  observe  and  particularise  about,  I  cannot 
summon  resolution  to  collect  when  I  know  nothing. 

It  is  positively  distressing  to  walk  in  the  glorious  forest 
amidst  such  treasures  and  feel  they  are  all  thrown  away  upon 
one.  My  collection  from  the  Abrolhos  is  interesting,  as  I 
suspect  it  nearly  contains  the  whole  flowering  vegetation — 
and  indeed  from  extreme  sterility  the  same  may  almost^be 
said  of  Santiago.  I  have  sent  home  four  bottles  with  animals 
in  spirits,  1  have  three  more,  but  would  not  send  them  till 
I  had  a  fourth.  I  shall  be  anxious  to  hear  how  they  fare. 
I  made  an  enormous  collection  of  Arachnids  at  Rio,  also 
a  good  many  small  beetles  in  pill  boxes,  but  it  is  not  the 
best  time  of  year  for  the  latter.  Amongst  the  lower  animals 
nothing  has  so  much  interested  me  as  finding  two  species 
of  elegantly  coloured  true  Planaria  inhabiting  the  dewy 
forest  !  The  false  relation  they  bear  to  snails  is  the  most 
extraordinary  thing  of  the  kind  I  have  ever  seen.  In  the 
same  genus  (or  more  truly  family)  some  of  the  marine 
species  possess  an  organisation  so  marvellous  that  I  can 
scarcely  credit  my  eyesight.  Every  one  has  heard  of  the 
discoloured  streaks  of  water  in  the  equatorial  regions. 
One  I  examined  was  owing  to  the  presence  of  such  minute 
Oscillarice  that  in  each  square  inch  of  surface  there  must 
have  been  at  least  one  hundred  thousand  present.  After 
this  I  had  better  be  silent,  for  you  will  think  me  a  Baron 
Munchausen  amongst  naturalists.  Most  assuredly  I  might 
collect  a  far  greater  number  of  specimens  of  Invertebrate 
animals  if  I  took  less  time  over  each  ;  but  I  have  come  to 
the  conclusion   that   two   animals   with   their   original   colour 


IO  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chai\  I 

Letter  3  and  shape  noted  down  will  be  more  valuable  to  naturalists 
than  six  with  only  dates  and  place.  I  hope  you  will  send 
me  your  criticisms  about  my  collection  ;  and  it  will  be  my 
endeavour  that  nothing  you  say  shall  be  lost  on  me.  I 
would  send  home  my  writings  with  my  specimens,  only  I 
find  I  have  so  repeatedly  occasion  to  refer  back  that  it 
would  be  a  serious  loss  to  me.  I  cannot  conclude  about  my 
collection  without  adding  that  I  implicitly  trust  in  your 
keeping  an  exact  account  against  all  the  expense  of  boxes,  etc., 
etc.  At  this  present  minute  we  are  at  anchor  in  the  mouth  of 
the  river,  and  such  a  strange  scene  as  it  is.  Everything  is  in 
flames — the  sky  with  lightning,  the  water  with  luminous 
particles,  and  even  the  very  masts  are  pointed  with  a  blue 
flame.  1  expect  great  interest  in  scouring  over  the  plains 
of  Monte  Video,  yet  I  look  back  with  regret  to  the  Tropics, 
that  magic  lure  to  all  naturalists.  The  delight  of  sitting 
on  a  decaying  trunk  amidst  the  quiet  gloom  of  the  forest 
is  unspeakable  and  never  to  be  forgotten.  How  often  have 
I  then  wished  for  you.  When  I  see  a  banana  I  well  recollect 
admiring  them  with  you  in  Cambridge— little  did  I  then 
think  how  soon   I  should  eat  their  fruit. 

August  1 5th.  In  a  few  days  the  box  will  go  by  the 
Emulous  packet  (Capt.  Cooke)  to  Falmouth  and  will  be 
forwarded  to  you.  This  letter  goes  the  same  way,  so  that 
if  in  course  of  due  time  you  do  not  receive  the  box,  will  you 
be  kind  enough  to  write  to  Falmouth  ?  We  have  been  here 
(Monte  Video)  for  some  time ;  but  owing  to  bad  weather 
and  continual  fighting  on  shore,  we  have  scarcely  ever 
been  able  to  walk  in  the  country.  I  have  collected  during 
the  last  month  nothing,  but  to-day  I  have  been  out  and 
returned  like  Noah's  Ark  with  animals  of  all  sorts.  1  have 
to-day  to  my  astonishment  found  two  Planaricc  living  under 
dry  stones:  ask  L.  Jenyns1  if  he  has  ever  heard  of  this  fact. 
I  also  found  a  most  curious  snail,  and  spiders,  beetles,  snakes, 
scorpions  ad  libitum,  and  to  conclude  shot  a  Cavia  weighing 
a  cwt.— On  Friday  we  sail  for  the  Rio  Negro,  and  then  will 
commence  our  real  wild  work.  I  look  forward  with  dread 
to  the  wet  stormy  regions  of  the  south,  but  after  so  much 
pleasure  I  must  put  up  with  some  sea-sickness  and  misery. 

1  L.  Jenyns  afterwards  changed  his  name  to  Blomefield  :  see  bio- 
graphical note,  p.  49. 


i8o9— 1842]  VOYAGE  II 

To  J.   S.    Henslow.  Letter  4 

Monte  Video,  24th  Novr  lSj2. 
We  arrived  here  on  the  24th  of  October,  after  our  first 
cruise  on  the  coast  of  Patagonia.  North  of  the  Rio  Negro 
we  fell  in  with  some  little  schooners  employed  in  sealing  :  to 
save  the  loss  of  time  in  surveying  the  intricate  mass  of  banks, 
Capt.  Fitz-Roy  has  hired  two  of  them  and  has  put  officers 
on  them.  It  took  us  nearly  a  month  fitting  them  out;  as 
soon  as  this  was  finished  we  came  back  here,  and  are  now 
preparing  for  a  long  cruise  to  the  south.  I  expect  to  find  the 
wild  mountainous  country  of  Terra  del  Fuego  very  interesting, 
and  after  the  coast  of  Patagonia  I  shall  thoroughly  enjoy  it. — 
I  had  hoped  for  the  credit  of  Dame  Nature,  no  such  country 
as  this  last  existed  ;  in  sad  reality  we  coasted  along  240  miles 
of  sand  hillocks  ;  I  never  knew  before,  what  a  horrid  ugly 
object  a  sand  hillock  is.  The  famed  country  of  the  Rio 
Plata  in  my  opinion  is  not  much  better :  an  enormous  brackish 
river,  bounded  by  an  interminable  green  plain  is  enough  to 
make  any  naturalist  groan.  So  Hurrah  for  Cape  Horn  and 
the  Land  of  Storms.  Now  that  I  have  had  my  growl  out, 
which  is  a  privilege  sailors  take  on  all  occasions,  I  will  turn  the 
tables  and  give  an  account  of  my  doing  in  Nat.  History.  I 
must  have  one  more  growl :  by  ill  luck  the  French  Government 
has  sent  one  of  its  collectors  to  the  Rio  Negro,  where  he  has 
been  working  for  the  last  six  months,  and  is  now  gone 
round  the  Horn.  So  that  I  am  very  selfishly  afraid  he  will 
get  the  cream  of  all  the  good  things  before  me.  As  I  have 
nobody  to  talk  to  about  my  luck  and  ill  luck  in  collecting, 
I  am  determined  to  vent  it  all  upon  you.  I  have  been  very 
lucky  with  fossil  bones  ;  I  have  fragments  of  at  least  6  distinct 
animals  :  as  many  of  them  are  teeth,  I  trust,  shattered  and 
rolled  as  they  have  been,  they  will  be  recognised.  I  have  paid 
all  the  attention  I  am  capable  of  to  their  geological  site  ;  but 
of  course  it  is  too  long  a  story  for  here.  1st,  I  have  the  tarsi 
and  metatarsi  very  perfect  of  a  Cavia  ;  2nd,  the  upper  jaw 
and  head  of  some  very  large  animal  with  four  square  hollow 
molars  and  the  head  greatly  protruded  in  front.  I  at  first 
thought  it  belonged  either  to  the  Megalonyx  or  Megathe- 
rium ; 1  in  confirmation  of  this  in  the  same  formation  I  found 

1  The  animal  may  probably  have  been  Grypotkerium  Darwini,  Ow. 
The  osseous  plates  mentioned  below  must  have  belonged  to  one  of  the 


\2  EARLY    LETTERS  (Chap.  I 

Letter  4  a  large  surface  of  the  osseous  polygonal  plates,  which  "  late 
observations "  (what  are  they  ?)  show  belong  to  the  Mega- 
therium. Immediately  I  saw  this  I  thought  they  must  belong 
to  an  enormous  armadillo,  living  species  of  which  genus  are 
so  abundant  here.  3rd,  The  lower  jaw  of  some  large  animal 
which,  from  the  molar  teeth,  I  should  think  belonged  to  the 
Edentata  ;  4th,  some  large  molar  teeth  which  in  some  respects 
would  seem  to  belong  to  an  enormous  rodent  ;  5th,  also  some 
smaller  teeth  belonging  to  the  same  order.  If  it  interests 
you  sufficiently  to  unpack  them,  I  shall  be  very  curious  to 
hear  something  about  them.  Care  must  be  taken  in  this  case 
not  to  confuse  the  tallies.  They  are  mingled  with  marine 
shells  which  appear  to  me  identical  with  what  now  exist. 
Hut  since  they  were  deposited  in  their  beds  several  geological 
changes  have  taken  place  in  the  country.  So  much  for  the 
dead,  and  now  for  the  living :  there  is  a  poor  specimen  of 
a  bird  which  to  my  unornithological  eyes  appears  to  be  a 
happy  mixture  of  a  lark,  pigeon  and  snipe  (No.  710). 
Mr.  MacLeay  himself  never  imagined  such  an  inosculating 
creature  :  I  suppose  it  will  turn  out  to  be  some  well  known 
bird,  although  it  has  quite  baffled  me.  I  have  taken  some 
interesting  Amphibia  ;  a  new  Trigonocephalies  beautifully 
connecting  in  its  habits  Crotalus  and  the  Viperida;,  and 
plenty  of  new  (as  far  as  my  knowledge  goes)  saurians.  As 
for  one  little  toad,  I  hope  it  may  be  new,  that  it  may  be 
christened  "  diabolicus."  Milton  must  allude  to  this  very 
individual  when  he  talks  of  "squat  like  a  toad"  ; '  its  colours 
are  by  Werner2  ink  black,  vermilion  red  and  buff  orange.  It 
has  been  a  splendid  cruise  for  me  in  Nat.  History.  Amongst 
the  Pelagic  Crustacea,  some  new  and  curious  genera.  In  the 
Zoophytes  some  interesting  animals.     As  for  one  Flustra,  if 

Glyptodontida?,  and  not  to  Megatherium.     We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Kerr 
for  calling  our  attention  to  a  passage  in  Buckland's  Bridgcivatcr  Treatise 
(Vol.  II.,  p.  20,  note),  where  bony  armour  is  ascribed  to  Megatherium. 
1  ".  .  .  him  [Satan]  there  they  [Ithuriel  and  Zephon]  found, 
Squat  like  a  toad,  close  at  the  ear  of  Eve  " 

{Paradise  Lost,  Book  IV.,  line  800). 

"Formerly  Milton's  Paradise  Lost  had  been  my  chief  favourite,  and 
in  my  excursions  during  the  voyage  of  the  Beagle,  when  I  could  take 
only  a  single  volume,  I  always  chose  Milton  "  {Autobiography,  p.  69). 

3  Werner's  Nomenclature  of  Colours,  Edinburgh,  1821. 


i809— 1842]  VOYAGE  1 3 

I  had  not  the  specimen  to  back  me  up  nobody  would  believe  Letter  4 
in  its  most  anomalous  structure.  But  as  for  novelty  all  this 
is  nothing  to  a  family  of  pelagic  animals  which  at  first  sight 
appear  like  Medusae  but  are  really  highly  organised.  I  have 
examined  them  repeatedly,  and  certainly  from  their  structure 
it  would  be  impossible  to  place  them  in  any  existing  order. 
Perhaps  Salpa  is  the  nearest  animal,  although  the  transparency 
of  the  body  is  nearly  the  only  character  they  have  in  common. 
I  think  the  dried  plants  nearly  contain  all  which  were  then 
(Bahia  Blanca)  flowering.  All  the  specimens  will  be  packed 
in  casks.  I  think  there  will  be  three  (before  sending  this 
letter  I  will  specify  dates,  etc.,  etc.).  I  am  afraid  you  will 
groan  or  rather  the  floor  of  the  lecture  room  will  when  the 
casks  arrive.  Without  you  I  should  be  utterly  undone. 
The  small  cask  contains  fish  :  will  you  open  it  to  see  how 
the  spirit  has  stood  the  evaporation  of  the  Tropics.  On 
board  the  ship  everything  goes  on  as  well  as  possible  ;  the 
only  drawback  is  the  fearful  length  of  time  between  this  and 
the  day  of  our  return.  I  do  not  see  any  limits  to  it.  One 
year  is  nearly  completed  and  the  second  will  be  so,  before 
we  even  leave  the  east  coast  of  S.  America.  And  then  our 
voyage  may  be  said  really  to  have  commenced.  I  know  not 
how  I  shall  be  able  to  endure  it.  The  frequency  with  which 
I  think  of  all  the  happy  hours  I  have  spent  at  Shrewsbury 
and  Cambridge  is  rather  ominous  — I  trust  everything  to  time 
and  fate  and  will  feel  my  way  as  I  go  on. 

Nov.  24th.  —We  have  been  at  Buenos  Ayres  for  a  week  ; 
it  is  a  fine  large  city,  but  such  a  country,  everything  is 
mud,  yuu  can  go  nowhere,  you  can  do  nothing  for  mud. 
In  the  city  I  obtained  much  information  about  the  banks 
of  the  Uruguay — I  hear  of  limestone  with  shells,  and  beds 
of  shells  in  every  direction.  I  hope  when  we  winter  in 
the  Plata  to  have  a  most  interesting  geological  excursion 
into  that  country  :  I  purchased  fragments  (Nos.  837-8)  of 
some  enormous  bones,  which  I  was  assured  belonged  to 
the  former  giants  !  !  I  also  procured  some  seeds — I  do 
not  know  whether  they  are  worth  your  accepting ;  if  you 
think  so  I  will  get  some  more.  They  are  in  the  box.  I 
have  sent  to  you  by  the  Duke  of  York  packet,  commanded 
by  Lieut.  Sncll,  to  Falmouth  two  large  casks  containing  fossil 
bones,  a   small   cask   with  fish   and   a   box  containing  skins, 


14  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  4  spirit  bottle,  etc.,  and  pill-boxes  with  beetles.  Would  you  be 
kind  enough  to  open  these  latter  as  they  are  apt  to  become 
mouldy.  With  the  exception  of  the  bones  the  rest  of  my 
collection  looks  very  scanty.  Recollect  how  great  a  proportion 
of  time  is  spent  at  sea.  I  am  always  anxious  to  hear  in  what 
state  the  things  come  and  any  criticisms  about  quantity  or 
kind  of  specimens.  In  the  smaller  cask  is  part  of  a  large 
head,  the  anterior  portions  of  which  are  in  the  other  large 
one.  The  packet  has  arrived  and  I  am  in  a  great  bustle.  You 
will  not  hear  from  me  for  some  months. 

Letter  5  To  J.  S.  Henslow. 

Valparaiso,  July  24th  1834. 

A  box  has  just  arrived  in  which  were  two  of  your  most 
kind  and  affectionate  letters.  You  do  not  know  how  happy 
they  have  made  me.  One  is  dated  Dec.  15th,  1833,  the 
other  Jan.  15th  of  the  same  year!  By  what  fatality  it  did 
not  arrive  sooner  I  cannot  conjecture  ;  I  regret  it  much,  for 
it  contains  the  information  I  most  wanted,  about  manner 
of  packing,  etc.,  etc. :  roots  with  specimens  of  plants,  etc.,  etc. 
This  I  suppose  was  written  after  the  reception  of  my  first 
cargo  of  specimens.  Not  having  heard  from  you  until  March 
of  this  year  I  really  began  to  think  that  my  collections  were 
so  poor,  that  you  were  puzzled  what  to  say  ;  the  case  is  now 
quite  on  the  opposite  tack  ;  for  you  are  guilty  of  exciting 
all  my  vain  feelings  to  a  most  comfortable  pitch  ;  if  hard 
work  will  atone  for  these  thoughts,  I  vow  it  shall  not  be 
spared.  It  is  rather  late,  but  I  will  allude  to  some  remarks 
in  the  Jan.  letter  ;  you  advise  me  to  send  home  duplicates 
of  my  notes ;  I  have  been  aware  of  the  advantage  of  doing 
so  ;  but  then  at  sea  to  this  day,  I  am  invariably  sick,  ex- 
cepting on  the  finest  days,  at  which  times  with  pelagic 
animals  around  me,  I  could  never  bring  myself  to  the  task — 
on  shore  the  most  prudent  person  could  hardly  expect  such 
a  sacrifice  of  time.  My  notes  are  becoming  bulky.  I  have 
about  600  small  quarto  pages  full  ;  about  half  of  this  is 
Geology — the  other  imperfect  descriptions  of  animals  ;  with 
the  latter  I  make  it  a  rule  only  to  describe  those  parts  or 
facts,  which  cannot  be  seen  in  specimens  in  spirits.  I  keep 
my  private  Journal  distinct  from  the  above.  (N.B.  This 
letter  is  a  most  untidy  one,  but  my  mind  is  untidy  with  joy  ; 


1809-1842]  VOYAGE  15 

it  is  your  fault,  so  you  must  take  the  consequences.)  With  Letter  5 
respect  to  the  land  Planarzce,  unquestionably  they  are  not 
molluscous  animals.  I  read  your  letters  last  night,  this 
morning  I  took  a  little  walk  ;  by  a  curious  coincidence,  I 
found  a  new  white  species  of  Planaria,  and  a  new  to  me 
Vaginulus  (third  species  which  I  have  found  in  S.  America) 
of  Cuvier.  Amongst  the  marine  mollusques  I  have  seen 
a  good  many  genera,  and  at  Rio  found  one  quite  new  one. 
With  respect  to  the  December  letter,  I  am  very  glad  to 
hear  the  four  casks  arrived  safe  ;  since  which  time  you  have 
received  another  cargo,  with  the  bird  skins  about  which  you 
did  not  understand  me.  Have  any  of  the  B.  Ayrean  seeds 
produced  plants  ?  From  the  Falklands  I  acknowledged  a 
box  and  letter  from  you  ;  with  the  letter  were  a  few  seeds 
from  Patagonia.  At  present  I  have  specimens  enough  to 
make  a  heavy  cargo,  but  shall  wait  as  much  longer  as 
possible,  because  opportunities  are  not  now  so  good  as 
before.  I  have  just  got  scent  of  some  fossil  bones  of  a 
MAMMOTH  ;  what  they  may  be  I  do  not  know,  but  if  gold  or 
galloping  will  get  them  they  shall  be  mine.  You  tell  me  you 
like  hearing  how  I  am  going  on  and  what  doing,  and  you 
well  may  imagine  how  much  I  enjoy  speaking  to  anyone 
upon  subjects  which  I  am  always  thinking  about,  but  never 
have  any  one  to  talk  to  [about].  After  leaving  the  Falklands 
we  proceeded  to  the  Rio  S.  Cruz,  following  up  the  river  till 
within  twenty  miles  of  the  Cordilleras.  Unfortunately  want  of 
provisions  compelled  us  to  return.  This  expedition  was  most 
important  to  me  as  it  was  a  transverse  section  of  the  great 
Patagonian  formation.  I  conjecture  (an  accurate  examination 
of  fossils  may  possibly  determine  the  point)  that  the  main 
bed  is  somewhere  about  the  Miocene  period  (using  Mr. 
Lyell's  expression)  ;  I  judge  from  what  I  have  seen  of  the 
present  shells  of  Patagonia.  This  bed  contains  an  enormous 
field  of  lava.  This  is  of  some  interest,  as  being  a  rude 
approximation  to  the  age  of  the  volcanic  part  of  the  great 
range  of  the  Andes.  Long  before  this  it  existed  as  a  slate 
and  porphyritic  line  of  hills.  I  have  collected  a  tolerable 
quantity  of  information  respecting  the  period  and  forms  of 
elevations  of  these  plains.  I  think  these  will  be  interesting 
to  Mr.  Lyell  ;  I  had  deferred  reading  his  third  volume 
till  my  return  :    you  may  guess  how  much   pleasure  it  gave 


\6  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  1 

Letter  5  me  ;  some  of  his  woodcuts  came  so  exactly  into  play  that 
I  have  only  to  refer  to  them  instead  of  redrawing  similar 
ones.  I  had  my  barometer  with  me,  I  only  wish  I  had 
used  it  more  in  these  plains.  The  valley  of  S.  Cruz  appears 
to  me  a  very  curious  one  ;  at  first  it  quite  baffled  me.  I  believe 
I  can  show  good  reasons  for  supposing  it  to  have  been  once 
a  northern  straits  like  to  that  of  Magellan.  When  I  return 
to  England  you  will  have^some  hard  work  in  winnowing  my 
Geology  ;  what  little  1  know  I  have  learnt  in  such  a  curious 
fashion  that  I  often  feel  very  doubtful  about  the  number  of 
grains  [of  value  ?].  Whatever  number  they  may  turn  out,  I 
have  enjoyed  extreme  pleasure  in  collecting  them.  In  T.  del 
Fuego  1  collected  and  examined  some  corallines  ;  I  have 
observed  one  fact  which  quite  startled  me  :  it  is  that  in  the 
genus  Sertularia  (taken  in  its  most  restricted  form  as  [used] 
by  Lamoureux)  and  in  two  species  which,  excluding  compara- 
tive expressions,  I  should  find  much  difficulty  in  describing 
as  different,  the  polypi  quite  and  essentially  differed  in  all 
their  most  important  and  evident  parts  of  structure.  I  have 
already  seen  enough  to  be  convinced  that  the  present  families 
of  corallines  as  arranged  by  Lamarck,  Cuvier,  etc.,  are  highly 
artificial.  It  appears  that  they  arc  in  the  same  state  [in] 
which  shells  were  when  Linnaeus  left  them  for  Cuvier  to 
rearrange.  I  do  so  wish  I  was  a  better  hand  at  dissecting, 
I  find  I  can  do  very  little  in  the  minute  parts  of  structure  ; 
I  am  forced  to  take  a  very  rough  examination  as  a  type  for 
different  classes  of  structure.  It  is  most  extraordinary  I  can 
nowhere  see  in  my  books  one  single  description  of  the 
polypus  of  any  one  coralline  excepting  Alcyom'uw  Lobularia 
of  Savigny.  I  found  a  curious  little  stony  Cellaria  1  (a  new 
genus)  each  cell  provided  with  long  toothed  bristle,  these  are 
capable  of  various  and  rapid  motions.  This  motion  is  often 
simultaneous,  and  can  be  produced  by  irritation.  This  fact,  as 
far  as  I  can  see,  is  quite  isolated  in  the  history  of  zoophytes 
(excepting  the  Flustra  with  an  organ  like  a  vulture's  head) ;  it 
points  out  a  much  more  intimate  relation  between  the  polypi 
than  Lamarck  is  willing  to  allow.  I  forgot  whether  I 
mentioned  having  seen  something  of  the  manner  of  propa- 
gation in  that  most  ambiguous  family,  the  corallines  ;  I  feel 

1  Cellaria,  a  genus  of  Bryozoa,  placed  in  the  section  Flustrina  of  the 
Suborder  Chilostomata. 


1809-1842]  VOYAGE  J  7 

pretty  well  convinced  if  they  are  not  plants  they  are  not  Let'er  5 
zoophytes.  The  "gemmule  "  of  a  Halimeda  contained  several 
articulations  united,  ready  to  burst  their  envelope,  and  become 
attached  to  some  basis.  I  believe  in  zoophytes  universally 
the  gemmule  produces  a  single  polypus,  which  afterwards  or 
at  the  same  time  grows  with  its  cell  or  single  articulation. 

The  Beagle  left  the  Sts.  of  Magellan  in  the  middle  of 
winter  ;  she  found  her  road  out  by  a  wild  unfrequented 
channel  ;  well  might  Sir  J.  Narborough  call  the  west  coast 
South  Desolation,  "  because  it  is  so  desolate  a  land  to  behold." 
We  were  driven  into  Chiloe  by  some  very  bad  weather.  An 
Englishman  gave  me  three  specimens  of  that  very  fine  Luca- 
noidal  insect  which  is  described  in  the  Camb.  Phil.  Trans.} 
two  males  and  one  female.  I  find  Chiloe  is  composed  of  lava 
and  recent  deposits.  The  lavas  are  curious  from  abounding 
in,  or  rather  being  in  parts  composed  of  pitchstone.  If  we 
go  to  Chiloe  in  the  summer,  I  shall  reap  an  entomological 
harvest.  I  suppose  the  Botany  both  there  and  in  Chili  is 
well  known. 

I  forgot  to  state  that  in  the  four  cargoes  of  specimens 
there  have  been  sent  three  square  boxes,  each  containing  four 
glass  bottles.  I  mention  this  in  case  they  should  be  stowed 
beneath  geological  specimens  and  thus  escape  your  notice, 
perhaps  some  spirit  may  be  wanted  in  them.  If  a  box 
arrives  from  B.  Ayres  with  a  Megatherium  head  and  other 
unnumbered  specimens,  be  kind  enough  to  tell  me,  as  I  have 
strong  fears  for  its  safety.  We  arrived  here  the  day  before 
yesterday  ;  the  views  of  the  distant  mountains  are  most 
sublime  and  the  climate  delightful  ;  after  our  long  cruise  in 
the  damp  gloomy  climates  of  the  south,  to  breathe  a  clear 
dry  air  and  feel  honest  warm  sunshine,  and  eat  good  fresh 
roast  beef  must  be  the  summum  bonum  of  human  life.  I  do 
not  like  the  look  of  the  rocks  half  so  much  as  the  beef,  there 
is  too  much  of  those  rather  insipid  ingredients,  mica,  quartz 
and  feldspar.  Our  plans  are  at  present  undecided  ;  there  is 
a  good  deal  of  work  to  the  south  of  Valparaiso  and  to  the 
north  an  indefinite  quantity.  I  look  forward  to  every  part 
with  interest.  I  have  sent  you  in  this  letter  a  sad  dose  of 
egotism,   but    recollect    I    look   up   to    you    as  my  father    in 

1  "  Description  of  Ckiasognathus  Grantii,  a  new  Lucanideous  Insect, 
etc.,"  by  J.  F.  Stephens  (Tram.  Camb.  Phil.  Soc,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  209,  1833). 


18  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  5  Natural  History,  and  a  son  may  talk  about  himself  to  his 
father.  In  your  paternal  capacity  as  proproctor  what  a 
great  deal  of  trouble  you  appear  to  have  had.  How  turbulent 
Cambridge  is  become.  Before  this  time  it  will  have  regained 
its  tranquillity.  I  have  a  most  schoolboy-like  wish  to  be 
there,  enjoying  my  holidays.  It  is  a  most  comfortable  reflec- 
tion to  mc,  that  a  ship  being  made  of  wood  and  iron,  cannot 
last  for  ever,  and  therefore  this  voyage  must  have  an  end. 

October  28th.     This  letter   has    been   lying   in   my  port- 
folio ever   since   July ;    I    did    not  send  it    away  because    I 
did  not  think    it  worth   the  postage  ;    it  shall  now  go  with 
a  box  of  specimens.     Shortly  after  arriving  here   I   set  out 
on  a  geological  excursion,  and  had  a  very   pleasant  ramble 
about  the  base  of  the  Andes.     The  whole  country  appears 
composed  of  breccias  (and  I  imagine  slates)  which  universally 
have  been  modified  and  oftentimes  completely  altered  by  the 
action  of  fire.     The  varieties  of  porphyry  thus  produced  are 
endless,  but  nowhere  have  I  yet  met  with  rocks  which  have 
flowed  in  a  stream  ;  dykes  of  greenstone  are  very  numerous. 
Modern    volcanic    action    is    entirely    shut    up    in    the    very 
central   parts  (which  cannot  now  be  reached   on  account  of 
the  snow)  of  the  Cordilleras.     In  the  south  of  the  R.  Maypu 
I   examined  the  Tertiary  plains,  already  partially  described 
by  M.  Gay.1     The  fossil  shells  appear  to  me  to  be  far  more 
different  from  the  recent  ones  than  in  the  great  Patagonian 
formation  ;    it   will    be  curious    if   an    Eocene    and    Miocene 
(recent    there    is    abundance   of)    could    be    proved    to   exist 
in  S.   America  as  well    as    in    Europe.     I   have    been    much 
interested  by  finding  abundance  of  recent  shells  at  an  eleva- 
tion of  1,300  feet  ;  the  country  in  many  places  is  scattered 
over  with  shells  but  these  are  all   littoral   ones.     So  that   I 
suppose  the  1,300  feet  elevation  must  be  owing  to  a  succession 
of  small  elevations    such   as  in    1822.       With   these  certain 
proofs  of  the  recent  residence  of  the  ocean  over  all  the  lower 
parts  of  Chili,  the  outline  of  every  view  and  the  form  of  each 
valley  possesses  a  high  interest.     Has  the  action  of  running 
water  or  the  sea  formed   this  deep  ravine?    was  a  question 
which  often   arose  in  my  mind  and  generally  was  answered 

1  "  Rapport  fait  a  PAcademie  Royale  des  Sciences,  sur  les  Travaux 
G^ologiques  de  M.  Cay,"  by  Alex.  Brongniart  (Ann.  Sri.  Nat.,  Vol. 
XXVIII.,  p.  394,  1833). 


1809-1S42]  VOYAGE  19 

by  finding  a  bed  of  recent  shells  at  the  bottom.  I  have  not  Letter  5 
sufficient  arguments,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  more  than  a 
small  fraction  of  the  height  of  the  Andes  has  been  formed 
within  the  Tertiary  period.  The  conclusion  of  my  excursion 
was  very  unfortunate,  I  became  unwell  and  could  hardly 
reach  this  place.  I  have  been  in  bed  for  the  last  month,  but 
am  now  rapidly  getting  well.  I  had  hoped  during  this  time 
to  have  made  a  good  collection  of  insects  but  it  has  been 
impossible  :  I  regret  the  less  because  Chiloe  fairly  swarms 
with  collectors  ;  there  are  more  naturalists  in  the  country, 
than  carpenters  or  shoemakers  or  any  other  honest  trade. 

In  my  letter  from  the  Falkland  Islands  I  said  I  had  fears 
about  a  box  with  a  Megatherium.  I  have  since  heard  from 
B.  Ayres  that  it  went  to  Liverpool  by  the  brig  Basingwaithe. 
If  you  have  not  received  it,  it  is  I  think  worth  taking 
some  trouble  about.  In  October  two  casks  and  a  jar  were 
sent  by  H.M.S.  Samarang  vid  Portsmouth.  I  have  no  doubt 
you  have  received  them.  With  this  letter  I  send  a  good 
many  bird  skins  ;  in  the  same  box  with  them,  there  is  a 
paper  parcel  containing  pill  boxes  with  insects.  The  other 
pill  boxes  require  no  particular  care.  You  will  see  in  two 
of  these  boxes  some  dried  Planarice  (terrestrial),  the  only 
method  I  have  found  of  preserving  them  (they  are  exceedingly 
brittle).  By  examining  the  white  species  I  understand  some 
little  of  the  internal  structure.  There  are  two  small  parcels 
of  seeds.  There  are  some  plants  which  I  hope  may  interest 
you,  or  at  least  those  from  Patagonia  where  I  collected 
every  one  in  flower.  There  is  a  bottle  clumsily  but  I  think 
securely  corked  containing  water  and  gas  from  the  hot 
baths  of  Cauquenes  seated  at  foot  of  Andes  and  long  cele- 
brated for  medicinal  properties.  I  took  pains  in  filling  and 
securing  both  water  and  gas.  If  you  can  find  any  one  who 
likes  to  analyze  them,  I  should  think  it  would  be  worth 
the  trouble.  I  have  not  time  at  present  to  copy  my  few 
observations  about  the  locality,  etc.,  etc.,  [of]  these  springs. 
Will  you  tell  me  how  the  Arachnids  which  I  have  sent  home, 
for  instance  those  from  Rio,  appear  to  be  preserved.  I  have 
doubts  whether  it  is  worth  while  collecting  them. 

We  sail  the  day  after  to-morrow :  our  plans  are  at  last 
limited  and  definite  ;  I  am  delighted  to  say  we  have  bid 
an    eternal    adieu    to   T.   del    Fuego,     The    Beagle   will    not 


20 


EARLY    LETTERS 


[Chap.  I 


Letter  5 


Letter  6 


proceed  further  south  than  C.  Tres  Montes  ;  from  which  point 
we  survey  to  the  north.  The  Chonos  Archipelago  is  delight- 
fully unknown:  fine  deep  inlets  running  into  the  Cordilleras — 
where  wc  can  steer  by  the  light  of  a  volcano.  I  do  not 
know  which  part  of  the  voyage  now  offers  the  most  attrac- 
tions. This  is  a  shamefully  untidy  letter,  but  you  must 
forgive  me. 

To  J.  S.  Henslow. 

April   iSth.  1835.  Valparaiso. 
I   have  just  returned  from    Mcndoza,   having  crossed  the 
Cordilleras  by  two  passes.     This  trip  has  added  much  to  my 
knowledge   of  the   geology   of  the  country.      Some  of  the 
facts,  of  the  truth  of  which   I    in   my  own   mind    feel    fully 
convinced,  will  appear  to  you  quite  absurd  and  incredible. 
I   will  give  a  very  short   sketch   of  the    structure   of  these 
huge    mountains.      In  the   Portillo  pass  (the  more  southern 
one)  travellers   have  described  the  Cordilleras  to  consist  of 
a  double  chain  of  nearly  equal  altitude  separated  by  a  con- 
siderable interval.     This  is  the  case  ;  and  the  same  structure 
extends  to  the  northward  to  Uspallata  ;  the  little  elevation 
of  the  eastern  line  (here  not  more  than  6,000 — 7,000  ft.)  has 
caused    it    almost    to   be    overlooked.      To    begin    with    the 
western  and  principal  chain,  we  have,  where  the  sections  are 
best  seen,  an  enormous  mass  of  a  porphyritic  conglomerate 
resting   on    granite.      This   latter   rock    seems  to    form    the 
nucleus  of  the  whole  mass,  and  is  seen  in  the  deep  lateral 
valleys,    injected    amongst,    upheaving,    overturning   in    the 
most  extraordinary  manner,  the  overlying  strata.    The  stratifi- 
cation in  all  the  mountains  is  beautifully  distinct  and  from 
a    variety    in    the    colour    can    be   seen    at    great    distances. 
I  cannot  imagine  any  part  of  the  world  presenting  a  more 
extraordinary  scene  of  the  breaking  up  of  the  crust  of  the 
globe  than  the  very  central  parts  of  the  Andes.    The  upheaval 
has  taken  place  by  a  great  number  of  (nearly)  N.and  S.  lines  ; 
which    in    most  cases  have  formed   as   many  anticlinal    and 
synclinal    ravines ;    the   strata  in  the    highest  pinnacles    are 
almost  universally  inclined  at  an  angle  from  70°  to  80°.     I 
cannot  tell  you  how  I  enjoyed  some  of  these  views — it  is  worth 
coming  from  England,  once  to  feel  such  intense  delight ;  at  an 
elevation  from  10  to  12,000  ft.  there  is  a  transparency  in  the  air, 


1S09-1842]  VOYAGE  21 

and  a  confusion  of  distances  and  a  sort  of  stillness  which  gives    Letter  6 
the  sensation  of  being  in  another  world,  and  when  to  this  is 
joined  the   picture  so  plainly  drawn   of  the  great  epochs  of 
violence,  it  causes  in  the  mind  a  most  strange  assemblage 
of  ideas. 

The  formation  I  call  Porphyritic  Conglomerates  is  the 
most  important  and  most  developed  one  in  Chili :  from  a 
great  number  of  sections  I  find  it  a  true  coarse  conglomerate 
or  breccia,  which  by  every  step  in  a  slow  gradation  passes 
into  a  fine  claystone-porphyry  ;  the  pebbles  and  cement 
becoming  porphyritic  till  at  last  all  is  blended  in  one  compact 
rock.  The  porphyries  are  excessively  abundant  in  this  chain. 
I  feel  sure  at  least  flhs  of  them  have  been  thus  produced  from 
sedimentary  beds  in  situ.  There  are  porphyries  which  have 
been  injected  from  below  amongst  strata,  and  others  ejected, 
which  have  flowed  in  streams  ;  it  is  remarkable,  and  I  could 
show  specimens  of  this  rock  produced  in  these  three  methods, 
which  cannot  be  distinguished.  It  is  a  great  mistake  con- 
sidering the  Cordilleras  here  as  composed  of  rocks  which 
have  flowed  in  streams.  In  this  range  I  nowhere  saw  a 
fragment,  which  I  believe  to  have  thus  originated,  although  the 
road  passes  at  no  great  distance  from  the  active  volcanoes 
The  porphyries,  conglomerate,  sandstone  and  quartzose  sand- 
stone and  limestones  alternate  and  pass  into  each  other  many 
times,  overlying  (where  not  broken  through  by  the  granite) 
clay-slate.  In  the  upper  parts,  the  sandstone  begins  to 
alternate  with  gypsum,  till  at  last  we  have  this  substance  of  a 
stupendous  thickness.  I  really  think  the  formation  is  in  some 
places  (it  varies  much)  nearly  2,000  ft.  thick,  it  occurs  often 
with  a  green  (epidote?)  siliceous  sandstone  and  snow-white 
marble  ;  it  resembles  that  found  in  the  Alps  in  containing 
large  concretions  of  a  crystalline  marble  of  a  blackish  grey 
colour.  The  upper  beds  which  form  some  of  the  higher 
pinnacles  consist  of  layers  of  snow-white  gypsum  and  red 
compact  sandstone,  from  the  thickness  of  paper  to  a  few  feet, 
alternating  in  an  endless  round.  The  rock  has  a  most  curiously 
painted  appearance.  At  the  pass  of  the  Peuquenes  in  this 
formation,  where  however  a  black  rock  like  clay-slate,  without 
many  lamina?,  occurring  with  a  pale  limestone,  has  replaced 
the  red  sandstone,  I  found  abundant  impressions  of  shells. 
The   elevation   must   be   between  12  and  13,000  ft.     A  shell 


22  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  6   which    1    believe  is  the  Gtyphcea  is  the  most  abundant — an 
Ostrea,  Turratella,  Ammonites,  small  bivalves,  Terebratuke (?). 

Perhaps  some  good  conchologist l  will  be  able  to  give  a  guess, 
to  what  grand  division  of  the  formations  of  Europe  these 
organic  remains  bear  most  resemblance.  They  are  exceedingly 
imperfect  and  few.  It  was  late  in  the  season  and  the  situa- 
tion particularly  dangerous  for  snow-storms.  I  did  not  dare 
to  delay,  otherwise  a^grand  harvest  might  have  been  reaped. 
So  much  for  the  western  line ;  in  the  Portillo  pass,  proceed- 
ing eastward,  we  meet  an  immense  mass  of  a  conglomerate, 
dipping  to  the  west  45°,  which  rest  on  micaceous  sandstone, 
etc.,  etc.,  upheaved  and  converted  into  quartz-rock  penetrated 
by  dykes  from  the  very  grand  mass  of  protogine  (large 
crystals  of  quartz,  red  feldspar,  and  occasional  little  chlorite). 
Now  this  conglomerate  which  reposes  on  and  dips  from 
the  protogene  45°  consists  of  the  peculiar  rocks  of  the  first 
described  chain,  pebbles  of  the  black  rock  with  shells,  green 
sandstone,  etc.,  etc.  It  is  hence  manifest  that  the  upheaval 
(and  deposition  at  least  of  part)  of  the  grand  eastern  chain 
is  entirely  posterior  to  the  western.  To  the  north  in  the 
Uspallata  pass,  we  have  also  a  fact  of  the  same  class.  Bear 
this  in  mind  :  it  will  help  to  make  you  believe  what  follows. 
I  have  said  the  Uspallata  range  is  geologically,  although 
only  6,000 — 7,000  ft.,  a  continuation  of  the  grand  eastern 
chain.  It  has  its  nucleus  of  granite,  consists  of  grand  beds 
of  various  crystalline  rocks,  which  I  can  feel  no  doubt  are 
subaqueous  lavas  alternating  with  sandstone,  conglomerates 
and  white  aluminous  beds  (like  decomposed  feldspar)  with 
many  other  curious  varieties  of  sedimentary  deposits.  These 
lavas  and  sandstones  alternate  very  many  times,  and  are 
quite  conformable  one  to  the  other.  During  two  days  of 
careful  examination  I  said  to  myself  at  least  fifty  times,  how 
exactly  like  (only  rather  harder)  these  beds  are  to  those  of  the 
upper  Tertiary  strata  of  Patagonia,  Chiloe  and  Concepcion, 
M  ithout  the  possible  identity  ever  having  occurred  to  me.  At 
last  there  was  no  resisting  the  conclusion.  I  could  not  expect 
shells,  for  they  never  occur  in  this  formation  ;  but  lignite  or 
carbonaceous  shale  ought  to  be  found.  I  had  previously  been 
exceedingly  puzzled  by  meeting  in  the  sandstone,  thin  layers 

1  Some  of  these  genera  are  mentioned  by  Darwin  (Geo/.  Obs.,  p.  181) 
as  having  been  named  for  him  by  M.  D'Orbigny. 


1809—1842]  VOYAGE  23 

(few   inches    to    feet    thick)    of   a    brecciated    pitchstone.       I     Letter  6 
strongly  suspect  the  underlying  granite  has  altered  such  beds 
into  this  pitchstone.     The  silicified  wood  (particularly  charac- 
teristic) was  yet  absent.    The  conviction  that   I  was  on  the 
Tertiary  strata  was  so  strong  by  this  time  in  my  mind,  that  on 
the  third  day  in  the  midst  of  Lavas  and  [?  masses]  of  granite 
I  began  my  apparently  forlorn  hunt.      How  do  you  think   I 
succeeded?     In   an   escarpement   of  compact  greenish  sand- 
stone, I  found  a  small  wood  of  petrified  trees  in  a  vertical 
position,  or  rather  the   strata  were  inclined  about  20-300  to 
one  point  and  the  trees  70°  to  the  opposite  one.    That  is,  they 
were  before  the  tilt  truly  vertical.      The  sandstone  consists 
of  many    layers,  and    is   marked   by  the  concentric    lines  of 
the  bark  (I  have  specimens);    11  are  perfectly  silicified  and 
resemble  the    dicotyledonous   wood  which   I    have    found  at 
Chiloe  and  Concepcion  ; l  the  others  (30-40)  I  only  know  to  be 
trees  from  the  analogy  of  form  and  position  ;  they  consist  of 
snow-white  columns  (like  Lot's  wife)  of  coarsely  crystalline 
carb.  of  lime.     The  largest  shaft  is  7  feet.     They  are  all  close 
together,  within  100  yds.,  and  about  the  same  level:  nowhere 
else  could  I  find  any.     It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  layers  of 
fine  sandstone  have  quietly  been  deposited  between  a  clump  of 
trees  which  were  fixed  by  their  roots.     The  sandstone  rests  on 
lava,  is  covered  by  a  great  bed  apparently  about  1,000  ft.  thick 
of  black  augitic  lava,  and  over  this  there  are  at  least  5  grand 
alternations  of  such  rocks  and  aqueous  sedimentary  deposits, 
amounting  in  thickness  to  several  thousand  feet.      I  am  quite 
afraid  of  the   only   conclusion   which    I    can    draw  from  this 
fact,  namely  that  there  must  have  been  a  depression  in  the 
surface    of    the   land   to  that   amount.      But   neglecting  this 
consideration,  it  was  a  most  satisfactory  support  of  my  pre- 
sumption of  the  Tertiary  (I  mean  by  Tertiary,  that  the  shells 
of  the  period  were  closely  allied,  or  some  identical,  to  those 
which  now  live,  as  in  the  lower  beds  of  Patagonia)  age  of  this 
eastern  chain.     A  great  part  of  the  proof  must  remain  upon 
my  ipse  dixit  of  a  mineralogical  resemblance  with  those  beds 
whose  age  is  known,  and  the  character  of  which  resemblance 

1  Geo/.  06s.,  p.  202.  Specimens  of  the  silicified  wood  were  examined 
by  Robert  Brown,  and  determined  by  him  as  coniferous,  "  partaking  of 
the  characters  of  the  Araucarian  tribe,  with  some  curious  points  of 
affinity  with  the  yew.'' 


24  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  6  is  to  be  subject  to  infinite  variation,  passing  from  one  variety 
to  another  by  a  concretionary  structure.  I  hardly  expect  you 
to  believe  me,  when  it  is  a  consequence  of  this  view  that 
granite,  which  forms  peaks  of  a  height  probably  of  14,000  ft., 
has  been  fluid  in  the  Tertiary  period ;  that  strata  of  that  period 
are  altered  by  its  heat,  and  are  traversed  by  dykes  from  the 
mass.  That  these  strata  have  also  probably  undergone  an 
immense  depression,  that  they  are  now  inclined  at  high  angles 
and  form  regular  or  complicated  anticlinal  lines.  To  complete 
the  climax  and  seal  your  disbelief,  these  same  sedimentary 
strata  and  lavas  are  traversed  by  very  numerous,  true  metallic 
veins  of  iron,  copper,  arsenic,  silver  and  gold,  and  these 
can  be  traced  to  the  underlying  granite.  A  gold  mine  has 
been  worked  close  to  the  clump  of  silicified  trees.  If  when 
you  see  my  specimens,  sections  and  account,  you  should 
think  that  there  is  pretty  strong  presumptive  evidence  of 
the  above  facts,  it  appears  very  important  ;  for  the  structure, 
and  size  of  this  chain  will  bear  comparison  with  any  in 
the  world,  and  that  this  all  should  have  been  produced  in 
so  very  recent  a  period  is  indeed  wonderful.  In  my  own 
mind  I  am  quite  convinced  of  the  reality  of  this.  I  can 
anyhow  most  conscientiously  say  that  no  previously  formed 
conjecture  warped  my  judgment.  As  I  have  described  so 
did  I  actually  observe  the  facts.  But  I  will  have  some  mercy 
and  end  this  most  lengthy  account  of  my  geological  trip. 

On  some  of  the  large  patches  of  perpetual  snow,  I  found 
the  famous  red  snow  of  the  Arctic  countries  ;  I  send  with  this 
letter  my  observations  and  a  piece  of  paper  on  which  I  tried 
to  dry  some  specimens.  If  the  fact  is  new  and  you  think 
it  worth  while,  cither  yourself  examine  them  or  send  them 
to  whoever  has  described  the  specimens  from  the  north  and 
publish  a  notice  in  any  of  the  periodicals.  I  also  send  a 
small  bottle  with  two  lizards,  one  of  them  is  viviparous  as 
you  will  see  by  the  accompanying  notice.  A  M.  Gay — a 
French  naturalist — has  already  published  in  one  of  the  news- 
papers of  this  country  a  similar  statement  and  probably  has 
forwarded  to  Paris  some  account ;  as  the  fact  appears  singular 
would  it  not  be  worth  while  to  hand  over  the  specimens 
to  some  good  lizardologist  and  comparative  anatomist  to 
publish  an  account  of  their  internal  structure?  Do  what 
y  ou  think  fit. 


1809-1S42J  VOYAGE  25 

This  letter  will  go  with  a  cargo  of  specimens  from  Letter  6 
Coquimbo.  I  shall  write  to  let  you  know  when  they  are  sent 
off.  In  the  box  there  are  two  bags  of  seeds,  one  [from  the] 
valleys  of  the  Cordilleras  5,000—10,000  ft.  high,  the  soil  and 
climate  exceedingly  dry,  soil  very  light  and  stony,  extremes 
in  temperature  ;  the  other  chiefly  from  the  dry  sandy  Traversia 
of  Mendoza  3,000  ft.  more  or  less.  If  some  of  the  bushes 
should  grow  but  not  be  healthy,  try  a  slight  sprinkling  of  salt 
and  saltpetre.  The  plain  is  saliferous.  All  the  flowers  in 
the  Cordilleras  appear  to  be  autumnal  flovverers — they  were 
all  in  blow  and  seed,  many  of  them  very  pretty.  I  gathered 
them  as  I  rode  along  on  the  hill  sides.  If  they  will  but 
choose  to  come  up,  I  have  no  doubt  many  would  be  great 
rarities.  In  the  Mendoza  bag  there  are  the  seeds  or  berries 
of  what  appears  to  be  a  small  potato  plant  with  a  whitish 
flower.  They  grow  many  leagues  from  where  any  habitation 
could  ever  have  existed  owing  to  absence  of  water.  .  Amongst 
the  Chonos  dried  plants,  you  will  see  a  fine  specimen  of  the 
wild  potato,  growing  under  a  most  opposite  climate,  ar.id 
unquestionably  a  true  wild  potato.  It  must  be  a  distinct 
species  from  that  of  the  Lower  Cordilleras  one.  Perhaps 
as  with  the  banana,  distinct  species  are  now  not  to  be 
distinguished  in  their  varieties  produced  by  cultivation. 
I  cannot  copy  out  the  few  remarks  about  the  Chonos 
potato.  With  the  specimens  there  is  a  bundle  of  old  papers 
and  note  books.  Will  you  take  care  of  them  ;  in  case 
I  should  lose  my  notes,  these  might  be  useful.  I  do  not 
send  home  any  insects  because  they  must  be  troublesome  to 
you,  and  now  so  little  more  of  the  voyage  remains  unfinished 
I  can  well  take  charge  of  them.  In  two  or  three  days  I  set 
out  for  Coquimbo  by  land  ;  the  Beagle  calls  for  me  in  the 
beginning  of  June.  So  that  I  have  six  weeks  more  to  enjoy 
geologising  over  these  curious  mountains  of  Chili.  There  is 
at  present  a  bloody  revolution  in  Peru.  The  Commodore 
has  gone  there,  and  in  the  hurry  has  carried  our  letters  with 
him  ;  perhaps  amongst  them  there  will  be  one  from  you. 
I  wish  I  had  the  old  Commodore  here,  I  would  shake  some 
consideration  for  others  into  his  old  body.  From  Coquimbo 
you  will  again  hear  from  me. 


26  EARLV    LETTERS  LChap.  I 

Letter  7  To  J.  S.  Henslow. 

Lima,  July  12th,  1 835. 
This  is  the  last  letter  which  I  shall  ever  write  to  you 
from  the  shores  of  America,  and  for  this  reason  I  send  it. 
In  a  few  days  time  the  Beagle  will  sail  for  the  Galapagos 
Islands.  I  look  forward  with  joy  and  interest  to  this,  both 
as  being  somewhat  nearer  to  England  and  for  the  sake  of 
having  a  good  look  at  an  active  volcano.  Although  we 
have  seen  lava  in  abundance,  I  have  never  yet  beheld  the 
crater.  I  sent  by  H.M.S.  Conway  two  large  boxes  of 
specimens.  The  Conway  sailed  the  latter  end  of  June. 
With  them  were  letters  for  you,  since  that  time  I  have 
travelled  by  land  from  Valparaiso  to  Copiapo  and  seen 
something  more  of  the  Cordilleras.  Some  of  my  geological 
views  have  been,  subsequently  to  the  last  letter,  altered.  I 
believe  the  upper  mass  of  strata  is  not  so  very  modern  as 
I  supposed.  This  last  journey  has  explained  to  me  much 
of  the  ancient  history  of  the  Cordilleras.  I  feel  sure  they 
formerly  consisted  of  a  chain  of  volcanoes  from  which 
enormous  streams  of  lava  were  poured  forth  at  the  bottom 
of  the  sea.  These  alternate  with  sedimentary  beds  to  a 
vast  thickness  ;  at  a  subsequent  period  these  volcanoes  must 
have  formed  islands,  from  which  have  been  produced  strata 
of  several  thousand  feet  thick  of  coarse  conglomerate.1 
These  islands  were  covered  with  fine  trees  ;  in  the  con- 
glomerate, I  found  one  15  feet  in  circumference  perfectly 
silicified  to  the  very  centre.  The  alternations  of  compact 
crystalline  rocks  (I  cannot  doubt  subaqueous  lavas),  and 
sedimentary  beds,  now  upheaved  fractured  and  indurated, 
form  the  main  range  of  the  Andes.  The  formation  was 
produced  at  the  time  when  ammonites,  gryphites,  oysters, 
Pecten,  Mytilus,  etc.,  etc.,  lived.  In  the  central  parts  of 
Chili  the  structure  of  the  lower  beds  is  rendered  very 
obscure  by  the  metamorphic  action  which  has  rendered 
even  the  coarsest  conglomerates  porphyritic.  The  Cor- 
dilleras of  the  Andes  so  worthy  of  admiration  from  the 
grandeur  of  their  dimensions,  rise  in  dignity  when  it  is 
considered    that  since  the   period   of  ammonites,  they  have 

1  See    Geological  Observations  oti   South  America  (London,    1S46), 
Chap.  VII.:  "Central  Chile;  Structure  of  the  Cordillera." 


i«o9— 1842]  VOYAGE  27 

formed  a  marked  feature  in  the  geography  of  the  globe.  Letter  7 
The  geology  of  these  mountains  pleased  me  in  one  respect  ; 
when  reading  Lyell,  it  had  always  struck  me  that  if  the 
crust  of  the  world  goes  on  changing  in  a  circle,  there  ought 
to  be  somewhere  found  formations  which,  having  the  age 
of  the  great  European  Secondary  beds,  should  possess  the 
structure  of  Tertiary  rocks  or  those  formed  amidst  islands 
and  in  limited  basins.  Now  the  alternations  of  lava  and 
coarse  sediment  which  form  the  upper  parts  of  the  Andes, 
correspond  exactly  to  what  would  accumulate  under  such 
circumstances.  In  consequence  of  this,  I  can  only  very 
roughly  separate  into  three  divisions  the  varying  strata 
(perhaps  8,000  ft.  thick)  which  compose  these  mountains. 
1  am  afraid  you  will  tell  me  to  learn  my  A  B  C  to  know 
quartz  from  feldspar  before  I  indulge  in  such  speculations. 
I  lately  got  hold  of  a  report  on  M.  Dessalines  D'Orbigny's 
labours  in  S.  America;1  I  experienced  rather  a  debasing 
degree  of  vexation  to  find  he  has  described  the  Geology 
of  the  Pampas,  and  that  I  have  had  some  hard  riding  for 
nothing,  it  was  however  gratifying  that  my  conclusions 
are  the  same,  as  far  as  I  can  collect,  with  his  results.  It 
is  also  capital  that  the  whole  of  Bolivia  will  be  described. 
I  hope  to  be  able  to  connect  his  geology  of  that  country 
with  mine  of  Chili.  After  leaving  Copiapo,  we  touched  at 
Iquique.  I  visited  but  do  not  quite  understand  the  position 
of  the  nitrate  of  soda  beds.  Here  in  Peru,  from  the  state 
of  anarchy,   I  can  make  no  expedition. 

I  hear  from  home,  that  my  brother  is  going  to  send  me  a 
box  with  books,  and  a  letter  from  you.  It  is  very  unfortunate 
that  I  cannot  receive  this  before  we  reach  Sydney,  even  if 
it  ever  gels  safely  so  far.  I  shall  not  have  another  opportunity 
for  many  months  of  again  writing  to  you.  Will  you  have 
the  charity  to  send  me  one  more  letter  (as  soon  as  this 
reaches  you)  directed  to  the  C.  of  Good  Hope.  Your  letters 
besides  affording  me  the  greatest  delight  always  give  me 
a  fresh  stimulus  for  exertion.  Excuse  this  geological  prosy 
letter,  and  farewell  till  you  hear  from  me  at  Sydney,  and 
see  me  in  the  autumn  of  1836. 

1   Voyage  dans  PAmerique  Miridionale,  etc.  (A.  Dessalines  D'Orbigny). 


28  EARLY    LETTERS 


[Chap.  I 


Le«ler  8  To  Josiah  Wedgwood. 

[Shrewsbury,  Oct.  5th,  1S36.] 

My  dear  Uncle 

The  Beagle  arrived  at  Falmouth  on  Sunday  evening, 
and  I  reached  home  late  last  night.  My  head  is  quite  con- 
fused with  so  much  delight,  but  I  cannot  allow  my  sisters  to 
tell  you  first  how  happy  I  am  to  see  all  my  dear  friends  again. 
I  am  obliged  to  return  in  three  or  four  days  to  London,  where 
the  Beagle  will  be  paid  off,  and  then  I  shall  pay  Shrewsbury 
a  longer  visit.  I  am  most  anxious  once  again  to  see  Maer, 
and  all  its  inhabitants,  so  that  in  the  course  of  two  or  three 
weeks,  I  hope  in  person  to  thank  you,  as  being  my  first  Lord 
of  the  Admiralty.1  I  am  so  very  happy  I  hardly  know  what 
I  am  writing.     Believe  me  your  most  affectionate  nephew, 

Chas.  Darwin. 

Lrltcr  9  To  C.  Lycll. 

Shrewsbury,  Monday  [Nov.  12th,  1838]. 

My  dear  Lyell 

I  suppose  you  will  be  in  Hart  St.2  to-morrow  [or]  the 
14th.  I  write  because  I  cannot  avoid  wishing  to  be  the  first 
person  to  tell  Mrs.  Lyell  and  yourself,  that  I  have  the  very 
good,  and  shortly  since  [i.e.  until  lately]  very  unexpected  fortune 
of  going  to  be  married  !  The  lady  is  my  cousin  Miss  Emma 
Wedgwood,  the  sister  of  Hensleigh  Wedgwood,  and  of  the 
elder  brother  who  married  my  sister,  so  we  are  connected 
by  manifold  ties,  besides  on  my  part,  by  the  most  sincere 

1  Readers  of  the  Life  and  Letters  will  remember  that  it  was  to  Josiah 
Wedgwood  that  Darwin  owed  the  great  opportunity  of  his  life  {Life  and 
Letters,  Vol.  I.,  page  59),  and  it  was  fitting  that  he  should  report  himself 
to  his  "  first  Lord  of  the  Admiralty."  The  present  letter  clears  up  a 
small  obscurity  to  which  Mr.  Poulton  has  called  attention  {Charles 
Darwin  and  the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  "Century"  Series,  1896, 
p.  25).  Writing  to  Fitz-Roy  from  Shrewsbury  on  October  6th,  Darwin 
says,  "  I  arrived  here  yesterday  morning  at  breakfast  time."  This 
refers  to  his  arrival  at  his  father's  house,  after  having  slept  at  the  inn. 
The  date  of  his  arrival  in  Shrewsbury  was,  therefore,  October  4th,  as 
given  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  272.     The  entries  in  his  Diary  are  :— 

Oct.  2, 1831.     Took  leave  of  my  home. 

Oct.  4, 1836.     Reached  Shrewsbury  after  absence  of  5  years  and  2  days. 

2  Sir  Charles  Lyell  lived  at  16,  Hart  Street,  Bloornsbury. 


i8o9— 1842]  MARRIAGE  29 

love  and  hearty  gratitude  to  her  for  accepting  such  a  one    Letter  9 
as  myself. 

I  determined  when  last  at  Maer  to  try  my  chance,  but  I 
hardly  expected  such  good  fortune  would  turn  up  for  me.  I 
shall  be  in  town  in  the  middle  or  latter  end  of  the  ensuing 
week.1  I  fear  you  will  say  I  might  very  well  have  left  my 
story  untold  till  we  met.  But  I  deeply  feel  your  kindness 
and  friendship  towards  me,  which  in  truth  I  may  say,  has  been 
one  chief  source  of  happiness  to  me,  ever  since  my  return  to 
England :  so  you  must  excuse  me.  I  am  well  sure  that 
Mrs.  Lyell,  who  has  sympathy  for  every  one  near  her,  will  give 
me  her  hearty  congratulations. 

Believe  me  my  dear  Lyell 

Yours  most  truly  obliged 

Chas.  Darwin. 

To  Emma  Wedgwood.  Letter  10 

Sunday  Night.  Athenreum.  [Jan.  20th,  1S39.] 
...  I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  I  enjoyed  my  Maer 
visit, — I  felt  in  anticipation  my  future  tranquil  life  :  how  I  do 
hope  you  may  be  as  happy  as  I  know  I  shall  be  :  but  it 
frightens  me,  as  often  as  I  think  of  what  a  family  you  have 
been  one  of.  I  was  thinking  this  morning  how  it  came,  that 
I,  who  am  fond  of  talking  and  am  scarcely  ever  out  of  spirits, 
should  so  entirely  rest  my  notions  of  happiness  on  quietness, 
and  a  good  deal  of  solitude  :  but  I  believe  the  explanation  is 
very  simple  and  I  mention  it  because  it  will  give  you  hopes, 
that  I  shall  gradually  grow  less  of  a  brute,  it  is  that  during  the 
five  years  of  my  voyage  (and  indeed  I  may  add  these  two 
last)  which  from  the  active  manner  in  which  they  have  been 
passed,  may  be  said  to  be  the  commencement  of  my  real  life, 
the  whole  of  my  pleasure  was  derived  from  what  passed  in 
my  mind,  while  admiring  views  by  myself,  travelling  across 
the  wild  deserts  or  glorious  forests  or  pacing  the  deck  of  the 
poor  little  Beagle  at  night.  Excuse  this  much  egotism, — I  give 
it  you  because  I  think  you  will  humanize  me,  and  soon  teach 
me  there  is  greater  happiness  than  building  theories  and 
accumulating  facts  in  silence  and  solitude.     My  own  dearest 

1  Mr.  Darwin  was  married  on  Jan.  29th,  1839  (see  Life  and  Letters, 
I.,  p.  299).  The  present  letter  was  written  the  day  after  he  had  become 
engaged- 


30  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  10  Emma,  I  earnestly  pray,  you  may  never  regret  the  great,  and 
I  will  add  very  good,  deed,  you  are  to  perform  on  the  Tuesday: 
my  own  dear  future  wife,  God  bless  you.  .  .  .  The  Lyells 
called  on  me  to-day  after  church  ;  as  Lyell  was  so  full  of 
ology  he  was  obliged  to  disgorge, — and  I  dine  there  on 
Tuesday  for  an  especial  conference.  I  was  quite  ashamed  of 
myself  to-day,  for  we  talked  for  half  an  hour,  unsophisticated 
geology,  with  poor  Mrs.  Lyell  sitting  by,  a  monument  of 
patience.  I  want  practice  in  ill-treating  the  female  sex, —  1  did 
not  observe  Lyell  had  any  compunction  ;  I  hope  to  harden 
my  conscience  in  time :  few  husbands  seem  to  find  it  difficult 
to  effect  this.  Since  my  return  I  have  taken  several  looks,  as 
you  will  readily  believe,  into  the  drawing-room  ;  1  suppose 
my  taste  [for]  harmonious  colours  is  already  deteriorated,  for 
I  declare  the  room  begins  to  look  less  ugly.  I  take  so  much 
pleasure  in  the  house,1  I  declare  I  am  just  like  a  great  over- 
grown child  with  a  new  toy  ;  but  then,  not  like  a  real  child, 
I  long  to  have  a  co-partner  and  possessor. 

The  following  passage  is  taken  from  the  MS.  copy  of  the  Auto- 
biography ;  it  was  not  published  in  the  Life  and  Letters  which  appeared 
in  Mrs.  Darwin's  lifetime  : — 

You  all  know  your  mother,  and  what  a  good  mother  she 
has  ever  been  to  all  of  you.  She  has  been  my  greatest 
blessing,  and  I  can  declare  that  in  my  whole  life  I  have  never 
heard  her  utter  one  word  I  would  rather  have  been  unsaid. 
She  has  never  failed  in  kindest  sympathy  towards  me,  and 
has  borne  with  the  utmost  patience  my  frequent  complaints 
of  ill-health  and  discomfort.  I  do  not  believe  she  has  ever 
missed  an  opportunity  of  doing  a  kind  action  to  any  one  near 
her.  I  marvel  at  my  good  fortune  that  she,  so  infinitely  my 
superior  in  every  single  moral  quality,  consented  to  be  my 
wife.  She  has  been  my  wise  adviser  and  cheerful  comforter 
throughout  life,  which  without  her  would  have  been  during 
a  very  long  period  a  miserable  one  from  ill-health.  She  has 
earned  the  love  of  every  soul  near  her. 

1  No.  12,  Upper  Gower  Street,  is  now  No.  no,  Gower  Street,  and 
forms  part  of  a  block  inhabited  by  Messrs.  Shoolbred's  employes.  We 
are   indebted,   for  this   information,   to    Mr.    Wheatley,  of  the   Society 

nf  Arts. 


'  . . .   . 


On  r/i  /  // 


i8oo— 184  j  |  DOWN  31 

C.  Lyell  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  11 

[July?,  1 84 1?] 
Lyell  started  on  his  first  visit  to  the  United  States  in  July,  1841,  and 
was  absent  thirteen  months.  Darwin  returned  to  London  July  23rd,  1841, 
after  a  prolonged  absence  ;  he  may,  therefore,  have  missed  seeing'  Lyell. 
Assuming  the  date  1841  to  be  correct,  it  would  seem  that  the  plan  of 
living  in  the  country  was  formed  a  year  before  it  was  actually  carried  out. 

[  have  no  doubt  that  your  father  did  rightly  in  persuading 
you  to  stay  [at  Shrewsbury],  but  wc  were  much  disappointed 
in  not  seeing  you  before  our  start  for  a  year's  absence. 
I  cannot  teli  you  how  often  since  your  long  illness  I  have 
missed  the  friendly  intercourse  which  we  had  so  frequently 
before,  and  on  which  I  built  more  than  ever  after  your 
marriage.  It  will  not  happen  easily  that  twice  in  one's  life, 
even  in  the  large  world  of  London,  a  congenial  soul  so 
occupied  with  precisely  the  same  pursuits  and  with  an  inde- 
pendence enabling  him  to  pursue  them  will  fall  so  nearly 
in  my  way,  and  to  have  had  it  snatched  from  me  with  the 
prospect  of  your  residence  somewhat  far  off  is  a  privation 
I  feel  as  a  very  great  one.  I  hope  you  will  not,  like 
Herschell,  get  far  off  from  a  railway. 

To  Catherine  Darwin.  Letter  12 

The  following  letter  was  written   to  his  sister  Catherine  about   two 
months  before  Charles  Darwin  settled  at  Down  : — 

Sunday  [July   1S42]. 

You  must  have  been  surprised  at  not  having  heard 
sooner  about  the  house.  Emma  and  I  only  returned  yester- 
day afternoon  from  sleeping  there.  I  will  give  you  in  detail, 
as  my  father  would  like,  my  opinion  on  it — Emma's  slightly 
differs.  Position  : — about  £  of  a  mile  from  the  small  village 
of  Down  in  Kent — 16  miles  from  St.  Paul's — 8|  miles  from 
station  (with  many  trains)  which  station  is  only  10  from 
London.  This  is  bad,  as  the  drive  from  [i.e.  on  account  of] 
the  hills  is  long.  I  calculate  wc  are  two  hours  going  from 
London  Bridge.  Village  about  forty  houses  with  old  walnut 
trees  in  the  middle  where  stands  an  old  flint  church  and  the 
lanes  meet.  Inhabitants  very  respectable — infant  school- — 
grown  up  people  great  musicians — all  touch  their  hats  as 
in  Wales  and  sit  at  their  open  doors  in  the  evening ;  no 
high   road   leads    through  the  village.     The   little  pot-house 


32  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  12  where  we  slept  is  a  grocer's  shop,  and  the  landlord  is  the 
carpenter — so  you  may  guess  the  style  of  the  village.  There 
are  butcher  and  baker  and  post-office.  A  carrier  goes  weekly 
to  London  and  calls  anywhere  for  anything  in  London  and 
takes  anything  anywhere.  On  the  road  [from  London]  to 
the  village",  on  a  fine  day  the  scenery  is  absolutely  beautiful : 
from  close  to  our  house  the  view  is  very  distant  and  rather 
beautiful,  but  the  house  being  situated  on  a  rather  high  table- 
land has  somewhat  of  a  desolate  air.  There  is  a  most  beautiful 
old  farm-house,  with  great  thatched  barns  and  old  stumps  of 
oak  trees,  like  that  of  Skelton,  one  field  off.  The  charm  of 
the  place  to  me  is  that  almost  every  field  is  intersected  (as 
alas  is  ours)  by  one  or  more  foot-paths.  I  never  saw  so 
many  walks  in  any  other  county.  The  country  is  extra- 
ordinarily rural  and  quiet  with  narrow  lanes  and  high  hedges 
and  hardly  any  ruts.  It  is  really  surprising  to  think  London 
is  only  16  miles  off.  The  house  stands  very  badly,  close  to 
a  tiny  lane  and  near  another  man's  field.  Our  field  is  15  acres 
and  flat,  looking  into  flat-bottomed  valleys  on  both  sides,  but 
no  view  from  the  drawing-room,  which  faces  due  south,  except 
on  our  flat  field  and  bits  of  rather  ugly  distant  horizon.  Close 
in  front  there  are  some  old  (very  productive)  cherry  trees, 
walnut  trees,  yew,  Spanish  chestnut,  pear,  old  larch,  Scotch 
fir  and  silver  fir  and  old  mulberry  trees,  [which]  make  rather 
a  pretty  group.  They  give  the  ground  an  old  look,  but  from 
not  flourishing  much  they  also  give  it  rather  a  desolate  look. 
There  are  quinces  and  medlars  and  plums  with  plenty  of 
fruit,  and  Morello  cherries  ;  but  few  apples.  The  purple 
magnolia  flowers  against  the  house.  There  is  a  really  fine 
beech  in  view  in  our  hedge.  The  kitchen  garden  is  a  detest- 
able slip  and  the  soil  looks  wretched  from  the  quantity  of 
chalk  flints,  but  I  really  believe  it  is  productive.  The  hedges 
grow  well  all  round  our  field,  and  it  is  a  noted  piece  of  hay- 
land.  This  year  the  crop  was  bad,  but  was  bought,  as  it 
stood,  for  £2  per  acre — that  is  ,£30 — the  purchaser  getting 
it  in.  Last  year  it  was  sold  for  £45 — no  manure  was  put 
on  in  the  interval.  Does  not  this  sound  well  ?  Ask  my  father. 
Does  the  mulberry  and  magnolia  show  it  is  not  very  cold 
in  winter,  which  I  fear  is  the  case?  Tell  Susan  it  is  9  miles 
from  Knole  Park  and  6  from  Westerham,  at  which  places 
I  hear  the  scenery  is  beautiful.     There  are  many  very  odd 


iSo9— 1842]  DOWN  33 

views  round  our  house — deepish  flat-bottomed  valley  and  Letter  12 
nice  farm-house,  but  big,  white,  ugly,  fallow  fields  ; — much 
wheat  grown  here.  House  ugly,  looks  neither  old  nor  new 
— walls  two  feet  thick — windows  rather  small — lower  story 
rather  low.  Capital  study  18  x  18.  Dining-room  21  x  18. 
Drawing-room  can  easily  be  added  to:  is  21  x  15.  Three 
stories,  plenty  of  bedrooms.  We  could  hold  the  Hensleighs 
and  you  and  Susan  and  Erasmus  all  together.  House  in 
good  repair.  Mr.  Cresy  a  few  years  ago  laid  out  for  the 
owner  .£1,500  and  made  a  new  roof.  Water-pipes  over 
house — two  bath-rooms — pretty  good  offices  and  good  stable- 
yard,  etc.,  and  a  cottage.  I  believe  the  price  is  about  £2,200, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  I  shall  get  it  for  one  year  on  lease  first  to 
try,  so  that  I  shall  do  nothing  to  the  house  at  first  (last  owner 
kept  three  cows,  one  horse,  and  one  donkey,  and  sold  some 
hay  annually  from  one  field).  I  have  no  doubt  if  we  com- 
plete the  purchase  I  shall  at  least  save  £1,000  over  Westcroft, 
or  any  other  house  we  have  seen.  Emma  was  at  first  a  good 
deal  disappointed,  and  at  the  country  round  the  house  ;  tne 
day  was  gloomy  and  cold  with  N.E.  wind.  She  likes  the 
actual  field  and  house  better  than  I  ;  the  house  is  just 
situated  as  she  likes  for  retirement,  not  too  near  or  too  far 
from  other  houses,  but  she  thinks  the  country  looks  desolate. 
I  think  all  chalk  countries  do,  but  I  am  used  to  Cambridge- 
shire, which  is  ten  times  worse.  Emma  is  rapidly  coming 
round.  She  was  dreadfully  bad  with  toothache  and  headache 
in  the  evening  and  Friday,  but  in  coming  back  yesterday 
she  was  so  delighted  with  the  scenery  for  the  first  few  miles 
from  Down,  that  it  has  worked  a  great  change  in  her.  We 
go  there  again  the  first  fine  day  Emma  is  able,  and  we  then 
finally  settle  what  to  do. 

The  following  fragmentary  "Account  of  Down"  was  found  among 
Mr.  Darwin's  papers  after  the  publication  of  the  Life  and  Letters.  It 
gives  the  impression  that  he  intended  to  write  a  natural  history  diary 
after  the  manner  of  Gilbert  White,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  this  was 
actually  the  case. 

1843.  May  1 5th. — The  first  peculiarity  which  strikes  a 
stranger  unaccustomed  to  a  hilly  chalk  country  is  the 
valleys,  with  their  steep  rounded  bottoms— not  furrowed  with 
the  smallest   rivulet.      On  the  road   to  Down   from   Kcston 

3 


34  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  12  a  mound  has  been  thrown  across  a  considerable  valley,  but 
even  against  this  mound  there  is  no  appearance  of  even  a 
small  pool  of  water  having  collected  after  the  heaviest  rains 
The  water  all  percolates  straight  downwards.  Ascertain 
average  depth  of  wells,  inclination  of  strata,  and  springs. 
Does  the  water  from  this  country  crop  out  in  springs  in 
Holmsdale  or  in  the  valley  of  the  Thames?  Examine  the 
fine  springs  in  Holmsdale. 

The  valleys  on  this  platform  sloping  northward,  but  ex- 
ceedingly even,  generally  run  north  and  south  ;  their  sides 
near  the  summits  generally  become  suddenly  more  abrupt, 
and  are  fringed  with  narrow  strips,  or,  as  they  are  here  called, 
"  shaws "  of  wood,  sometimes  merely  by  hedgerows  run 
wild.  The  sudden  steepness  may  generally  be  perceived,  as 
just  before  ascending  to  Cudham  Wood,  and  at  Green  Hill, 
where  one  of  the  lanes  crosses  these  valleys.  These  valleys 
are  in  all  probability  ancient  sea-bays,  and  I  have  sometimes 
speculated  whether  this  sudden  steepening  of  the  sides  does 
not  mark  the  edges  of  vertical  cliffs  formed  when  these 
valleys  were  filled  with  sea-water,  as  would  naturally  happen 
in  strata  such  as  the  chalk. 

In  most  countries  the  roads  and  footpaths  ascend  along 
the  bottoms  of  valleys,  but  here  this  is  scarcely  ever  the  case. 
All  the  villages  and  most  of  the  ancient  houses  are  on  the 
platforms  or  narrow  strips  of  flat  land  between  the  parallel 
valleys.  Is  this  owing  to  the  summits  having  existed  from 
the  most  ancient  times  as  open  downs  and  the  valleys  having 
been  filled  up  with  brushwood  ?  I  have  no  evidence  of  this, 
but  it  is  certain  that  most  of  the  farmhouses  on  the  flat  land 
are  very  ancient.  There  is  one  peculiarity  which  would  help 
to  determine  the  footpaths  to  run  along  the  summits  instead 
of  the  bottom  of  the  valleys,  in  that  these  latter  in  the  middle 
are  generally  covered,  even  far  more  thickly  than  the  general 
surface,  with  broken  flints.  This  bed  of  flints,  which  gradually 
thins  away  on  each  side,  can  be  seen  from  a  long  distance  in 
a  newly  ploughed  or  fallow  field  as  a  whitish  band.  Every 
stone  which  ever  rolls  after  heavy  rain  or  from  the  kick  of  an 
animal,  ever  so  little,  all  tend  to  the  bottom  of  the  valleys  ; 
but  whether  this  is  sufficient  to  account  for  their  number  I 
have  sometimes  doubted,  and  have  been  inclined  to  apply  to 
the  case  Lyell's  theory  of  solution  by  rain-water,  etc.,  etc. 


1809-1S42]  DOWN  35 

The  flat  summit-land  is  covered  with  a  bed  of  stiff  red  Letter  12 
clay,  from  a  few  feet  in  thickness  to  as  much,  I  believe, 
as  twenty  feet :  this  [bed],  though  lying  immediately  on  the 
chalk,  and  abounding  with  great,  irregularly  shaped,  unrolled 
flints,  often  with  the  colour  and  appearance  of  huge  bones, 
which  were  originally  embedded  in  the  chalk,  contains  not 
a  particle  of  carbonate  of  lime.  This  bed  of  red  clay  lies 
on  a  very  irregular  surface,  and  often  descends  into  deep 
round  wells,  the  origin  of  which  has  been  explained  by  Lyell. 
In  these  cavities  are  patches  of  sand  like  sea-sand,  and  like 
the  sand  which  alternates  with  the  great  beds  of  small  pebbles 
derived  from  the  wear-and-tear  of  chalk-flints,  which  form 
Keston,  Hayes  and  Addington  Commons.  Near  Down  a 
rounded  chalk-flint  is  a  rarity,  though  some  few  do  occur  ; 
and  I  have  not  yet  seen  a  stone  of  distant  origin,  which 
makes  a  difference — at  least  to  geological  eyes — in  the  very 
aspect  of  the  country,  compared  with  all  the  northern  counties. 

The  chalk-flints  decay  externally,  which,  according  to 
Berzelius  {Edin.  Neiv  Phil.  Journal,  late  number),  is  owing  to 
the  flints  containing  a  small  proportion  of  alkali  ;  but,  besides 
this  external  decay,  the  whole  body  is  affected  by  exposure  of 
a  few  years,  so  that  they  will  not  break  with  clean  faces  for 
building. 

This  bed  of  red  clay,  which  renders  the  country  very 
slippery  in  the  winter  months  from  October  to  April,  does 
not  cover  the  sides  of  the  valleys  ;  these,  when  ploughed, 
show  the  white  chalk,  which  tint  shades  away  lower  in  the 
valley,  as  insensibly  as  a  colour  laid  on  by  a  painter's  brush. 

Nearly  all  the  land  is  ploughed,  and  is  often  left  fallow, 
which  gives  the  country  a  naked  red  look,  or  not  unfrequently 
white,  from  a  covering  of  chalk  laid  on  by  the  farmers. 
Nobody  seems  at  all  aware  on  what  principle  fresh  chalk 
laid  on  land  abounding  with  lime  does  it  any  good.  This, 
however,  is  said  to  have  been  the  practice  of  the  country 
ever  since  the  period  of  the  Romans,  and  at  present  the  many 
white  pits  on  the  hill  sides,  which  so  frequently  afford  a 
picturesque  contrast  with  the  overhanging  yew  trees,  are  all 
quarried  for  this  purpose. 

The  number  of  different  kinds  of  bushes  in  the  hedgerows, 
entwined  by  traveller's  joy  and  the  bryonies,  is  conspicuous 
compared  with  the  hedges  of  the  northern  counties. 


36  EARLY    LETTERS  [Chap.  I 

Letter  12  March  25th  [1844?]. — The  first  period  of  vegetation,  and 
the  banks  are  clothed  with  pale-blue  violets  to  an  extent  I 
have  never  seen  equalled,  and  with  primroses.  A  few  days 
later  some  of  the  copses  were  beautifully  enlivened  by 
Ranunculus  auricomus,  wood  anemones,  and  a  white  Stellaria. 
Again,  subsequently,  large  areas  were  brilliantly  blue  with  blue- 
bells. The  flowers  are  here  very  beautiful,  and  the  number  of 
flowers;  [and]  the  darkness  of  the  blue  of  the  common  little 
Polygala  almost  equals  it  to  an  alpine  gentian. 

There  are  large  tracts  of  woodland,  [cut  down]  about  once 
every  ten  years  ;  some  of  these  enclosures  seem  to  be  very 
ancient.  On  the  south  side  of  Cudham  Wood  a  beech 
hedge  has  grown  to  Brobdignagian  size,  with  several  of 
the  huge  branches  crossing  each  other  and  firmly  grafted 
together. 

Larks  abound  here,  and  their  songs  sound  most  agreeably 
on  all  sides  ;  nightingales  arc  common.  Judging  from  an  odd 
cooing  note,  something  like  the  purring  of  a  cat,  doves  are 
very  common  in  the  woods. 

June  25th. — The  sainfoin  fields  are  now  of  the  most  beautiful 
pink,  and  from  the  number  of  hive-bees  frequenting  them  the 
humming  noise  is  quite  extraordinary.  This  humming  is 
rather  deeper  than  the  humming  overhead,  which  has  been 
continuous  and  loud  during  all  these  last  hot  days  over 
almost  every  field.  The  labourers  here  say  it  is  made  by 
"  air-bees,"  and  one  man,  seeing  a  wild  bee  in  a  flower  different 
from  the  hive  kind,  remarked  :  "  That,  no  doubt,  is  an  air-bee." 
This  noise  is  considered  as  a  sign  of  settled  fair  weather. 


CHAPTER    II 

EVOLUTION 

1844— 1858 

Since  the  publication  of  the  Life  and  Letters,  Mr.  Huxley's  obituary 
notice  of  Charles  Darwin  has  appeared.1  This  masterly  paper  is,  in  our 
opinion,  the  finest  of  the  great  series  of  Darwinian  essays  which  we  owe 
to  Mr.  Huxley.  We  would  venture  to  recommend  it  to  our  readers  as  the 
best  possible  introduction  to  these  pages.  There  is,  however,  one  small 
point  in  which  we  differ  from  Mr.  Huxley.  In  discussing  the  growth 
of  Mr.  Darwin's  evolutionary  views,  Mr.  Huxley  quotes  from  the  auto- 
biography '  a  passage  in  which  the  writer  describes  the  deep  impression 
made  on  his  mind  by  certain  groups  of  facts  observed  in  South 
America.  Mr.  Huxley  goes  on:  "The  facts  to  which  reference  is 
here  made  were,  without  doubt,  eminently  fitted  to  attract  the  attention 
of  a  philosophical  thinker  ;  but,  until  the  relations  of  the  existing  with 
the  extinct  species,  and  of  the  species  of  the  different  geographical 
areas  with  one  another,  were  determined  with  some  exactness, 
they  afforded  but  an  unsafe  foundation  for  speculation.  It  was  not 
possible  that  this  determination  should  have  been  effected  before 
the  return  of  the  Beagle  to  England  ;  and  thus  the  date  3  which  Darwin 
(writing  in  1837)  assigns  to  the  dawn  of  the  new  light  which  was 
rising  in  his  mind,  becomes  intelligible."  This  seems  to  us  inconsistent 
with  Darwin's  own  statement  that  it  was  especially  the  character  of  the 
"species  on  Galapagos  Archipelago"  which  had  impressed  him.1  This 
must  refer  to  the  zoological  specimens  :  no  doubt  he  was  thinking  of 
the  birds,  but  these  he  had  himself  collected  in  1835,*  and  no  accurate 

1  /'roe.  R.  Soc,  vol.  44,  [888,  and  Collected  Essays  (Darwiniana),  p.  253, 
1899. 

2  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  82.  Some  account  of  the  origin  of  his  evolu- 
tionary views  is  given  in  a  letter  to  Jenyns  (Blomefield),  Life  and  Letters, 
ii.  p.  34. 

3  The  date  in  question  is  July  1837,  when  he  "opened  first  note-book 
on  Transmutation  of  Species." 

4  See  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  276. 

5  He  wrote  in  his  Journal,  p.  394,  "  My  attention  was  first  thoroughly 
aroused,  by  comparing  together  the  numerous  specimens  shot  by  myself 
and  several  other  parties  on  board,"  etc. 

37 


3$  i:  volution  [Chap.  II 

determination  of  the  forms  was  necessary  to  impress  on  him  the 
remarkable  characteristic  species  of  the  different  islands.  We  agree 
with  Mr.  Huxley  that  1S37  is  the  date  of  the  "new  light  which  was  rising 
in  his  mind."  That  the  dawn  did  not  come  sooner  seems  to  us  to  be 
accounted  for  by  the  need  of  time  to  produce  so  great  a  revolution  in 
his  conceptions.  We  do  not  see  that  Mr.  Huxley's  supposition  as  to  the 
effect  of  the  determination  of  species,  etc.,  has  much  weight.  Mr.  Huxley 
quotes  a  letter  from  Darwin  to  Zacharias,  "  But  I  did  not  become  con- 
vinced that  species  were  mutable  until,  1  think,  two  or  three  years  [after 
1837]  had  elapsed"  (see  Letter  278).  This  passage,  which  it  must  be 
remembered  was  written  in  1877,  is  all  but  irreconcilable  with  the  direct 
evidence  of  the  1S37  note-book.  A  series  of  passages  are  quoted  from  it 
in  the  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II ,  pp.  5  ct  seq.,  and  these  it  is  impossible  to 
read  without  feeling  that  he  was  convinced  of  immutability.  He  had  not 
yet  attained  to  a  clear  idea  of  Natural  Selection,  and  therefore  his  views 
may  not  have  had,  even  to  himself,  the  irresistible  convincing  power  they 
afterwards  gained  ;  but  that  he  was,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word, 
convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  we  cannot  doubt.  He 
thought  it  "  almost  useless  "  to  try  to  prove  the  truth  of  evolution  until 
the  cause  of  change  was  discovered.  And  it  is  natural  that  in  later  life 
he  should  have  felt  that  conviction  was  wanting  till  that  cause  was  made 
out.1  For  the  purposes  of  the  present  chapter  the  point  is  not  very 
material.  We  know  that  in  1842  he  wrote  the  first  sketch  of  his  theory, 
and  that  it  was  greatly  amplified  in  1844.  So  that,  at  the  date  of  the 
first  letters  of  this  chapter,  we  know  that  he  had  a  working  hypothesis 
of  evolution  which  did  not  differ  in  essentials  from  that  given  in  the 
Origin  of  Species. 

To  realise  the  amount  of  work  that  was  in  progress  during  the  period 
covered  by  Chapter  II.,  it  should  be  remembered  that  during  part  of  the 
time — namely,  from  1846  to  1854 — he  was  largely  occupied  by  his  work 
on  the  Cinipedes.3  This  research  would  have  fully  occupied  a  less 
methodical  workman,  and  even  to  those  who  saw  him  at  work  it  seemed 
his  whole  occupation.  Thus  (to  quote  a  story  of  Lord  Avebury's)  one  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  children  is  said  to  have  asked,  in  regard  to  a  neighbour, 
"Then  where  does  he  do  his  barnacles?"  as  though  not  merely  his 
father,  but  all  other  men,  must  be  occupied  on  that  group. 

Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  to  whom  the  first  letter  in  this  chapter  is  addressed, 
was  good  enough  to  supply  a  note  on  the  origin  of  his  intimacy  with 
Mr.  Darwin,  and  this  is  published  in  the  Life  and  Letters?  The  close 
intercourse  that  sprang  up  between  them  was  largely  carried  on  by 
correspondence,  and  Mr.    Darwin's  letters  to  Sir  Joseph  have  supplied 


1  See  Charles  Darwin,  his  Life  told,  etc.,  1892,  p.  165. 

''  Life  and  Letters,  1.  p.  346. 

3  Ibid.,  II.,  p.  19.  See  also  Nature,  1899,  June  22nd,  p.  187,  where 
some  reminiscences  are  published,  which  formed  part  of  Sir  Joseph's 
speech  at  the  unveiling  of  Darwin's  statue  in  the  Oxford  Museum. 


1S44 — 1S5S]  SIR    J.    D.    HOOKER  39 

most  valuable  biographical  material.  But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that, 
quite  apart  from  this,  science  owes  much  to  this  memorable  friendship, 
since  without  Hooker's  aid  Darwin's  great  work  would  hardly  have  been 
carried  out  on  the  botanical  side.  And  Sir  Joseph  did  far  more  than  supply 
knowledge  and  guidance  in  technical  matters  :  Darwin  owed  to  him  a 
sympathetic  and  inspiriting  comradeship  which  cheered  and  refreshed 
him  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

A  sentence  from  a  letter  to  Hooker  written  in  1845  shows,  quite  as 
well  as  more  serious  utterances,  how  quickly  the  acquaintance  grew  into 
friendship. 

"Farewell  !  What  a  good  thing  is  community  of  tastes  !  I  feel  as  if 
I  had  known  you  for  fifty  years.  Adios."  And  in  illustration  of  the 
permanence  of  the  sympathetic  bond  between  them,  we  quote  a  letter 
of  1 88 1  written  forty-two  years  after  the  first  meeting  with  Sir  Joseph  in 
Trafalgar  Square  (see  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  19).  Mr.  Darwin  wrote  : 
"  Your  letter  has  cheered  me,  and  the  world  does  not  look  a  quarter 
so  black  this  morning  as  it  did  when  I  wrote  before.  Your  friendly 
words  are  worth  their  weight  in  gold." 

To   J.    D.    Hooker.  Letter  13 

Down,  Thursday  [Jan.  nth,  1844]^ 

My  dear  Sir 

I  must  write  to  thank  you  for  your  last  letter,  and  to 
tell  you  how  much  all  your  views  and  facts  interest  me.  I 
must  be  allowed  to  put  my  own  interpretation  on  what  you 
say  of  "  not  being  a  good  arranger  of  extended  views  " — which 
is,  that  you  do  not  indulge  in  the  loose  speculations  so 
easily  started  by  every  smatterer  and  wandering  collector. 
I  look  at  a  strong  tendency  to  generalise  as  an  entire  evil. 

What  you  say  of  Mr.  Brown  is  humiliating ;  I  had 
suspected  it,  but  would  not  allow  myself  to  believe  in  such 
heresy.  Fitz-Roy  gave  him  a  rap  in  his  preface,1  and  made 
him  very  indignant,  but  it  seems  a  much  harder  one  would 
not  have  been   wasted.     My  cryptogamic  collection  was  sent 

1  In  the  preface  to  the  Surveying  I  "oyages  of  the  "  Adventure  "  and  the 
"Beagle"  1826-30,  forming  Vol.  I.  of  the  work,  which  includes  the  later 
voyage  of  the  Beagle,  Captain  Fitz-Roy  wrote  (March,  1839):  "Captain 
King  took  great  pains  in  forming  and  preserving  a  botanical  collection, 
aided  by  a  person  embarked  solely  for  that  purpose.  He  placed  this 
collection  in  the  British  Museum,  and  was  led  to  expect  that  a  first-rate 
botanist  would  have  examined  and  described  it  ;  but  he  has  been 
disappointed."  A  reference  to  Robert  Brown's  dilatoriness  over  King's 
collection  occurs  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  274,  note. 


40  KYOLUTION  [CHAr.  II 

Letter  13  to  Berkeley  ;  it  was  not  large.  I  do  not  believe  he  has  yet 
published  an  account,  but  he  wrote  to  me  some  year  ago 
that  he  had  described  [the  specimens]  and  mislaid  all  his 
descriptions.  Would  it  not  be  well  for  you  to  put  yourself 
in  communication  with  him,  as  otherwise  something  will 
perhaps  be  twice  laboured  over  ?  My  best  (though  poor) 
collection  of  the  cryptogams  was  from  the  Chonos  Islands. 

Would  you  kindly  observe  one  little  fact  for  me,  whether 
any  species  of  plant,  peculiar  to  any  island,  as  Galapagos, 
St.  Helena,  or  New  Zealand,  where  there  are  no  large 
quadrupeds,  have  hooked  seeds — such  hooks  as,  if  observed 
here,  would  be  thought  with  justness  to  be  adapted  to  catch 
into  wool  of  animals. 

Would  you  further  oblige  me  some  time  by  informing  me 
(though  I  forget  this  will  certainly  appear  in  your  Antarctic 
Flora)  whether  in  islands  like  St.  Helena,  Galapagos,  and 
New  Zealand,  the  number  of  families  and  genera  are  large 
compared  with  the  number  of  species,  as  happens  in  coral 
islands,  and  as,  I  believe,  in  the  extreme  Arctic  land.  Cer- 
tainly this  is  the  case  with  marine  shells  in  extreme  Arctic 
seas.  Do  you  suppose  the  fewness  of  species  in  proportion 
to  number  of  large  groups  in  coral  islets  is  owing  to  the 
chance  of  seeds  from  all  orders  getting  drifted  to  such  new 
spots,  as  I  have  supposed.  Did  you  collect  sea-shells  in 
Kerguelen-land  ?     I  should  like  to  know  their  character. 

Your  interesting  letters  tempt  me  to  be  very  unreasonable 
in  asking  you  questions  ;  but  you  must  not  give  yourself  any 
trouble  about  them,  for  I  know  how  fully  and  worthily  you 
are  employed.1 

Besides  a  general  interest  about  the  southern  lands,  I 
have  been  now  ever  since  my  return  engaged  in  a  very  pre- 
sumptuous work,  and  I  know  no  one  individual  who  would 
not  say  a  very  foolish  one.  I  was  so  struck  with  the  distribution 
of  the  Galapagos  organisms,  etc.,  and  with  the  character  of 
the  American  fossil  mammifers,  etc.,  that  I  determined  to 
collect  blindly  every  sort  of  fact  which  could  bear  anyway  on 
what  are  species.  I  have  read  heaps  of  agricultural  and 
horticultural  books,  and  have  never  ceased  collecting  facts. 
At  last  gleams  of  light  have  come,  and  I  am  almost  convinced 

1  The  rest  of  the  letter  has  been  previously  published  in  Life  and 
Letters,  1 1 .,  p.  23. 


1844—1858]  NATURAL    SELECTION  41 

(quite  contrary  to  the  opinion  I  started  with)  that  species  Letter  15 
are  not  (it  is  like  confessing  a  murder)  immutable.  Heaven 
forfend  me  from  Lamarck  nonsense  of  a  "  tendency  to  pro- 
gression," "  adaptations  from  the  slow  willing  of  animals," 
etc. !  But  the  conclusions  I  am  led  to  are  not  widely  different 
from  his  ;  though  the  means  of  change  are  wholly  so.  I  think 
I  have  found  out  (here's  presumption  !)  the  simple  way  by 
which  species  become  exquisitely  adapted  to  various  ends. 
You  will  now  groan,  and  think  to  yourself,  "on  what  a  man 
have  I  been  wasting  my  time  and  writing  to."  I  should,  five 
years  ago,  have  thought  so.  ... x 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  14 

[Nov.]  1844. 
.  .  .  What  a  curious,  wonderful  case  is  that  of  the 
Lycopodium\-  .  .  .  I  suppose  you  would  hardly  have  expected 
them  to  be  more  varying  than  a  phanerogamic  plant.  I  trust 
you  will  work  the  case  out,  and,  even  if  unsupported,  publish 
it,  for  you  can  surely  do  this  with  due  caution.  I  have  heard 
of  some  analogous  facts,  though  on  the  smallest  scale,  in 
certain  insects  being  more  variable  in  one  district  than  in 
another,  and  I  think  the  same  holds  with  some  land-shells. 
By  a  strange  chance  I  had  noted  to  ask  you  in  this  letter  an 
analogous  question,  with  respect  to  genera,  in  lieu  of  individual 
species, — that  is,  whether  you  know  of  any  case  of  a  genus 
with  most  of  its  species  being  variable  (say  Rubus)  in  one 
continent,  having  another  set  of  species  in  another  continent 
non-variable,  or  not  in  so  marked  a  manner.  Mr.  Herbert3 
incidentally  mentioned  in  a  letter  to  me  that  the  heaths  at 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  were  very  variable,  whilst  in  Europe 
they  are  (?)  not  so  ;  but  then  the  species  here  are  few  in 
comparison,  so  that  the  case,  even  if  true,  is  not  a  good  one. 
In  some  genera  of  insects  the  variability  appears  to  be  common 

1  On  the  questions  here  dealt  with  see  the  interesting  letter  to 
Jenyns  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  34. 

'  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  wrote,  Nov.  8,  1S44  :  "I  am  firmly  convinced 
(but  not  enough  to  piint  it)  that  L.  Selago  varies  in  Van  Diemen's  Land 
into  L.  varium.  Two  more  different  species  (as  they  have  hitherto  been 
thought),  per  se  cannot  be  conceived,  but  nowhere  else  do  they  vary  into 
one  another,  nor  does  Selago  vary  at  all  in  England." 

3  No  doubt  Dean  Herbert,  the  horticulturist.  See  Life  and  Letters, 
U  P-  343- 


42  1".  VOLITION  [CiiAr.  II 

i  tei  14  in  distant  parts  of  the  world.  In  shells,  I  hope  hereafter  to 
get  much  light  on  this  question  through  fossils.  If  you  can 
help  me,  I  should  be  very  much  obliged  :  indeed,  all  your 
letters  are  most  useful  to  me. 

Monday. — Now  for  your  first  long  letter,  and  to  me  quite 
as  interesting  as  long.  Several  things  are  quite  new  to  me 
in  it — viz.,  for  one,  your  belief  that  there  are  more  extra- 
tropical  than  intra-tropical  species.  I  see  that  my  argument 
from  the  Arctic  regions  is  false,  and  I  should  not  have  tried 
to  argue  against  you,  had  I  not  fancied  that  you  thought 
that  equability  of  climate  was  the  direct  cause  of  the  creation 
of  a  greater  or  lesser  number  of  species.  I  see  you  call  our 
climate  equable  ;  I  should  have  thought  it  was  the  contrary. 
Anyhow,  the  term  is  vague,  and  in  England  will  depend 
upon  whether  a  person  compares  it  with  the  United  States 
or  Ticrra  del  Fuego.  In  my  Journal  (p.  342)  I  see  I  state 
that  in  South  Chiloe,  at  a  height  of  about  1,000  feet,  the 
forests  had  a  Fuegian  aspect :  I  distinctly  recollect  that  at 
the  sea-level  in  the  middle  of  Chiloe  the  forest  had  almost  a 
tropical  aspect.  I  should  like  much  to  hear,  if  you  make  out, 
whether  the  N.  or  S.  boundaries  of  a  plant  are  the  most 
restricted  ;  I  should  have  expected  that  the  S.  would  be,  in 
the  temperate  regions,  from  the  number  of  antagonist  species 
being  greater.  N.B.  Humboldt,  when  in  London,  told  me 
of  some  river1  in  N.E.  Europe,  on  the  opposite  banks  of  which 
the  flora  was,  on  the  same  soil  and  under  same  climate, 
widely  different ! 

I  forget2  my  last  letter,  but  it  must  have  been  a  very  silly 
one,  as  it  seems  1  gave  my  notion  of  the  number  of  species 
being  in  great  degree  governed  by  the  degree  to  which  the 
area  had  been  often  isolated  and  divided.  I  must  have  been 
cracked  to  have  written  it,  for  I  have  no  evidence,  without  a 
person  be  willing  to  admit  all  my  views,  and  then  it  does 
follow. 

The  remainder  of  the  foregoing  letter  is  published  in  the  Life  and 
Letters,  II.,  p.  29.     It  is  interesting  as  giving  his  views  on  the  mutability 

1  The  Obi  (see  Flora  Antarctica,  p.  211,  note).  Hooker  writes  : 
"  Some  of  the  most  conspicuous  trees  attain  either  of  its  banks,  but  do 
not  cross  them.'-' 

2  The  last  paragraph  is  published  in  Life  mid  Letters,  II.,  p.  29. 


1844—1858]  J.     C.     P  RICHARD  43 

of  species.  Thus  he  wrote  :  "  With  respect  to  books  on  this  subject,  I 
do  not  know  any  systematical  ones,  except  Lamarck's,  which  is  veritable 
rubbish  ;  but  there  are  plenty,  as  Lyell,  Pritchard,  etc.,  on  the  view  of 
the  immutability."  By  "  Pritchard"  is  no  doubt  intended  James  Cowles 
"Prichard,"  author  of  the  Physical  History  of  Mankind. '  Prof.  Poulton 
has  given  in  his  paper,  "  A  Remarkable  Anticipation  of  Modern  Views 
on  Evolution,"-'  an  interesting  study  of  Prichard's  work.  He  shows 
that  Prichard  was  in  advance  of  his  day  in  his  views  on  the  non-trans- 
mission of  acquired  characters.  Prof.  Poulton  also  tries  to  show  that 
Prichard  was  an  evolutionist.  He  allows  that  Prichard  wrote  with 
hesitation,  and  that  in  the  later  editions  of  his  book  his  views  became 
weaker.  But,  even  with  these  qualifications,  we  think  that  Poulton 
has  unintentionally  exaggerated  the  degree  to  which  Prichard  believed 
in  evolution. 

One  of  Prichard's  strongest  sentences  is  quoted  by  Poulton  {loc.  a'/., 
p.  16)  ;  it  occurs  in  the  Physical  History  of  Mankind,  Ed.  2,  Vol.  II., 
p.  570  :— 

"  Is  it  not  probable  that  the  varieties  which  spring  up  within  the  limits 
of  particular  species  are  further  adaptations  of  structure  to  the  circum- 
stances under  which  the  tribe  is  destined  to  exist  ?  Varieties  branch  out 
from  the  common  form  of  a  species,  just  as  the  forms  of  species  deviate 
from  the  common  type  of  a  genus.  Why  should  the  one  class  of 
phenomena  be  without  end  or  utility,  a  mere  effect  of  contingency  or 
chance,  more  than  the  other?" 

If  this  passage,  and  others  similar  to  it,  stood  alone,  we  might  agree 
with  Prof.  Poulton  ;  but  this  is  impossible  when  we  find  in  Vol.  I.  of 
the  same  edition,  page  90,  the  following  uncompromising  statement  of 
immutability  : — 

"  The  meaning  attached  to  the  term  species,  in  natural  history,  is 
very  simple  and  obvious.  It  includes  only  one  circumstance — namely, 
an  original  distinctness  and  constant  transmission  of  any  character. 
A  race  of  animals,  or  plants,  marked  by  any  peculiarities  of  structure 
which  have  always  been  constant  and  undeviating,  constitutes  a 
species." 

1  James  Cowles  Prichard  (1786 — 1848).  He  came  on  both  sides  from 
Quaker  families,  but,  according  to  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  he  ulti- 
mately joined  the  Church  of  England.  He  was  a  M.D.  of  Edinburgh,  and 
by  diploma  of  Oxford.  He  was  for  a  year  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
and  afterwards  at  St.  John's  and  New  College,  Oxford,  but  did  not 
graduate  at  either  University.  He  practised  medicine,  and  was  Physician 
to  the  Infirmary  at  Bristol.  Three  years  before  his  death  he  was  made 
a  Commissioner  in  Lunacy.  He  not  only  wrote  much  on  Ethnology, 
but  also  made  sound  contributions  to  the  science  of  language  and  on 
medical  subjects.  His  treatise  on  insanity  was  remarkable  for  his 
advanced  views  on  "  moral  insanity." 

3  Science  Progress,  Vol.  I.,  April  1897,  p.  278. 


44  EVOLUTION  [Chat.  II 

On  p.  91,  in  speaking  of  the  idea  that  the  species  which  make  up  a 
genus  may  have  descended  from  a  common  form,  he  says  : — 

"  There  must,  indeed,  be  some  principle  on  which  the  phenomena  of 
resemblance,  as  well  as  those  of  diversity,  may  be  explained  ;  and  the 
reference  of  several  forms  to  a  common  type  seems  calculated  to  suggest 
the  idea  of  some  original  affinity  ;  but,  as  this  is  merely  a  conjecture,  it 
must  be  kept  out  of  sight  when  our  inquiries  respect  matters  of  fact 
only/' 

This  view  is  again  given  in  Vol.  II.,  p.  569,  where  he  asks  whether  we 
should  believe  that  "  at  the  first  production  of  a  genus,  when  it  first  grew 
into  existence,  some  slight  modification  in  the  productive  causes  stamped 
it  originally  with  all  these  specific  diversities  ?  Or  is  it  most  probable 
that  the  modification  was  subsequent  to  its  origin,  and  that  the  genus  at 
its  first  creation  was  one  and  uniform,  and  afterwards  became  diversified 
by  the  influence  of  external  agents  ?"  He  concludes  that  "  the  former  of 
these  suppositions  is  the  conclusion  to  which  we  are  led  by  all  that  can 
be  ascertained  respecting  the  limits  of  species,  and  the  extent  of  variation 
under  the  influence  of  causes  at  present  existing  and  operating." 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Prichard  did  not  carry  his  ideas  to  their 
logical  conclusion,  it  may  perhaps  excite  surprise  that  Mr.  Darwin  should 
have  spoken  of  him  as  absolutely  on  the  side  of  immutability. 

We  believe  it  to  be  partly  accounted  for  (as  Poulton  suggests)  by  the 
fact  that  Mr.  Darwin  possessed  only  the  third  edition  (1836  and  1837) 
and  the  fourth  edition  (1841-51).1  In  neither  of  these  is  the  evolutionary 
point  of  view  so  strong  as  in  the  second  edition. 

We  have  gone  through  all  the  passages  marked  by  Mr.  Darwin  for 
future  reference  in  the  third  and  fourth  editions,  and  have  been  only  able 
to  find  the  following,  which  occurs  in  the  third  edition  (Vol.  I.,  1S36, 
p.  242) : » 

"  The  variety  in  form,  prevalent  among  all  organised  productions  of 
nature,  is  found  to  subsist  between  individual  beings  of  whatever  species, 
even  when  they  are  the  offspring  of  the  same  parents.  Another  circum- 
stance equally  remarkable  is  the  tendency  which  exists  in  almost  every 
tribe,  whether  of  animals  or  of  plants,  to  transmit  to  their  offspring  and 
to  perpetuate  in  their  race  all  individual  peculiarities  which  may  thus  have 
taken  their  rise.     These  two  general  facts  in  the  economy  of  organised 

1  The  edition  of  1841-51  consists  of  reprints  of  the  third  edition  and 
three  additional  volumes  of  various  dates.  Vols.  I.  and  II.  are  described 
in  the  title-page  as  the  fourth  edition  ;  Vols.  III.  and  IV.  as  the  third 
edition,  and  Vol.  V.  has  no  edition  marked  in  the  title. 

■  There  is  also  (ed.  1837,  Vol.  II.,  p.  344)  a  vague  reference  to 
Natural  Selection,  of  which  the  last  sentence  is  enclosed  in  pencil  in 
inverted  commas,  as  though  Mr.  Darwin  had  intended  to  quote  it :  "In 
other  parts  of  Africa  the  xanthous  variety  [of  man]  often  appears,  but 
does  not  multiply.  Individuals  thus  characterised  arc  like  seeds  which 
perish  in  an  uncongenial  soil." 


1844-1S58]  J.    C.    PRICHARD  45 

beings  lay  a  foundation  for  the  existence  of  diversified  races,  originating 
from  the  same  primitive  stock  and  within  the  limits  of  identical  species." 

On  the  following  page  (p.  243)  a  passage  (not  marked  by  Mr.  Darwin) 
emphasises  the  limitation  which  Prichard  ascribed  to  the  results  of 
variation  and  inheritance  : — 

"Even  those  physiologists  who  contend  for  what  is  termed  the 
indefinite  nature  of  species  admit  that  they  have  limits  at  present  and 
under  ordinary  circumstances.  Whatever  diversities  take  place  happen 
without  breaking  in  upon  the  characteristic  type  of  the  species.  This  is 
transmitted  from  generation  to  generation  :  goats  produce  goats,  and 
sheep,  sheep." 

The  passage  on  p.  242  occurs  in  the  reprint  of  the  1836-7  edition 
which  forms  part  of  the  1S41-51  edition,  but  is  not  there  marked  by 
Mr.  Darwin.  He  notes  at  the  end  of  Vol.  I.  of  the  1836-7  edition  : 
"  March,  1857.  I  have  not  looked  through  all  these  \i.e.  marked  passages], 
but  I  have  gone  through  the  later  edition "  ;  and  a  similar  entry  is  in 
Vol.  II.  of  the  third  edition.  It  is  therefore  easy  to  understand  how  he 
came  to  overlook  the  passage  on  p.  242  when  he  began  the  fuller  state- 
ment of  his  species  theory  which  is  referred  to  in  the  Life  and  Letters  as 
the  "  unfinished  book."  In  the  historical  sketch  prefixed  to  the  Origin  of 
Species  writers  are  named  as  precursors  whose  claims  are  less  strong  than 
Prichard's,  and  it  is  certain  that  Mr.  Darwin  would  have  given  an  account 
of  him  if  he  had  thought  of  him  as  an  evolutionist. 

The  two  following  passages  will  show  that  Mr.  Darwin  was,  from  his 
knowledge  of  Prichard's  books,  justified  in  classing  him  among  those 
who  did  not  believe  in  the  mutability  of  species  : 

"  The  various  tribes  of  organised  beings  were  originally  placed  by  the 
Creator  in  certain  regions,  for  which  they  are  by  their  nature  peculiarly 
adapted.  Each  species  had  only  one  beginning  in  a  single  stock  :  pro- 
bably a  single  pair,  as  Linnaeus  supposed,  was  first  called  into  being 
in  some  particular  spot,  and  the  progeny  left  to  disperse  themselves  to 
as  great  a  distance  from  the  original  centre  of  their  existence  as  the 
locomotive  powers  bestowed  on  them,  or  their  capability  of  bearing 
changes  of  climate  and  other  physical  agencies,  may  have  enabled  them 
to  wander." ' 

The  second  passage  is  annotated  by  Mr.  Darwin  with  a  shower  of 
exclamation  marks  : 

"  The  meaning  attached  to  the  term  species  in  natural  history  is  very 
definite  and  intelligible.  It  includes  only  the  following  conditions — 
namely,  separate  origin  and  distinctness  of  race,  evinced  by  the  constant 
transmission  of  some  characteristic  peculiarity  of  organisation.  A  race 
of  animals  or  of  plants  marked  by  any  peculiar  character  which  has 
always  been  constant  and  undeviating  constitutes  a  species  ;  and  two 
races  are  considered  as  specifically  different,  if  they  are  distinguished 
from  each  other  by  some  characteristic  which  one  cannot  be  supposed  to 

1  Prichard,  third  edition,  1836-7,  Vol.  I.,  p.  96. 


46  K VOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

have  acquired,  or  the  other  to  have  lost  through  any  known  operation  of 
physical  causes  ;  for  we  are  hence  led  to  conclude  that  the  tribes  thus 
distinguished  have  not  descended  from  the  same  original  stock."  ' 

As  was  his  custom,  Mr.  Darwin  pinned  at  the  end  of  the  first  volume 
of  the  1841-51  edition  a  piece  of  paper  containing  a  list  of  the  pages 
where  marked  passages  occur.  This  paper  bears,  written  in  pencil, 
"How  like  my  book  all  this  will  be!"  The  words  appear  to  refer  to 
Prichard's  discussion  on  the  dispersal  of  animals  and  plants  ;  they 
certainly  do  not  refer  to  the  evolutionary  views  to  be  found  in  the  book. 

Letter  15  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down  [1S44]. 

Thank  you  exceedingly  for  your  long  letter,  and  I  am  in 
truth  ashamed  of  the  time  and  trouble  you  have  taken  for  me; 
but  I  must  some  day  write  again  to  you  on  the  subject  of 
your  letter.  I  will  only  now  observe  that  you  have  extended 
my  remark  on  the  range  of  species  of  shells  into  the  range 
of  genera  or  groups.  Analogy  from  shells  would  only  go  so 
far,  that  if  two  or  three  species  ....  were  found  to  range 
from  America  to  India,  they  would  be  found  to  extend 
through  an  unusual  thickness  of  strata — say  from  the  Upper 
Cretaceous  to  its  lowest  bed,  or  the  Neocomian.  Or  you  may 
reverse  it  and  say  those  species  which  range  throughout  the 
whole  Cretaceous,  will  have  wide  ranges  :  viz.,  from  America 
through  Europe  to  India  (this  is  one  actual  case  with  shells 
in  the  Cretaceous  period). 

Letter  16  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down  [1S45]. 

I  ought  to  have  written  sooner  to  say  that  I  am  very 
willing  to  subscribe  £l  is.  to  the  African  man  (though  it  be 
murder  on  a  small  scale),  and  will  send  you  a  Post-office- 
order  payable  to  Kew,  if  you  will  be  so  good  as  to  take  charge 
of  it.  Thanks  for  your  information  about  the  Antarctic 
Zoology  ;  I  got  my  numbers  when  in  Town  on  Thursday  : 
would  it  be  asking  your  publisher  to  take  too  much  trouble 
to  send  your  Botany  [Flora  Antarctica,  by  J.  D.  Hooker,  1844] 
to  the  Athenavum  Club  ?  he  might  send  two  or  three  numbers 


1  Prichard,  cd.  1836-7,  Vol.  I  ,  p.  106.  This  passage  is  almost 
identical  with  that  quoted  from  the  second  edition,  Vol.  I.,  p.  90.  The 
latter  part,  from  "and  two  races  .  .  .  ,"  occurs  in  the  second  edition, 
though  not  quoted  above. 


lS44 — 'S5S]  ALPINE    VARIETIES  47 

together.  I  am  really  ashamed  to  think  of  your  having  Letter  16 
given  me  such  a  valuable  work  ;  all  I  can  say  is  that  1 
appreciate  your  present  in  two  ways — as  your  gift,  and  for 
its  great  use  to  my  species-work.  I  am  very  glad  to  hear 
that  you  mean  to  attack  this  subject  some  day.  I  wonder 
whether  we  shall  ever  be  public  combatants  ;  anyhow,  I 
congratulate  myself  in  a  most  unfair  advantage  of  you,  viz., 
in  having  extracted  more  facts  and  views  from  you  than  from 
any  one  other  person.  I  daresay  your  explanation  of  poly- 
morphism on  volcanic  islands  may  be  the  right  one  ;  the 
reason  I  am  curious  about  it  is,  the  fact  of  the  birds  on  the 
Galapagos  being  in  several  instances  very  fine-run  species — 
that  is,  in  comparing  them,  not  so  much  one  with  another,  as 
with  their  analogues  from  the  continent.  I  have  somehow 
felt,  like  you,  that  an  alpine  form  of  a  plant  is  not  a  true 
variety  ;  and  yet  I  cannot  admit  that  the  simple  fact  of  the 
cause  being  assignable  ought  to  prevent  its  being  called  a 
variety  ;  every  variation  must  have  some  cause,  so  that  th§ 
difference  would  rest  on  our  knowledge  in  being  able  or  not 
to  assign  the  cause.  Do  you  consider  that  a  true  variety 
should  be  produced  by  causes  acting  through  the  parent  ?  But 
even  taking  this  definition,  are  you  sure  that  alpine  forms 
are  not  inherited  from  one,  two,  or  three  generations  ?  Now, 
would  not  this  be  a  curious  and  valuable  experiment,1  viz.,  to 
get  seeds  of  some  alpine  plant,  a  little  more  hairy,  etc.,  etc.,  than 
its  lowland  fellow,  and  raise  seedlings  at  Kew  :  if  this  has  not 
been  done,  could  you  not  get  it  done  ?  Have  you  anybody 
in  Scotland  from  whom  you  could  get  the  seeds  ? 

I  have  been  interested  by  your  remarks  on  Scuea'o  and 
Gnaphalium  :  would  it  not  be  worth  while  (I  should  be  very 
curious  to  hear  the  result)  to  make  a  short  list  of  the  generally 
considered  variable  or  polymorphous  genera,  as  Rosa,  Salix, 
Rubus,  etc.,  etc.,  and  reflect  whether  such  genera  are  generally 
mundane,  and  more  especially  whether  they  have  distinct  or 
identical  (or  closely  allied)  species  in  their  different  and 
distant  habitats. 

Don't  forget  me,  if  you  ever  stumble  on  cases  of  the  same 
species  being  more  or  less  variable  in  different  countries. 

1  For  an  account  of  work  of  this  character,  see  papers  by  G.  Bonnier 
in  the  Revue  Gcndrale,  Vol.  II.,  1890;  Ann.  Sc.  Nat.,  Vol.  XX.  ;  Rdvue 
Gene)  ale.  Vol.  VII. 


48  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  16  With  respect  to  the  word  "  sterile  "  as  used  for  male  or 
polleniferous  flowers,  it  has  always  offended  my  ears  dread- 
fully ;  on  the  same  principle  that  it  would  to  hear  a  potent 
stallion,  ram  or  bull  called  sterile,  because  they  did  not  bear, 
as  well  as  beget,  young. 

With  "respect  to  your  geological-map  suggestion,  I  wish 
with  all  my  heart  I  could  follow  it ;  but  just  reflect  on  the 
number  of  measurements  requisite :  why,  at  present  it  could 
not  be  done  even  in  England,  even  with  the  assumption  of 
the  land  having  simply  risen  any  exact  number  of  feet.  But 
subsidence  in  most  cases  has  hopelessly  complexed  the 
problem:  see  what  Jordanhill-Smith1  says  of  the  dance  up 
and  down,  many  times,  which  Gibraltar  has  had  all  within 
the  recent  period.  Such  maps  as  Lyell 2  has  published  of 
sea  and  land  at  the  beginning  of  the  Tertiary  period  must  be 
excessively  inaccurate  :  it  assumes  that  every  part  on  which 
Tertiary  beds  have  not  been  deposited,  must  have  then  been 
dry  land, — a  most  doubtful  assumption. 

I  have  been  amused  by  Chambers  v.  Hooker  on  the  K. 
Cabbage.     I    see  in  the  Explanations 3  (the  spirit  of  which, 

1  James  Smith,  of  Jordan  Hill,  author  of  a  paper  "On  the  Geology  of 
Gibraltar"  (Quart.  Joitrn.  Gcol.  Soc.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  41,  1846). 

s  Principles  of  Geology,  1875,  Vol.  I.,  Plate  1,  p.  254. 

3  Explanations  :  A  Sequel  to  the  Vestiges  of  the  Natural  History  of 
Creation  was  published  in  1845,  after  the  appearance  of  the  fourth 
edition  of  the  Vestiges,  by  way  of  reply  to  the  criticisms  on  the  original 
book.  The  "  K.  cabbage  "  referred  to  at  the  beginning  of  the  paragraph 
is  Pringlea  antiscorbutica,  the  "  Kerguelen  Cabbage  "  described  by  Sir 
J.  D.  Hooker  in  his  Flora  Antarctica.  What  Chambers  wrote  on  this 
subject  we  have  not  discovered.  The  mention  of  Sedgwick  is  a  refer- 
ence to  his  severe  review  of  the  Vestiges  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  1845, 
vol.  82,  p.  1.  Darwin  described  it  as  savouring  "of  the  dogmatism  of 
the  pulpit"  (Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  344).  Mr.  Ireland's  edition  of  the 
Vestiges  (1884),  in  which  Robert  Chambers  was  first  authentically  an- 
nounced as  the  author,  contains  (p.  xxix)  an  extract  from  a  letter  written 
by  Chambers  in  i860,  in  which  the  following  passage  occurs,  "The  April 
number  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  (i860)  makes  all  but  a  direct  amende 
for  the  abuse  it  poured  upon  my  work  a  number  of  years  ago."  This  is 
the  well-known  review  by  Owen,  to  which  references  occur  in  the  Life 
and  Letters,  II.,  p.  300.  The  amende  to  the  Vestiges  is  not  so  full  as  the 
author  felt  it  to  be  ;  but  it  was  clearly  in  place  in  a  paper  intended  to 
belittle  the  Origin;  it  also  gave  the  reviewer  (p.  511)  an  opportunity  for 
a  hit  at  Sedgwick  and  his  1845  review. 


1844—1858]  L.    13L0MEFIELD  49 

though  not  the  facts,  ought  to  shame  Sedgwick)  that  Vestiges  Letter  16 
considers  all  land-animals  and  plants  to  have  passed  from 
marine  forms  ;  so  Chambers  is  quite  in  accordance.  Did 
you  hear  Forbes,  when  here,  giving  the  rather  curious 
evidence  (from  a  similarity  in  error)  that  Chambers  must  be 
the  author  of  the  Vestiges  :  your  case  strikes  me  as  some 
confirmation.  I  have  written  an  unreasonably  long  and  dull 
letter,  so  farewell. 

To  L.  Rlomefield  [Jenyns].1  Letter  17 

Down.     Fl-Ij.  14th  [1845]. 

I   have  taken  my  leisure  in  thanking  you  for  your  last 

letter  and  discussion,  to  me  very  interesting,  on  the  increase 

of  species.     Since  your  letter,  I  have  met  with  a  very  similar 

view  in   Richardson,   who   states  that  the  young   are  driven 

1  The  following  sketch  of  the  life  of  Rev.  Leonard  Blomefield 
(formerly  Jenyns)  is  taken  from  his  Chapters  in  my  Life ;  Reprint  with 
Additions  (privately  printed),  Bath,  1889.  He  was  born,  as  he  states 
with  characteristic  accuracy,  at  10  p.m.,  May  25th,  1800  ;  and  died  a* 
Bath,  Sept.  1st,  1893.  His  father — a  second  cousin  of  Soame  Jenyns,  from 
whom  he  inherited  Bottisham  Hall,  in  Cambridgeshire — was  a  parson- 
squire  of  the  old  type,  a  keen  sportsman,  and  a  good  man  of  business. 
Leonard  Jenyns'  mother  was  a  daughter  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Heberden, 
in  whose  house  in  Pall  Mall  he  was  born.  Leonard  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  Cambridge,  and  became  curate  of  Swaffham  Bulbeck,  a  village  close 
to  his  father's  property  ;  he  was  afterwards  presented  to  the  Vicarage  of 
the  parish,  and  held  the  living  for  nearly  thirty  years.  The  remainder  of 
his  life  he  spent  at  Bath.  He  was  an  excellent  field-naturalist  and  a 
minute  and  careful  observer.  Among  his  writings  may  be  mentioned 
the  Fishes  in  Zoology  of  the  Voyage  of  the  " Beagle"  1842,  a  Manual. 
of  British  Vertebrate  Animals,  1836,  a  Memoir  of  Professor  Henslow, 
1862,  to  which  Darwin  contributed  recollections  of  his  old  master, 
Observatio?is  in  Natural  History,  1846,  and  Observations  in  Meteorology, 
1858,  besides  numerous  papers  in  scientific  journals.  In  his  Chaplers'he 
describes  himself  as  showing  as  a  boy  the  silent  and  retiring  nature,  and 
also  the  love  of  "order,  method,  and  precision,"  which  characterised  him 
through  life  ;  and  he  adds,  "  even  to  old  age  I  have  been  often  called  a 
very  particular  gentleman:'  In  a  hitherto  unpublished  passage  in  his 
autobiographical  sketch,  Darwin  wrote,  "At  first  I  disliked  him,  from  his 
somewhat  grim  and  sarcastic  expression  ;  and  it  is  not  often  that  a  first 
impression  is  lost  ;  but  I  was  completely  mistaken,  and  found  him  very 
kind-hearted,  pleasant,  and  with  a  good  stock  of  humour."  Mr.  Jenyns 
records  that  as  a  boy  he  was  by  a  stranger  taken  for  a  son  of  his  uncle, 
Dr.  Heberden  (the  younger),  whom  he  closely  resembled. 

4 


50  EVOLUTION  [CiiAr.  II 

Letter  17  away  by  the  old  into  unfavourable  districts,  and  there  mostly 
perish.  When  one  meets  with  such  unexpected  statistical 
returns  on  the  increase  and  decrease  and  proportion  of  deaths 
and  births  amongst  mankind,  and  in  this  well-known  country 
of  ours,  one  ought  not  to  be  in  the  least  surprised  at  one's 
ignorance,  when,  where,  and  how  the  endless  increase  of  our 
robins  and  sparrows  is  checked. 

Thanks  for  your  hints  about  terms  of  "  mutation,"  etc.  ; 
I  had  some  suspicions  that  it  was  not  quite  correct,  and  yet 
I  do  not  yet  see  my  way  to  arrive  at  any  better  terms.  It 
will  be  years  before  I  publish,  so  that  I  shall  have  plenty  of 
time  to  think  of  better  words.  Development  would  perhaps 
do,  only  it  is  applied  to  the  changes  of  an  individual  during 
its  growth.  I  am,  however,  very  glad  of  your  remark,  and 
will  ponder  over  it. 

We  are  all  well,  wife  and  children  three,  and  as  flourishing 
as  this  horrid,  house-confining,  tempestuous  weather  permits. 

Letter  18  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down  [1845]. 

I  hope  you  are  getting  on  well  with  your  lectures,  and  that 
you  have  enjoyed  some  pleasant  walks  during  the  late  de- 
lightful weather.  I  write  to  tell  you  (as  perhaps  you  might 
have  had  fears  on  the  subject)  that  your  books  have  arrived 
safely.  I  am  exceedingly  obliged  to  you  for  them,  and  will 
take  great  care  of  them  ;  they  will  take  me  some  time  to 
read  carefully. 

I  send  to-day  the  corrected  MS.  of  the  first  number  of  my 
Journal'1  in  the  Colonial  Library,  so  that  if  you  chance  to 
know  of  any  gross  mistake  in  the  first  214  pages  (if  you  have 
my  Journal),  I  should  be  obliged  to  you  to  tell  me. 

Do  not  answer  this  for  form's  sake  ;  for  you  must  be  very 
busy.  We  have  just  had  the  Lyells  here,  and  you  ought  to 
have  a  wife  to  stop  your  working  too  much,  as  Mrs.  Lyell 
peremptorily  stops  Lyell. 

1  In  1842  he  had  written  to  his  sister  :  "  Talking  of  money,  I  reaped 
the  other  day  all  the  profit  which  I  shall  ever  get  from  my  Journal [Journal 
of  Researches,  etc.]  which  consisted  in  paying  Mr.  Colburn  .£21  ioj. 
for  the  copies  which  I  presented  to  different  people  ;  1,337  copies  have 
been  sold.  This  is  a  comfortable  arrangement,  is  it  not?"  He  was 
proved  wrong  in  his  gloomy  prophecy,  as  the  second  edition  was  published 
by  Mr.  Murray  in  1845. 


1844—1858]  CROSSING  51 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.1  Letter  19 

Down  [1845 — 1846]. 
I  am  particularly  obliged  for  your  facts  about  solitary 
islands  having  several  species  of  peculiar  genera  ;  it  knocks 
on  the  head  some  analogies  of  mine  ;  the  point  stupidly  never 
occurred  to  me  to  ask  about.  I  am  amused  at  your  anathemas 
against  variation  and  co.  ;  whatever  you  may  be  pleased 
to  say,  you  will  never  be  content  with  simple  species,  "  as 
they  are."  I  defy  you  to  steel  your  mind  to  technicalities, 
like  so  many  of  our  brother  naturalists.  I  am  much  pleased 
that  I  thought  of  sending  you  Forbes'2  article.  I  confess  I 
cannot  make  out  the  evidence  of  his  time-notions  in  distribu- 
tion, and  I  cannot  help  suspecting  that  they  are  rather  vague. 
Lyell  preceded  Forbes  in  one  class  of  speculation  of  this  kind  : 
for  instance,  in  his  explaining  the  identity  of  the  Sicily  Flora 
with  that  of  South  Italy,  by  its  having  been  wholly  upraised 
within  the  recent  period  ;  and,  so  I  believe,  with  mountain- 
chains  separating  floras.  I  do  not  remember  Humboldt's  fact 
about  the  heath  regions.  Very  curious  the  case  of  th^. 
broom  ;  I  can  tell  you  something  analogous  on  a  small  scale. 
My  father,  when  he  built  his  house,  sowed  many  broom-seeds 
on  a  wild  bank,  which  did  not  come  up,  owing,  as  it  was 
thought,  to  much  earth  having  been  thrown  over  them. 
About  thirty-five  years  afterwards,  in  cutting  a  terrace,  all  this 
earth  was  thrown  up,  and  now  the  bank  is  one  mass  of  broom. 
I  see  we  were  in  some  degree  talking  to  cross-purposes  ;  when 
I  said  I  did  [not]  much  believe  in  hybridising  to  any  extent, 
I  did  not  mean  at  all  to  exclude  crossing.  It  has  long  been  a 
hobby  of  mine  to  see  in  how  many  flowers  such  crossing  is 
probable;    it  was,  I   believe,  Knight's3  view,  originally,  that 


1  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker's  letters  to  Mr.  Darwin  seem  to  fix  the  date  as 
1845,  while  the  reference  to  Forbes'  paper  indicates  1846. 

3  E.  Forbes'  celebrated  paper  Memoirs  of  the  Geological  Survey  of 
Great  Britain,  Vol.  I.,  p.  336,  1846.  In  Lyell's  Principles,  7th  Ed., 
1847,  p.  676,  he  makes  a  temperate  claim  of  priority,  as  he  had 
already  done  in  a  private  letter  of  Oct.  14th,  1846,  to  Forbes  {Life  of 
Sir  Charles  Lyell,  1881,  Vol.  II.,  p.  106)  both  as  regards  the  Sicilian 
flora  and  the  barrier  effect  of  mountain-chains.  See  Letter  20  for  a 
note  on  Forbes. 

3  See  an  article  on  "The  Knight-Darwin  law"  by  Francis  Darwin 
in  Nature,  Oct.  27th,   1898,  p.  630. 


52  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  19  every  plant  must  be  occasionally  crossed.  I  find,  however, 
plenty  of  difficulty  in  showing  even  a  vague  probability  of 
this  ;  especially  in  the  Leguminosae,  though  their  [structure  ?  ] 
is  inimitably  adapted  to  favour  crossing,  I  have  never  yet 
met  with  but  one  instance  of  a  natural  mongrel  (nor  mule  ?)  in 
this  family. 

I  shall  be  particularly  curious  to  hear  some  account  of  the 
appearance  and  origin  of  the  Ayrshire  Irish  Yew.  And  now 
for  the  main  object  of  my  letter  :  it  is  to  ask  whether  you 
would  just  run  your  eye  over  the  proof  of  my  Galapagos 
chapter,1  where  I  mention  the  plants,  to  see  that  I  have  made 
no  blunders,  or  spelt  any  of  the  scientific  names  wrongly.  As 
I  daresay  you  will  so  far  oblige  me,  will  you  let  me  know 
a  few  days  before,  when  you  leave  Edinburgh  and  how 
long  you  stay  at  Kinnordy,  so  that  my  letter  might  catch 
you.  I  am  not  surprised  at  my  collection  from  James 
Island  differing  from  others,  as  the  damp  upland  district 
(where  I  slept  two  nights)  is  six  miles  from  the  coast,  and 
no  naturalist  except  myself  probably  ever  ascended  to  it. 
Cuming  had  never  even  heard  of  it.  Cuming  tells  me  that  he 
was  on  Charles,  James,  and  Albemarle  Islands,  and  that  he 
cannot  remember  from  my  description  the  Scalesia,  but  thinks 
he  could  if  he  saw  a  specimen.  I  have  no  idea  of  the  origin  of 
the  distribution  of  the  Galapagos  shells,  about  which  you  ask. 
I  presume  (after  Forbes'  excellent  remarks  on  the  facilities 
by  which  embryo-shells  are  transported)  that  the  Pacific  shells 
have  been  borne  thither  by  currents  ;  but  the  currents  all  run 
the  other  way. 

Letter  20  Edward  Forbes2  to  C.  Darwin. 

Edward  Forbes  was  at  work  on  his  celebrated  paper  in  the  Geological 
Survey  Memoirs  for  1846.  We  have  not  seen  the  letter  of  Darwin's  to 
which  this  is  a  reply,   nor,  indeed,  any  of  his  letters  to  Forbes.     The 

1   In  the  second  edition  of  the  Naturalist's  Voyage. 

-  Edward  Forbes,  F.R.S.  (1815 — 1854),  filled  the  office  of  Palaeon- 
tologist to  the  Ordnance  Geological  Survey,  and  afterwards  became 
President  of  the  Geological  Society;  in  1854 — the  last  year  of  his  life — 
he  was  appointed  to  the  Chair  of  Natural  History  in  the  University  of 
Edinburgh.  Forbes  published  many  papers  on  geological,  zoological, 
and  botanical  subjects,  one  of  his  most  remarkable  contributions  being 
the  well-known  essay  "On  the  Connexion  between  the  Distribution  of 


From  a  photograph  by  Hill  &  Adamson 
Edward  Forbes 


1844—1858]  EDWARD     FORBES  53 

date  of  the  letter  is  fixed  by  Forbes's  lecture  given  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution on  Feb.  27th,  1846  (according  to  L.  Horner's  privately  printed 
Memoirs,  II.,  p.  94). 

Wednesday.     3,  Southwark  Street,  Hyde  Park.     [1846.]         Letter  20 

Dear  Darwin 

To  answer  your  very  welcome  letter,  so  far  from  being 
a  waste  of  time,  is  a  gain,  for  it  obliges  me  to  make  myself 
clear  and  understood  on  matters  which  I  have  evidently  put 
forward  imperfectly  and  with  obscurity.  I  have  devoted  the 
whole  of  this  week  to  working  and  writing  out  the  flora 
question,  for  I  now  feel  strong  enough  to  give  my  promised 
evening  lecture  on  it  at  the  Royal  Institution  on  Friday,  and, 
moreover,  wish  to  get  it  in  printable  form  for  the  Reports  of 
our  Survey.  Therefore  at  no  time  can  I  receive  or  answer 
objections  with  more  benefit  than  now.  From  the  hurry 
and  pressure  which  unfortunately  attend  all  my  movements 
and  doings  I  rarely  have  time  to  spare,  in  preparing  for 
publication,  to  do  more  than  give  brief  and  unsatisfactory 
abstracts,  which   I   fear  are  often  extremely  obscure. 

Now  for  your  objections — which  have  sprung  out  of  my 
own  obscurities. 

I  do  not  argue  in  a  circle  about  the  Irish  case,  but  treat 
the  botanical  evidence  of  connection  and  the  geological  as 
distinct.  The  former  only  I  urged  at  Cambridge  ;  the  latter 
I  have  not  yet  publicly  maintained. 

My  Cambridge  argument1  was  this:  That  no  known  currents, 
whether  of  water  or  air,  or  ordinary  means  of  transport,2  would 

the  Existing  Fauna  and  Flora  of  the  British  Isles  and  the  Geological 
Changes  which  have  affected  their  area  "  {Mem.  Geo/.  Surv.,  Vol.  I., 
p.  336,  1846).  (See  Proc.  Roy.  Soc,  Vol.  VII.,  p.  263,  1856;  Quart. 
Jonrn.  Geol.  Soc,  Vol.  XI.,  p.  xxvii,  1S55  ;  and  Ann.  Mag.  Nat.  His/., 
Vol.  XV.,  1855.) 

1  "On  the  Distribution  of  Endemic  Plants,"  by  E.  Forbes,  Brit.  Assoe. 
Rep.,  1845  (Cambridge),  p.  67. 

2  Darwin's  note  on  transportation  (found  with  Forbes' letter):  "Forbes' 
arguments,  from  several  Spanish  plants  in  Ireland  not  being  transported, 
not  sound,  because  sea-currents  and  air  ditto  and  migration  of  birds  in 
same  lines.  I  have  thought  not-transportation  the  greatest  difficulty. 
Now  we  see  how  many  seeds  every  plant  and  tree  requires  to  be  regularly 
propagated  in  its  own  country,  for  we  cannot  think  the  great  number  of 
seeds  superfluous,  and  therefore  how  small  is  the  chance  of  here  and 
there  a  solitary  seedling  being  preserved  in  a  well  stocked  country.'' 


54  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  20  account  for  the  little  group  of  Asturian  plants — few  as  to 
species,  but  playing  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  vegetation — 
giving  a  peculiar  botanical  character  to  the  south  of  Ireland  ; 
that,  as  I  had  produced  evidence  of  the  other  floras  of  our 
islands,  i.e.  the  Germanic,  the  Cretaceous,  and  the  Devonian 
(these  tdrms  used  topographically,  not  geologically)  having 
been  acquired  by  migration  over  continuous  land  (the  glacial 
or  alpine  flora  I  except  for  the  present — as  ice-carriage  might 
have  played  a  great  part  in  its  introduction) — I  considered  it 
most  probable,  and  maintained,  that  the  introduction  of  that 
Irish  flura  was  also  effected  by  the  same  means.  I  held  also 
that  the  character  of  this  flora  was  more  southern  and  more 
ancient  than  that  of  any  of  the  others,  and  that  its  fragmentary 
and  limited  state  was  probably  due  to  the  plants  composing  it 
having  (from  their  comparative  hardiness — heaths,  saxifrages, 
etc.)  survived  the  destroying  influence  of  the  glacial  epoch. 

My  geological  argument  now  is  as  follows  :  half  the 
Mediterranean  islands,  or  more,  are  partly— in  some  cases  (as 
Malta)  wholly — composed  of  the  upheaved  bed  of  the  Miocene 
sea  ;  so  is  a  great  part  of  the  south  of  France  from  Bordeaux 
to  Montpellier  ;  so  is  the  west  of  Portugal  ;  and  we  find  the 
corresponding  beds  with  the  same  fossils  (Pecten  latissimus, 
etc.)  in  the  Azores.  So  general  an  upheaval  seems  to  me  to 
indicate  the  former  existence  of  a  great  post-Miocene  land  [in] 
the  region  of  what  is  usually  called  the  Mediterranean  flora. 
(Everywhere  these  Miocene  islands,  etc.,  bear  a  flora  of  true 
type.)  If  this  land  existed,  it  did  not  extend  to  America,  for 
the  fossils  of  the  Miocene  of  America  are  representative  and 
not  identical.  Where,  then,  was  the  edge  or  coast-line  of  it, 
Atlantic- wards  ?  Look  at  the  form  and  constancy  of  the  great 
fucus-bank,  and  consider  that  it  is  a  Sargassum  bank,  and  that 
the  Sargassum  there  is  in  an  abnormal  condition,  and  that 
the  species  of  this  genus  of  fuci  are  essentially  ground-growers, 
and  then  see  the  probability  of  this  bank  having  originated 
on  a  line  of  ancient  coast. 

Now,  having  thus  argued  independently,  first  on  my 
flora  and  second  on  the  geological  evidences  of  land  in  the 
quarter  required,  I  put  the  two  together  to  bear  up  my  Irish 
case. 

I  cannot  admit  the  Sargassum  case  to  be  parallel  with  that 
of  Confervas  or  Oscillatoria. 


1844-185S]  NATURAL    HISTORY  55 

I  think   I  have  evidence  from  the    fossils  of  the  boulder  Letter  20 
formations    in    Ireland    that    if   such    Miocene    land    existed 
it   must  have  been   broken  up  or  partially  broken  up  at  the 
epoch  of  the  glacial  or  boulder  period. 
All  objections  thankfully  received. 

Ever  most  sincerely, 

Edward  Forbes. 

To  L.  Jenyns  (Blomefield).  Letter  21 

Down.  [1S46]. 
I  am  much  obliged  for  your  note  and  kind  intended 
present  of  your  volume.1  I  feel  sure  I  shall  like  it,  for  all 
discussions  and  observations  on  what  the  world  would  call 
trifling  points  in  Natural  History  always  appear  to  me  very 
interesting.  In  such  foreign  periodicals  as  I  have  seen, 
there  are  no  such  papers  as  White,  or  Watcrton,  or  some 
few  other  naturalists  in  Loudon's  and  Charlesworth's  Journal, 
would  have  written  ;  and  a  great  loss  it  has  always  appeared 
to  me.  I  should  have  much  liked  to  have  met  you  in  London, 
but  I  cannot  leave  home,  as  my  wife  is  recovering  from  a 
rather  sharp  fever  attack,  and  I  am  myself  slaving  to  finish 
my  S.  American  Geology,2  of  which,  thanks  to  all  Plutonic 
powers,  two-thirds  are  through  the  press,  and  then  I  shall 
feel  a  comparatively  free  man.  Have  you  any  thoughts  of 
Southampton?3  I  have  some  vague  idea  of  going  there,  and 
should  much  enjoy  meeting  you. 

To  J.   D.   Hooker.  Letter  22 

Shrewsbury  [end  of  Feb.  1846J. 
I  came  here  on  account  of  my  father's  health,  which  has 
been  sadly  failing  of  late,  but  to  my  great  joy  he  has  got 
surprisingly  better.  ...  I  had  not  heard  of  your  botanical 
appointment,4  and  am  very  glad  of  it,  more  especially  as  it 
will  make  you  travel  and  give  you  change  of  work  and  relaxa- 
tion.    Will  you  some  time  have  to  examine  the  Chalk  and  its 

1  No  doubt  the  late  Mr.  Blomefield's  Observations  in  Natural  History. 
See  Life  and  Lett e7s,  II.,  p.  31. 

•  Geological  Observations  in  South  America  (London),  1846. 

3  The  British  Association  met  at  Southampton  in  1846. 

4  Sir  Joseph  was  appointed  Botanist  to  the  Geological  Survey  in  1841'). 


56  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  22  junction  with  London  Clay  and  Greensand  ?  If  so  our  house 
would  be  a  good  central  place,  and  my  horse  would  be  at 
your  disposal.  Could  you  not  spin  a  long  week  out  of  this 
examination  ?  it  would  in  truth  delight  us,  and  you  could 
bring  your  papers  (like  Lyell)  and  work  at  odd  times.  Forbes 
has  been-  writing  to  me  about  his  subsidence  doctrines  ;  I  wish 
I  had  heard  his  full  details,  but  I  have  expressed  to  him  in 
my  ignorance  my  objections,  which  rest  merely  on  its  too 
great  hypothetical  basis  ;  I  shall  be  curious,  when  I  meet 
him,  to  hear  what  he  says.  lie  is  also  speculating  on  the 
gulf-weed.  I  confess  I  cannot  appreciate  his  reasoning  about 
his  Miocene  continent,  but  I  daresay  it  is  from  want  of 
knowledge. 

You  allude  lo  the  Sicily  flora  not  being  peculiar,  and  this 
being  caused  by  its  recent  elevation  (well  established)  in  the 
main  part  :  you  will  find  Lyell  has  put  forward  this  very 
clearly  and  well.  The  Apennines  (which  I  was  somewhere 
lately  reading  about)  seems  a  very  curious  case. 

I  think  Forbes  ought  to  allude  a  little  to  Lyell's  :  work  on 
nearly  the  same  subject  as  his  speculations  ;  not  that  I  mean 
that  Forbes  wishes  to  take  the  smallest  credit  from  him  or 
any  man  alive  ;  no  man,  as  far  as  I  see,  likes  so  much  to  give 
credit  to  others,  or  more  soars  above  the  petty  craving  for 
self-celebrity. 

If  you  come  to  any  more  conclusions  about  polymor- 
phism, I  should  be  very  glad  to  hear  the  result  :  it  is 
delightful  to  have  many  points  fermenting  in  one's  brain,  and 
your  letters  and  conclusions  always  give  one  plenty  of  this 
same  fermentation.  I  wish  I  could  even  make  any  return  for 
all  your  facts,  views,  and  suggestions. 


I  etter  23  To  J.  D.   Hooker. 

The  following  extract  gives  the  germ  of  what  developed  into  an 
interesting  discussion  in  the  Origin  (Ed.  1,  p.  147).  Danvin  wrote,  "I 
suspect  also  that  some  cases  of  compensation  which  have  been  advanced 
and  likewise  some  other  facts,  may  be  merged  under  a  more  general 
principle:  namely,  that  natural  selection  is  continually  trying  to  economise 
in  every  part  of  the  organism."  He  speaks  of  the  general  belief 
of  botanists  in  compensation,  but  does  not  quote  any  instances. 

1  See  Letter  19. 


1844— 1858]  LAW    OF    BALANCEMENT  57 

[Sep.  1846].  Letter  23 
Have  you  ever  thought  of  G.  St.  Hilaire's  "  loi  de 
balancement,"  1  as  applied  to  plants  ?  I  am  well  aware  that 
some  zoologists  quite  reject  it,  but  it  certainly  appears  to  me 
that  it  often  holds  good  with  animals.  You  are  no  doubt 
aware  of  the  kind  of  facts  I  refer  to,  such  as  great  develop- 
ment of  canines  in  the  carnivora  apparently  causing  a 
diminution — a  compensation  or  balancement — in  the  small 
size  of  premolars,  etc.  I  have  incidentally  noticed  some 
analogous  remarks  on  plants,  but  have  never  seen  it  discussed 
by  botanists.  Can  you  think  of  cases  in  any  one  species  in 
genus,  or  genus  in  family,  with  certain  parts  extra  developed, 
and  some  adjoining  parts  reduced?  In  varieties  of  the  same 
species  double  flowers  and  large  fruits  seem  something  of 
this — want  of  pollen  and  of  seeds  balancing  with  the  in- 
creased number  of  petals  and  development  of  fruit.  I  hope 
we  shall  see  you  here  this  autumn. 

In  this  year  (1847)  Darwin  wrote  a  short  review  of  Waterhouse's 
Natural  History  of  the  Mammalia,  of  which  the  first  volume  had  appeared. 
It  was  published  in  The  Annals  and  Magazine  of  Natural  History, 
Vol.  XIX.,  p.  53.  The  following  sentence  is  the  only  one  which  shows 
even  a  trace  of  evolution:  "whether  we  view  classification  as  a  mere 
contrivance  to  convey  much  information  in  a  single  word,  or  as  something 
more  than  a  memoria  technica,  and  as  connected  with  the  laws  of  creation, 
we  cannot  doubt  that  where  such  important  differences  in  the  generative 
and  cerebral  systems,  as  distinguish  the  Marsupiata  from  the  Placentata, 
run  through  two  series  of  animals,  they  ought  to  be  arranged  under  heads 
of  equal  value." 

A  characteristic  remark  occurs  in  reference  to  Geographical  Distri- 
bution, "  that  noble  subject  of  which  we  as  yet  but  dimly  see  the  full 
bearing." 

The  following  letter  seems  to  be  of  sufficient  interest  to  be  published 
in  spite  of  the  obscurities  caused  by  the  want  of  date.  It  seems  to  have 
been  written  after  1847,  m  which  year  a  dispute  involving  Dr.  King  and 

1  According  to  Darwin  (Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants,  2nd  ed., 
II-,  p.  335)  the  law  of  balancement  was  propounded  by  Goethe  and 
Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire  (1772 — 1S44)  nearly  at  the  same  time,  but  he 
gives  no  reference  to  the  works  of  these  authors.  It  appears,  however, 
from  his  son  Isidore's  Vie,  Travau.x  &*c,  d'E/ienne  Geoffroy  Saint- 
Hilaire,  Paris  1847,  P-  2I4>  that  the  law  was  given  in  his  Philosophie 
Analomioue,  of  which  the  first  part  was  published  in  181 8.  Darwin 
{ibid.)  gives  some  instances  of  the  law  holding  good  in  plants. 


58  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

several  "arctic  gentlemen"  was  carried  on  in  the  Atkenaum.  Mr. 
Darwin  speaks  of"  Natural  History  Instructions  for  the  present  expedi- 
tion." This  may  possibly  refer  to  the  Admiralty  Manual  of  Scientific 
Enquiry  (1849),  for  it  is  clear,  from  the  prefatory  memorandum  of  the 
Lords  of  the  Admiralty,  that  they  believed  the  manual  would  be  of  use 
in  the  forthcoming  expeditions  in  search  of  Sir  John  Franklin. 

Letter  24  To  E.  Crcsy.1 

Down  [after  1847]. 

Although  I  have  never  particularly  attended  to  the  points 
in  dispute  between  Dr.  Kin;;2  and  the  other  Arctic  gentlemen, 
yet  I  have  carefully  read  all  the  articles  in  the  Atfien&utn, 
and  took  from  them  much  the  same  impression  as  you  convey 
in  your  letter,  For  which  I  thank  you.  I  believe  that  old 
sinner,  Sir  J.  Barrow3  has  been  at  the  bottom  of  all  the 
money  wasted  over  the  naval  expeditions.  So  strongly  have 
1  felt  on  this  subject,  that,  when  I  was  appointed  on  a  com- 
mittee for  Nat.  Hist,  instructions  for  the  present  expedition, 
had  I  been  able  to  attend  I  had  resolved  to  express  my  opinion 
on  the  little  advantage,  comparatively  to  the  expense,  gained 
by  them.  There  have  been,  I  believe,  from  the  beginning 
eighteen  expeditions  ;  this  strikes  me  as  monstrous,  con- 
sidering how  little  is  known,  for  instance,  on  the  interior  of 
Australia.  The  country  has  paid  dear  for  Sir  John's  hobby- 
horse. I  have  very  little  doubt  that  Dr.  King  is  quite  right 
in  the  advantage  of  land  expeditions  as  far  as  geography  is 
concerned  ;  and  that  is  now  the  chief  object.1 

1  Mr.  Cresy  was,  we  believe,  an  architect:  his  friendship  with 
Mr.  Darwin  dates  from  the  settlement  at  Down. 

2  Richard  King  (181 1  ? — 1876).  He  was  surgeon  and  naturalist  to  Sir 
George  Back's  expedition  (1833-5)  to  tne  mouth  of  the  Great  Fish 
River  in  search  of  Captain  Ross,  of  which  he  published  an  account. 
In  1S50  he  accompanied  Captain  Horatio  Austin's  search  expedition  in 
the  Resolute. 

3  Sir  John  Barrow  (1764 — 1848),  Secretary  to  the  Admiralty. 

4  This  sentence  would  imply  that  Darwin  thought  it  hopeless  to 
rescue  Sir  J.  Franklin's  expedition.  If  so,  the  letter  must  be,  at  least,  as 
late  as  1850.  If  the  eighteen  expeditions  mentioned  above  are  "search 
expeditions,"  it  would  also  bring  the  date  of  the  letter  to  1850. 


1844—1858]  SIR     R.    OWEN  59 


To  Richard  Owen.1  Letter  25 

Down  [Mar.  26th,   1848]. 
My  dear  Owen 

I  do  not  know  whether  your  MS.  instructions  are  sent 
in  ;  but  even   if  they  are  not  sent  in,  I  daresay  what  I   am 

1  Richard  Owen  (1804-92)  was  born  at  Lancaster,  and  educated  at 
the  local  Grammar  School,  where  one  of  his  schoolfellows  was  William 
Whewell,  afterwards  Master  of  Trinity.    He  was  subsequently  apprenticed 
to  a  surgeon  and  apothecary,  and  became  deeply  interested  in  the  study 
of  anatomy.     He  continued  his  medical  training  in  Edinburgh  and  at 
St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital  in  London.     In  1827  Owen  became  assistant 
to  William  Clift  (whose  daughter  Owen  married  in  1835),  Conservator  to 
the  Hunterian  Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons.     It  was  here 
that  he  became  acquainted  with  Cuvier,  at  whose  invitation  he  visited 
Paris,  and  attended  his  lectures  and  those  of  Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire.     The 
publication,  in   1832,  of  the  Memoir  on  the  Pearly  Nautilus  placed  th,e 
author   "  in   the   front  rank   of   anatomical   monographers."     On    Cliffs 
retirement,  Owen  became  sole  Conservator  to  the  Hunterian  Museum, 
and  was  made  first  Hunterian  Professor  of  Comparative  Anatomy  and 
Physiology  at  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons.     In  1S56  he  accepted  the 
post  of  Superintendent  of  the  Natural  History  department  of  the  British 
Museum,  and  shortly  after  his  appointment  he  strongly  urged  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  National  Museum  of  Natural  History,  a  project  which  was 
eventually  carried  into  effect  in   1875.     In  1884  he  was  gazetted  K.C.B. 
Owen  was  a  strong  opponent  of  Darwin's  views,  and  contributed  a  bitter 
and   anonymous   article    on   the    Origin   of  Species   to   the    Edinburgh 
Revieiv  of   i860.     The   position  of  Owen    in   the   history  of  anatomical 
science  has  been  dealt  with  by  Huxley  in  an  essay  incorporated  in  the 
Life  of  Richard  Owen,  by  his  grandson,  the  Rev.  Richard  Owen  (2  vols., 
London,    1894).     Huxley   pays    a  high  tribute  to  Owen's   industry   and 
ability:  "During  more  than  half  a  century  Owen's   industry  remained 
unabated  ;  and  whether  we  consider  the  quality  or  the  quantity  of  the 
work  done,  or  the  wide  range  of  his  labours,  I  doubt  if,  in  the  long  annals 
of  anatomy,  more  is  to  be  placed  to  the  credit  of  any  single  worker." 
The  record  of  his  work  is  "enough,  and  more  than  enough,  to  justify  the 
high  place  in  the  scientific  world  which   Owen  so  long  occupied.     If  I 
mistake  not,  the  historian  of  comparative  anatomy  and  palaeontology  will 
always  assign  to  Owen  a  place  next  to,  and  hardly  lower  than,  that  of 
Cuvier,  who  was  practically  the  creator  of  those  sciences  in  their  modern 
shape,  and  whose  works  must  always  remain  models  of  excellence    in 
their  kind."     On  the  other  hand,  Owen's  contributions  to  philosophical 
anatomy  are  on  a  much  lower  plane  ;  hardly  any  of  his  speculations  in 


60  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  25  going    to  write  will    be  absolutely  superfluous,1  but   I  have 
derived  such  infinitely  great  advantage  from  my  new  simple 
microscope,    in   comparison    with    the  one  which    I    used  on 
board  the  Beagle,  and   which  was   recommended  to    me  by 
R.  Brown,'-  that  I  cannot  forego  the  mere  chance  of  advantage 
of  urging    this   on    you.      The    leading    point   of    difference 
consists   simply   in  having  the  stage   for  saucers  very  large 
and  fixed.     Mine  will  hold    a   saucer  three  inches  in  inside 
diameter.     I   have   never   seen    such  a   microscope    as  mine, 
though   Chevalier's  (from   whose  plan  many  points  of  mine 
are  taken),  of  Paris,    approaches    it    pretty    closely.     I  fully 
appreciate   the    utter   absurdity   of    my   giving    you    advice 
about  means  of  dissecting  ;  but   I    have  appreciated   myself 
the   enormous  disadvantage   of  having  worked   with  a   bad 
instrument,    though    thought    a    few    years    since    the    best. 
Please  to  observe  that  without  you  call  especial   attention  to 
this  point,  those  ignorant  of  Natural  History  will  be  sure  to 
get  one  of  the  fiddling  instruments  sold   in  shops.     If  you 
thought  fit,  I  would  point  out  the  differences,  which,  from  my 
experience,   make   a    useful  microscope  for   the  kind  of  dis- 
section of  the  invertebrates  which  a  person  would  be  likely 
to  attempt  on  board  a  vessel.     But  pray  again  believe  that  I 
feel  the  absurdity  of  this  letter,  and   I  write  merely  from  the 
chance  of  yourself,  possessing  great  skill  and  having  worked 
with  good  instruments,  [not  being]  possibly  fully  aware  what 
an  astonishing  difference  the  kind  of  microscope  makes  for 
those  who  have  not  been  trained  in  skill  for  dissection  under 
water.     When   next   I   come  to  town   (I  was  prevented  last 
time  by  illness)  I  must  call  on  you,  and  report,  for  my  own 
satisfaction,  a  really  (I  think)  curious    point    I    have    made 

this  field  have  stood  the  test  of  investigation  :  "...  I  am  not  sure  that 
any  one  but  the  historian  of  anatomical  science  is  ever  likely  to  recur 
to  them,  and  considering  Owen's  great  capacity,  extensive  learning,  and 
tireless  industry,  that  seems  a  singular  result  of  years  of  strenuous 
labour." 

1  The  results  of  Mr.  Darwin's  experience  given  in  the  above  letter 
were  embodied  by  Prof.  Owen  in  the  section  "  On  the  Use  of  the  Micro- 
scope on  Board  Ship,"  forming  part  of  the  article  "  Zoology "  in  the 
Manual  of  Scientific  Enquiry,  Prepared  for  the  Use  of  Her  Majesty's 
Navy  (London,   1849). 

2  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  145. 


1844—1858]  UNAPPLIED    SCIENCE  6l 

out  in  my  beloved  barnacles.     You  cannot  tell  how  much  I   Letter  25 
enjoyed  my  talk  with  you  here. 

Ever,  my  dear  Owen, 

Yours  sincerely, 

C.  Darwin. 

P.S. — If  I  do  not  hear,  I  shall  understand  that  my  letter  is 
superfluous.  Smith  and  Beck  were  so  pleased  with  the  simple 
microscope  they  made  for  me,  that  they  have  made  another 
as  a  model.  If  you  are  consulted  by  any  young  naturalists, 
do  recommend  them  to  look  at  this.  I  really  feel  quite 
a  personal  gratitude  to  this  form  of  microscope,  and  quite 
a  hatred  to  my  old  one. 

TO  J.  S.  Henslow.  Letter  26 

Down  [April  1st,  1848]. 

Thank  you  for  your  note  and  giving  me  a  chance  of  seeing 
you  in  town  ;  but  it  was  out  of  my  power  to  take  advantage 
of  it,  for  I  had  previously  arranged  to  go  up  to  London  on 
Monday.  I  should  have  much  enjoyed  seeing  you.  Thanks 
also  for  your  address,1  which  I  like  very  much.  The  anecdote 
about  Whewell  and  the  tides  I  had  utterly  forgotten  ;  I 
believe  it  is  near  enough  to  the  truth.  I  rather  demur  to  one 
sentence  of  yours — viz.,  "  However  delightful  any  scientific 
pursuit  may  be,  yet,  if  it  should  be  wholly  unapplied,  it  is  of 
no  more  use  than  building  castles  in  the  air."  Would  not 
your  hearers  infer  from  this  that  the  practical  use  of  each 
scientific  discovery  ought  to  be  immediate  and  obvious  to 
make  it  worthy  of  admiration  ?  What  a  beautiful  instance 
chloroform  is  of  a  discovery  made  from  purely  scientific 
researches,  afterwards  coming  almost  by  chance  into  practical 
use  !  For  myself  I  would,  however,  take  higher  ground,  for 
I  believe  there  exists,  and  I  feel  within  me,  an  instinct  for  truth, 
or  knowledge  or  discovery,  of  something  of  the  same  nature  as 
the  instinct  of  virtue,  and  that  our  having  such  an  instinct 
is  reason  enough  for  scientific  researches  without  any 
practical  results  ever  ensuing  from  them.     You  will  wonder 

1  An  introductory  lecture  delivered  in  March  1848  at  the  first  meeting 
of  a  Society  "for  giving  instructions  to  the  working  classes  in  Ipswich  in 
various  branches  of  science,  and  more  especially  in  natural  history " 
{Memoir  of  the  Rev.  J.  S.  Henslow,  by  Leonard  Jenyns,  p.  150). 


62  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  26  what  makes  me  run  on  so,  but  I  have  been  working  very 
hard  for  the  last  eighteen  months  on  the  anatomy,  etc.,  of  the 
Cirripcdia  (on  which  I  shall  publish  a  monograph),  and  some 
of  my  friends  laugh  at  me,  and  I  fear  the  study  of  the 
Cirripcdia  will  ever  remain  "  wholly  unapplied,"  and  yet  I 
feel  that  such  study  is  better  than  castle-building. 

Letter  27  To  J.  D.  Hooker,  at  Dr.  Falconer's,  Botanic  Garden,  Calcutta. 

Down,  May  ioth,  1848. 

I  was  indeed  delighted  to  sec  your  handwriting  ;  but  I 
felt  almost  sorry  when  I  beheld  how  long  a  letter  you  had 
written.  I  know  that  you  are  indomitable  in  work,  but 
remember  how  precious  your  time  is,  and  do  not  waste  it  on 
your  friends,  however  much  pleasure  you  may  give  them. 
Such  a  letter  would  have  cost  me  half-a-day's  work.  How 
capitally  you  seem  going  on  !  I  do  envy  you  the  sight  of  all 
the  glorious  vegetation.  I  am  much  pleased  and  surprised 
that  you  have  been  able  to  observe  so  much  in  the  animal 
world.  No  doubt  you  keep  a  journal,  and  an  excellent  one 
it  will  be,  I  am  sure,  when  published.  All  these  animal  facts 
will  tell  capitally  in  it.  I  can  quite  comprehend  the  difficulty 
you  mention  about  not  knowing  what  is  known  zoologically  in 
India  ;  but  facts  observed,  as  you  will  observe  them,  are  none 
the  worse  for  reiterating.    Did  you  see  Mr.  Blyth1  in  Calcutta? 

'  Edward  Blyth  (1810-73),  distinguished  for  his  knowledge  of  Indian 
birds  and  mammals.  He  was  for  twenty  years  Curator  of  the  Museum 
of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal,  a  collection  which  was  practically 
created  by  his  exertions.  Gould  spoke  of  him  as  "the  founder  of  the 
study "  of  Zoology  in  India.  His  published  writings  are  voluminous, 
and  include,  in  addition  to  those  bearing  his  name,  numerous  articles  in 
the  Field,  Land  and  Water,  etc.,  under  the  signature  Zoophilia  or  Z.  He 
also  communicated  his  knowledge  to  others  with  unsparing  generosity, 
yet — doubtless  the  chief  part  of  his  "  extraordinary  fund  of  information  " 
died  with  him.  Darwin  had  much  correspondence  with  him,  and  always 
spoke  of  him  with  admiration  for  his  powers  of  observation  and  for  his 
judgment.  The  letters  to  Blyth  have  unfortunately  not  come  into  our 
hands.  The  indebtedness  of  Darwin  to  Blyth  may  be  roughly  gauged 
by  the  fact  that  the  references  under  his  name  in  the  index  to  Animals 
and  Plants  occupy  nearly  a  column.  For  further  information  about  Blyth 
see  Grote's  introduction  to  the  "  Catalogue  of  Mammals  and  Birds  of  Burma, 
by  the  late  E.  Blyth  "  in  the  Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal. 
Part  II.,  Extra  number,  August  1875  ;  also  an  obituary  notice  published 


1844—1858]  INSULAR    FLORAS  6$ 

He  would  be  a  capital  man  to  tell  you  what  is  known  about  Letter  27 
Indian  Zoology,  at  least  in  the  Vertebrata.  He  is  a  very 
clever,  odd,  wild  fellow,  who  will  never  do  what  he  could  do, 
from  not  sticking  to  any  one  subject.  By  the  way,  if  you  should 
see  him  at  any  time,  try  not  to  forget  to  remember  me  very 
kindly  to  him  ;  I  liked  all  I  saw  of  him.  Your  letter  was  the 
very  one  to  charm  me,  with  all  its  facts  for  my  Species-book, 
and  truly  obliged  I  am  for  so  kind  a  remembrance  of  mc.  Do 
not  forget  to  make  enquiries  about  the  origin,  even  if  only 
traditionally  known,  of  any  varieties  of  domestic  quadrupeds, 
birds,  silkworms,  etc.  Are  there  domestic  bees  ?  if  so  hives 
ought  to  be  brought  home.  Of  all  the  facts  you  mention, 
that  of  the  wild  [illegible],  when  breeding  with  the  domestic, 
producing  offspring  somewhat  sterile,  is  the  most  surprising  : 
surely  they  must  be  different  species.  Most  zoologists  would 
absolutely  disbelieve  such  a  statement,  and  consider  the  result 
as  a  proof  that  they  were  distinct  species.  I  do  not  go  so  far 
as  that,  but  the  case  seems  highly  improbable.  Blyth  has 
studied  the  Indian  Ruminantia.  I  have  been  much  struck 
about  what  you  say  of  lowland  plants  ascending  mountains, 
but  the  alpine  not  descending.  How  I  do  hope  you  will  get 
up  some  mountains  in  Borneo  ;  how  curious  the  result  will  be  ! 
By  the  way,  I  never  heard  from  you  what  affinity  the  Maldive 
flora  has,  which  is  cruel,  as  you  tempted  me  by  making  me 
guess.  I  sometimes  groan  over  your  Indian  journey,  when 
I  think  over  all  your  locked  up  riches.  When  shall  I  see 
a  memoir  on  Insular  floras,  and  on  the  Pacific  ?  What  a 
grand  subject  Alpine  floras  of  the  world  l  would  be,  as  far  as 
known  ;  and  then  you  have  never  given  a  coup  d'ceil  on  the 
similarity  and  dissimilarity  of  Arctic  and  Antarctic  floras. 
Well,  thank  heavens,  when  you  do  come  back  you  will  be 
nolens  volens  a  fixture.  I  am  particularly  glad  you  have  been 
at  the  Coal  ;  I  have  often  since  you  went  gone  on  maunder- 
ing on    the    subject,  and    I    shall    never  rest  easy  in   Down 

at  the  time  of  his  death  in  the  Field.  Mr.  Grote's  Memoir  contains  a 
list  of  Blyth's  writings  which  occupies  nearly  seven  pages  of  the  Journal, 
We  are  indebted  to  Professor  Newton  for  calling  our  attention  to  the 
sources  of  this  note. 

1  Mr.  William  Botting  Hemsley,  F.R.S.,  of  the  Royal  Gardens,  Kew, 
is  now  engaged  on  a  monograph  of  the  high-level  Alpine  plants  of 
the  world. 


64  EVOLUTION  [Chai\  II 

Letter  27  churchyard  without  the  problem  be  solved  by  some  one 
before  I  die.  Talking  of  dying  makes  me  tell  you  that  my 
confounded  stomach  is  much  the  same  ;  indeed,  of  late  has 
been  rather  worse,  but  for  the  last  year,  I  think,  I  have  been 
able  to  do  more  work.  I  have  done  nothing  besides  the 
barnacles,  except,  indeed,  a  little  theoretical  paper  on  erratic 
boulders,1  and  Scientific  Geological  Instructions  for  the 
Admiralty  Volume,'-  which  cost  me  some  trouble.  This  work, 
which  is  edited  by  Sir  J.  Herschel,  is  a  very  good  job,  inas- 
much as  the  captains  of  men-of-war  will  now  see  that  the 
Admiralty  cares  for  science,  and  so  will  favour  naturalists  on 
board.  As  for  a  man  who  is  not  scientific  by  nature,  I  do 
not  believe  instructions  will  do  him  any  good  ;  and  if  he  be 
scientific  and  good  for  anything  the  instructions  will  be 
superfluous.  I  do  not  know  who  does  the  Botany ;  Owen 
does  the  Zoology,  and  I  have  sent  him  an  account  of  my  new 
simple  microscope,  which  I  consider  perfect,  even  better  than 
yours  by  Chevalier.  N.B.  I  have  got  a  £"  object-glass,  and 
it  is  grand.  I  have  been  getting  on  well  with  my  beloved 
Cirripedia,  and  get  more  skilful  in  dissection.  I  have  worked 
out  the  nervous  system  pretty  well  in  several  genera,  and 
made  out  their  ears  and  nostrils,3  which  were  quite  unknown. 
I  have  lately  got  a  bisexual  cirripede,  the  male  being  micro- 
scopically small  and  parasitic  within  the  sack  of  the  female.  I 
tell  you  this  to  boast  of  my  species  theory,  for  the  nearest 
closely  allied  genus  to  it  is,  as  usual,  hermaphrodite,  but  I  had 
observed    some  minute   parasites    adhering  to  it,  and  these 

1  "  On  the  Transportal  of  Erratic  Boulders  from  a  Lower  to  a  Higher 
Level1'  (Quart.  Journ.  Geo/.  Soc,  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  315-23.  1S48).  In  this 
paper  Darwin  favours  the  view  that  the  transport  of  boulders  was  effected 
by  coast-ice.  An  earlier  paper  entitled  "  Notes  on  the  Effects  produced 
by  the  ancient  Glaciers  of  Caernarvonshire,  and  on  the  Boulders  trans- 
ported by  floating  Ice"  (Phil.  Mag.  1S42,  p.  352)  is  spoken  of  by  Sir 
Archibald  Geikie  as  standing  "almost  at  the  top  of  the  long  list  of 
English  contributions  to  the  history  of  the  Ice  Age"  (Charles  Darwin, 
Nature  Series,  p.  23). 

3  A  Manual  of  Scientific  Enquiry,  prepared  for  the  use  of  Her 
Majesty's  Navy,  and  adapted  for  Travellers  in  General.  Edited  by  Sir 
John  F.  W.  Herschel,  Bart.  Section  VI. — Geology — by  Charles  Darwin. 
London,  1849.     See  Life  and  Letters,  pp.  328-9. 

3  For  the  olfactory  sacs  see  Darwin's  Monograph  of  the  Cirripedia, 
1851,  p.  52. 


1844—  1S58]  DE    LA    BECIIE  65 

parasites  I  now  can  show  are  supplemental  males,  the  male  Letter  27 
organs  in  the  hermaphrodite  being  unusually  small,  though 
perfect  and  containing  zoosperms :  so  we  have  almost  a 
polygamous  animal,  simple  females  alone  being  wanting.  I 
never  should  have  made  this  out,  had  not  my  species  theory 
convinced  me,  that  an  hermaphrodite  species  must  pass  into 
a  bisexual  species  by  insensibly  small  stages  ;  and  here  we 
have  it,  for  the  male  organs  in  the  hermaphrodite  are  be- 
ginning to  fail,  and  independent  males  ready  formed.  But 
I  can  hardly  explain  what  I  mean,  and  you  will  perhaps  wish 
my  barnacles  and  species  theory  al  Diavolo  together.  But 
I  don't  care  what  you  say,  my  species  theory  is  all  gospel. 
We  have  had  only  one  party  here  :  viz.,  of  the  Lyells,  Forbes, 
Owen,  and   Ramsay,  and  we  both  missed  you  and  Falconer 

very  much I  know  more  of  your  history  than  you  will 

suppose,  for  Miss  Henslow  most  good-naturedly  sent  me 
a  packet  of  your  letters,  and  she  wrote  me  so  nice  a  little 
note  that  it  made  me  quite  proud.  I  have  not  heard  of 
anything  in  the  scientific  line  which  would  interest  you. 
Sir  H.  De  la  Beche  x  gave  a  very  long  and  rather  dull  address; 
the  most  interesting  part  was  from  Sir  J.  Ross.  Mr.  Becte 
Jukes  figured  in  it  very  prominently  :  it  really  is  a  very  nice 
quality  in  Sir  Henry,  the  manner  in  which  he  pushes  forward 
his  subordinates.-  Jukes  has  since  read  what  was  considered 
a  very  valuable  paper.  The  man,  not  content  with  moustaches, 
now  sports  an  entire  beard,  and  I  am  sure  thinks  himself  like 
Jupiter  tonans.  There  was  a  short  time  since  a  not  very 
creditable  discussion  at  a  meeting  of  the  Royal  Society,  where 
Owen  fell  foul  of  Mantell  with  fury  and  contempt  about 
belemnites.  What  wretched  doings  come  from  the  order 
of  fame  ;  the  love  of  truth  alone  would  never  make  one  man 
attack  another  bitterly.  My  paper  is  full,  so  I  must  wish  you 
with  all  my  heart  farewell.  Heaven  grant  that  your  health 
may  keep  good. 

1  The  Presidential  Address  delivered  by  De  la  Heche  before  the 
Geological  Society  in  1848  (Quart.  Journ.  Geo/.  Soc,  Vol.  IV.,  Proceeding  r, 
p.  xxi,  1848).  Sir  Henry  Thomas  De  la  Beche  (1796 — 1855)  was  appointed 
Director  of  the  Ordnance  Geological  Survey  in  1832  ;  his  private  under- 
taking to  make  a  geological  survey  of  the  mining  districts  of  Devon 
and  Cornwall  led  the  Government  to  found  the  National  Survey.  He 
was  also  instrumental  in  forming  the  Museum  of  Practical  Geology  in 
Jermyn  Street. 

5 


66  EVOLUTION  [Chap.I1 

Letter  28  To  J.  S.  Ilenslow. 

The  Lodge,   Malvern,   May  6lh,   1849. 

Your  kind  note  has  been  forwarded  to  me  here.  You  will 
be  surprised  to  hear  that  we  all — children,  servants,  and  all — 
have  been  here  for  nearly  two  months.  All  last  autumn  and 
wintcrTny  health  grew  worse  and  worse  :  incessant  sickness, 
tremulous  hands,  and  swimming  head.  I  thought  I  was 
going  the  way  of  all  flesh.  Having  heard  of  much  success 
in  some  cases  from  the  cold-water  cure,  I  determined  to 
give  up  all  attempts  to  do  anything  and  come  here  and  put 
myself  under  Dr.  Gully.  It  has  answered  to  a  considerable 
extent  :  my  sickness  much  checked  and  considerable  strength 
gained.  Dr.  G.,  moreover  (and  I  hear  he  rarely  speaks 
confidently),  tells  me  he  has  little  doubt  but  that  he  can  cure 
me  in  the  course  of  time — time,  however,  it  will  take.  I  have 
experienced  enough  to  feel  sure  that  the  cold-water  cure  is 
a  great  and  powerful  agent  and  upsetter  of  all  constitutional 
habits.  Talking  of  habits,  the  cruel  wretch  has  made  me 
leave  off  snuff — that  chief  solace  of  life.  We  thank  you  most 
sincerely  for  your  prompt  and  early  invitation  to  Hitcham  for 
the  British  Association  for  1850  :l  if  I  am  made  well  and 
strong,  most  gladly  will  I  accept  it  ;  but  as  I  have  been 
hitherto,  a  drive  every  day  of  half  a  dozen  miles  would  be 
more  than  I  could  stand  with  attending  any  of  the  sections. 
I  intend  going  to  Birmingham  2  if  able  ;  indeed,  I  am  bound 
to  attempt  it,  for  I  am  honoured  beyond  all  measure  in 
being  one  of  the  Vice-Presidents.  I  am  uncommonly  glad 
you  will  be  there  ;  I  fear,  however,  we  shall  not  have  any 
such  charming  trips  as  Nuneham  and  Dropmore.3  We  shall 
stay  here  till  at  least  June  1st,  perhaps  till  July  1st  ;  and 
I  shall  have  to  go  on  with  the  aqueous  treatment  at  home 
for  several  more  months.  One  most  singular  effect  of  the 
treatment  is  that  it  induces  in  most  people,  and  eminently 
in  my  case,  the  most  complete  stagnation  of  mind.  I  have 
ceased  to  think  even  of  barnacles  !     I  heard  some  time  since 

1  The  invitation  was  probably  not  for  1850,  but  for  185 1,  when  the 
Association  met  at  Ipswich. 

3  The  Association  met  at  Birmingham  in  1849. 

3  In  a  letter  to  Hooker  (Oct.  12th,  1849)  Darwin  speaks  of  "that 
heavenly  day  at  Dropmore."    {Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  379.) 


1844-1858]  NOMENCLATURE  Qy 

from  Hooker.  .  .  .  How  capitally  he  seems  to  have  succeeded  Letter  28 
in  all  his  enterprises !  You  must  be  very  busy  now.  I 
happened  to  be  thinking  the  other  day  over  the  Gamlingay 
trip  to  the  Lilies  of  the  Valley: l  ah,  those  were  delightful  days 
when  one  had  no  such  organ  as  a  stomach,  only  a  mouth  and 
the  masticating  appurtenances.  I  am  very  much  surprised 
at  what  you  say,  that  men  are  beginning  to  work  in  earnest 
[at]  Botany.  What  a  loss  it  will  be  for  Natural  History  that 
you  have  ceased  to  reside  all  the  year  in  Cambridge ! 

To  J.  F.  Royle.*  Letter  2g 

Down,  Sept.  1st  [184-  ?]. 
I  return  you  with  very  many  thanks  your  valuable  work. 
I  am  sure  I  have  not  lost  any  slip  or  disarranged  the  loose 
numbers.  I  have  been  interested  by  looking  through  the 
volumes,  though  I  have  not  found  quite  so  much  as  I  had 
thought  possible  about  the  varieties  of  the  Indian  domestic 
animals  and  plants,  and  the  attempts  at  introduction  have 
been  too  recent  for  the  effects  (if  any)  of  climate  to  have  been 
developed.  I  have,  however,  been  astonished  and  delighted 
at  the  evidence  of  the  energetic  attempts  to  do  good  by  such 
numbers  of  people,  and  most  of  them  evidently  not  personally 
interested  in  the  result.  Long  may  our  rule  flourish  in  India. 
I  declare  all  the  labour  shown  in  these  transactions  is  enough 
by  itself  to  make  one  proud  of  one's  countrymen. 

To  Hugh  Strickland.  Letter  30 

The  first  paragraph  of  this  letter  is  published  in  the  Life  and 
Letters,  I.,  p.  372,  as  part  of  a  series  of  letters  to  Strickland,  beginning 
at  p.  365,  where  a  biographical  note  by  Professor  Newton  is  also  given. 
Professor  Newton  wrote  :  "In  1841  he  brought  the  subject  of  Natural 
History  Nomenclature  before  the  British  Association,  and  prepared  the 

1  The  Lily  of  the  Valley  {Convallaria  majalis)  is  recorded  from 
Gamlingay  by  Professor  Babington  in  his  Flora  of  Cambridgeshire 
p.  234.     (London,   i860.) 

2  John  Forbes  Royle  (1800-58)  was  originally  a  surgeon  in  the 
H.E.I.C.  Medical  Service,  and  was  for  some  years  Curator  at  Saharunpur. 
From  1837-56  he  was  Professor  of  Materia  Medica  at  King's  College, 
London.  He  wrote  principally  on  economic  and  Indian  botany.  One 
of  his  chief  works  was  Illustrations  of  the  Botany  and  other  branches  of 
the  Natural  History  of  the  Himalayan  Mountains  and  of  the  Flora 
of  Cashmere.     (London,   1839.) 


68  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

code  of  rules  for  Zoological  Nomenclature,  now  known  by  his  name — 
the  principles  of  which  are  very  generally  accepted."  Mr.  Darwin's 
reasons  against  appending  the  describer's  name  to  that  of  the  species 
are  given  in  Life  ami  Letters,  p.  366.  The  present  letter  is  of  interest 
as  giving  additional  details  in  regard  to  Darwin's  difficulties. 

Letter  30  '  Down,   Feb.   10th  [1849]. 

I  have  again  to  thank  you  cordially  for  your  letter.  Your 
remarks  shall  fructify  to  some  extent,  and  I  will  try  to  be 
more  faithful  to  rigid  virtue  and  priority  ;  but  as  for  calling 
Balantts  "  Lepas  "  (which  I  did  not  think  of)  I  cannot  do  it, 
my  pen  won't  write  it— it  is  impossible.  I  have  great  hopes 
some  of  my  difficulties  will  disappear,  owing  to  wrong  dates 
in  Agassiz  and  to  my  having  to  run  several  genera  into  one  ; 
for  I  have  as  yet  gone,  in  but  few  cases,  to  original  sources. 
With  respect  to  adopting  my  own  notions  in  my  Cirripedia 
book,  I  should  not  like  to  do  so  without  I  found  others 
approved,  and  in  some  public  way  ;  nor  indeed  is  it  well 
adapted,  as  I  can  never  recognise  a  species  without  I  have 
the  original  specimen,  which  fortunately  I  have  in  many  cases 
in  the  British  Museum.  Thus  far  I  mean  to  adopt  my  notion, 
in  never  putting  tnihi  or  Darwin  after  my  own  species,  and  in 
the  anatomical  text  giving  no  authors'  names  at  all,  as 
the  systematic  part  will  serve  for  those  who  want  to  know 
the  history  of  the  species  as  far  as  I  can  imperfectly  work 
it  out. 

I  have  had  a  note  from  W.  Thompson  :  this  morning,  and 
he  tells  me  Ogleby  has  some  scheme  identical  almost  with  mine. 
I  feel  pretty  sure  there  is  a  growing  general  aversion  to  the 
appendage  of  author's  name,  except  in  cases  where  necessary. 
Now  at  this  moment  I  have  seen  specimens  ticketed  with  a 
specific  name  and  no  reference — such  are  hopelessly  incon- 
venient ;  but  I  declare  I  would  rather  (as  saving  time)  have  a 
reference  to  some  second  systematic  work  than  to  the  original 
author,  for  I  have  cases  of  this  which  hardly  help  me  at  all, 
for  I  know  not  where  to  look  amongst  endless  periodical 
foreign  papers.  On  the  other  hand,  one  can  get  hold  of  most 
systematic  works  and  so  follow  up  the  scent,  and  a  species 
does  not  long  lie  buried  exclusively  in  a  paper. 

1  Mr.  Thompson  is  described  in  the  preface  to  the  Lepadida  as  "  the 
distinguished  Natural  Historian  of  Ireland." 


,844—185^]  NOMENCLATURE  69 

I  thank  you  sincerely  for  your  very  kind  offer  of  occa-  Letter  30 
sionally  assisting  me  with  your  opinion,  and  I  will  not 
trespass  much.  I  have  a  case,  but  [it  is  one]  about  which  1 
am  almost  sure  ;  and  so  to  save  you  writing,  if  I  conclude 
rightly,  pray  do  not  answer,  and  I  shall  understand  silence  as 
assent. 

Olfcrs  in  1814  made  Lepas  aurita  Linn,  into  the  genus 
ConcJioderma  ;  [Oken]  in  1815  gave  the  name  Branta  to  Lepas 
aurita  and  vittata,  and  by  so  doing  he  alters  essentially 
Olfers'  generic  definition.  Oken  was  right  (as  it  turns  out), 
and  Lepas  aurita  and  vittata  must  form  together  one  genus.1 
(I  leave  out  of  question  a  multitude  of  subsequent  synonyms.) 
Now  I  suppose  I  must  retain  Conchoderma  of  Olfers.  I 
cannot  make  out  a  precise  rule  in  the  British  Association 
Report  for  this.  When  a  genus  is  cut  into  two  I  see  that  the 
old  name  is  retained  for  part  and  altered  to  it  ;  so  I  suppose 
the  definition  may  be  enlarged  to  receive  another  species — 
though  the  cases  are  somewhat  different.  I  should  have  had 
no  doubt  if  Lepas  aurita  and  vittata  had  been  made  into  two 
genera,  for  then  when  run  together  the  oldest  of  the  two  would 
have  been  retained.  Certainly  to  put  ConcJioderma  Olfers  is 
not  quite  correct  when  applied  to  the  two  species,  for  such 
was  not  Olfers'  definition  and  opinion.  If  I  do  not  hear,  I 
shall  retain   Conchoderma  for  the  two  species.  .  .  . 

P.S. — Will  you  by  silence  give  consent  to  the  following  ? 

Linnaeus  gives  no  type  to  his  genus  Lepas,  though  L. 
balanus  comes  first.  Several  oldish  authors  have  used  Lepas 
exclusively  for  the  pedunculate  division,  and  the  name  has 
been  given  to  the  family  and  compounded  in  sub-generic 
names.  Now,  this  shows  that  old  authors  attached  the  name 
Lepas  more  particularly  to  the  pedunculate  division.  Now,  if 
I  were  to  use  Lepas  for  Anatifera'1  I  should  get  rid  of  the 
difficulty  of  the  second  edition  of  Hill  and  of  the  difficulty 
of  Anatifera  vel  Anatifa.  Linnaeus's  generic  description  is 
equally  applicable  to  Anatifera  and  Balanus,  though  the  latter 
stands  first.     Must  the  mere  precedence  rigorously  outweigh 

1  In  the  Monograph  on  the  Cirripcdia  (Lepadidae)  the  names  used 
are  Conchoderma  aurita  and  virgata. 

2  Anatifera  and  Anatifa  were  used  as  generic  names  for  what  Linnaeus 
and  Darwin  called  Lepas  anatifera. 


JO  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  30  the  apparent  opinion  of  many  old  naturalists  ?  As  for  using 
Lepas  in  place  of  Balanus,  I  cannot.  Every  one  will  under- 
stand what  is  meant  by  Lepas  Anatifera,  so  that  convenience 
would  be  wonderfully  thus  suited.  If  I  do  not  hear,  I  shall 
understand   I   have  your  consent. 

Letter  31  j.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin. 

In  the  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  392,  is  a  letter  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  from 
Mr.  Darwin,  to  whom  the  former  had  dedicated  his  Himalayan  Journals. 
Mr.  Darwin  there  wrote:  "Your  letter,  received  this  morning,  has 
interested  me  extremely,  and  I  thank  you  sincerely  for  telling  me  your  old 
thoughts  and  aspirations."  The  following  is  the  letter  referred  to,  which 
at  our  request  Sir  Joseph  has  allowed  us  to  publish. 

Kew,  March  1st,  1854. 

Now  that  my  book  '  has  been  publicly  acknowledged  to 
be  of  some  value,  I  feel  bold  to  write  to  you  ;  for,  to  tell  you 
the  truth,  I  have  never  been  without  a  misgiving  that  the 
dedication  might  prove  a  very  bad  compliment,  however 
kindly  I  knew  you  would  receive  it.  The  idea  of  the  dedica- 
tion has  been  present  to  me  from  a  very  early  date  :  it  was 
formed  during  the  Antarctic  voyage,  out  of  love  for  your  own 
Journal,  and  has  never  deserted  me  since ;  nor  would  it,  I  think, 
had  I  never  known  more  of  you  than  by  report  and  as  the 
author  of  the  said  Naturalist's  Journal.  Short  of  the  gratifica- 
tion I  felt  in  getting  the  book  out,  I  know  no  greater  than 
your  kind,  hearty  acceptation  of  the  dedication  ;  and,  had  the 
reviewers  gibbeted  me,  the  dedication  would  alone  have  given 
me  real  pain.  I  have  no  wish  to  assume  a  stoical  indifference 
to  public  opinion,  for  I  am  well  alive  to  it,  and  the  critics 
might  have  irritated  me  sorely,  but  they  could  never  have 
caused  me  the  regret  that  the  association  of  your  name  with 
a  bad  book  of  mine  would  have. 

You  will  laugh  when  I  tell  you  that,  my  book  out,  I  feel 
past  the  meridian  of  life !  But  you  do  not  know  how  from 
my  earliest  childhood  I  nourished  and  cherished  the  desire  to 
make  a  creditable  journey  in  a  new  country,  and  write  such 
a  respectable  account  of  its  natural  features  as  should  give 
me  a  niche  amongst  the  scientific  explorers  of  the  globe  I 
inhabit,  and  hand  my  name  down  as  a  useful  contributor  of 

1  Himalayan  Journals,  2  vols.     London,  1854. 


1844—1858]  DARWIN    AND    HUXLEY  J\ 

original  matter.  A  combination  of  most  rare  advantages  has  Letter  31 
enabled  me  to  gain  as  much  of  my  object  as  contents  me,  for 
I  never  wished  to  be  greatest  amongst  you,  nor  did  rivalry 
ever  enter  my  thoughts.  No  ulterior  object  has  ever  been 
present  to  me  in  this  pursuit.  My  ambition  is  fully  gratified 
by  the  satisfactory  completion  of  my  task,  and  I  am  now 
happy  to  go  on  jog-trot  at  Botany  till  the  end  of  my  days — 
downhill,  in  one  sense,  all  the  way.  I  shall  never  have  such 
another  object  to  work  for,  nor  shall  I  feel  the  want  of  it.  .  .  . 
As  it  is,  the  craving  of  thirty  years  is  satisfied,  and  I  now  look 
back  on  life  in  a  way  I  never  could  previously.  There  never 
was  a  past  hitherto  to  me.  The  phantom  was  always  in  view  ; 
mayhap  it  is  only  a  "  ridiculus  mus  "  after  all,  but  it  is  big 
enough  for  me.  .  .  . 

The  story  of  Huxley's  life  has  been  fully  given  in  the  interesting 
biography  edited  by  Mr.  Leonard  Huxley.1  Readers  of  this  book  and 
of  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin  gain  an  insight  into  the 
relationship  between  this  pair  of  friends  to  which  any  words  of  ours 
can  add  but  little.  Darwin  realised  to  the  full  the  essential  strength 
of  Mr.  Huxley's  nature  ;  he  knew,  as  all  the  world  now  knows,  the 
delicate  sense  of  honour  of  his  friend,  and  he  was  ever  inclined  to 
lean  on  his  guidance  in  practical  matters,  as  on  an  elder  brother. 
Of  Mr.  Huxley's  dialectical  and  literary  skill  he  was  an  enthusiastic 
admirer,  and  he  never  forgot  what  his  theories  owed  to  the  fighting 
powers  of  his  "general  agent."2  Huxley's  estimate  of  Darwin  is  very 
interesting  :  he  valued  him  most  highly  for  what  was  so  strikingly  char- 
acteristic of  himself— the  love  of  truth.  He  spoke  of  finding  in  him 
"  something  bigger  than  ordinary  humanity— an  unequalled  simplicity  and 
directness  of  purpose— a  sublime  unselfishness." 3  The  same  point  of  view 
comes  out  in  Huxley's  estimate  of  Darwin's  mental  power.4  "  He  had 
a  clear,  rapid  intelligence,  a  great  memory,  a  vivid  imagination,  and  what 
made  his  greatness  was  the  strict  subordination  of  all  these  to  his  love 
of  truth."  This,  as  an  analysis  of  Darwin's  mental  equipment,  seems  to 
us  incomplete,  though  we  do  not  pretend  to  mend  it.  We  do  not  think 
it  is  possible  to  dissect  and  label  the  complex  qualities  which  go  to  make 
up  that  which  we  all  recognise  as  genius.  But,  if  we  may  venture  to 
criticise,  we  would  say  that  Mr.  Huxley's  words  do  not  seem  to  cover 


1  Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Henry  Huxley.     London,  1900. 

'  Ibid.,  I.,  p.  171. 
Ibid.,  1 1.,  p.  94.     Huxley  is  speaking  of  Gordon's  death,  and  goes  on  : 
"Of  all  the  people  whom   I  have  met  with  in  my  life,  he  and   Darwin 
are  the  two  in  whom  1  have  found,"  etc. 

4  Ibid.,  II.,  p.  39. 


72  EVOLUTION  [Chat.  II 

that  supreme  power  of  seeing  and  thinking  what  the  rest  of  the  world 
had  overlooked,  which  was  one  of  Darwin's  most  striking  characteristics. 
As  throwing  light  on  the  quality  of  their  friendship,  we  give  below  a  letter 
which  has  already  appeared  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of  T.  H.  Huxley, 
I.,  p.  366.  Mr.  L.  Huxley  gives  an  account  of  the  breakdown  n  health 
which  convinced  Huxley's  friends  that  rest  and  relief  from  anxiety  must 
be  found  for  him.  Mr.  L.  Huxley  aptly  remarks  of  the  letter,  "It  is 
difficult  to  say  whether  it  docs  more  honour  to  him  who  sent  it  or  to  him 
who  received  it." ' 

Letter  32  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Down,  April  23rd,  1873. 

My  dear  Huxley 

I  have  been  asked  by  some  of  your  friends  (eighteen  in 
number)  to  inform  you  that  they  have  placed,  through  Robarts, 
Lubbock  &  Co.,  the  sum  of  £2,100  to  your  account  at  your 
bankers.  We  have  done  this  to  enable  you  to  get  such 
complete  rest  as  you  may  require  for  the  re-establishment  of 
your  health  ;  and  in  doing  this  we  are  convinced  that  we  act 
for  the  public  interest,  as  well  as  in  accordance  with  our  most 
earnest  desires.  Let  me  assure  you  that  we  are  all  your 
warm  personal  friends,  and  that  there  is  not  a  stranger  or 
mere  acquaintance  amongst  us.  If  you  could  have  heard 
what  was  said,  or  could  have  read  what  was,  as  I  believe,  our 
inmost  thoughts,  you  would  know  that  we  all  feel  towards  you, 
as  we  should  to  an  honoured  and  much  loved  brother.  I  am 
sure  that  you  will  return  this  feeling,  and  will  therefore  be 
glad  to  give  us  the  opportunity  of  aiding  you  in  some  degree, 
as  this  will  be  a  happiness  to  us  to  the  last  day  of  our  lives. 
Let  me  add  that  our  plan  occurred  to  several  of  your  friends 
at  nearly  the  same  time  and  quite  independently  of  one 
another. 

My  dear  Huxley, 

Your  affectionate  friend, 

Charles  Darwin. 

1  Huxley's  Life,  I.,  p.  366.  Mr.  Darwin  left  to  Mr.  Huxley  a  legacy 
of  £1,000,  "as  a  slight  memorial  of  my  lifelong  affection  and  respect 
for  him." 


f^-is  (>/*/(•/ tisuL     't/wCc 


'Mm 


.  y.  ^yt .  k  yft/  \/< 


T#5J. 


<•'/■ 


■ 


1844—1858]  ARCHETYPE  71 

To  T.  II.  Huxley. 

The  following  letter  is  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  long  series  addressed 

to  Mr.  Huxley. 

Down,  April  23rd  [1854]. 

My  dear  Sir 

I  have  got  out  all  the  specimens,  which  I  have  thought 
could  by  any  possibility  be  of  any  use  to  you  ;  but  I  have  not 
looked  at  them,  and  know  not  what  state  they  are  in,  but 
should  be  much  pleased  if  they  are  of  the  smallest  use  to 
you.  I  enclose  a  catalogue  of  habitats :  I  thought  my 
notes  would  have  turned  out  of  more  use.  I  have  copied 
out  such  few  points  as  perhaps  would  not  be  apparent  in 
preserved  specimens.  The  bottle  shall  go  to  Mr.  Gray  on 
Thursday  next  by  our  weekly  carrier. 

I  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  paper  on  the  Mollusca  ;l 
I  have  read  it  all  with  much  interest :  but  it  would  be 
ridiculous  in  me  to  make  any  remarks  on  a  subject  on 
which  I  am  so  utterly  ignorant  ;  but  I  can  see  its  high 
importance.  The  discovery  of  the  type  or  "idea"2  (in  yo*ir 
sense,  for  I  detest  the  word  as  used  by  Owen,  Agassiz  &  Co.) 
of  each  great  class,  I  cannot  doubt,  is  one  of  the  very  highest 
ends  of  Natural  History  ;  and  certainly  most  interesting  to 
the  worker-out.  Several  of  your  remarks  have  interested 
me :  I  am,  however,  surprised  at  what  you  say  versus 
"anamorphism,"3  I  should  have  thought  that  the  archetype 
in   imagination  was  always  in   some  degree  embryonic,  and 

1  The  paper  of  Huxley's  is  "  On  the  Morphology  of  the  Cephalous 
Mollusca,  etc."  {Phil.  Trans.  R.  Soc,  Vol.  143,  Part  I.,  1853,  p.  29). 

3  Huxley  defines  his  use  of  the  word  "archetype"  at  p.  50:  "All 
that  I  mean  is  the  conception  of  a  form  embodying  the  most  general 
propositions  that  can  be  affirmed  respecting  the  Cephalous  Mollusca, 
standing  in  the  same  relation  to  them  as  the  diagram  to  a  geometrical 
theorem,  and  like  it,  at  once,  imaginary  and  true." 

3  The  passage  referred  to  is  at  p.  63  :  "  If,  however,  all  Cephalous 
Mollusks  ...  be  only  modifications  by  excess  or  defect  of  the  parts 
of  a  definite  archetype,  then,  I  think,  it  follows  as  a  necessary  con- 
sequence, that  no  anamorphism  takes  place  in  this  group.  There  is 
no  progression  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  type,  but  merely  a  more  or 
less  complete  evolution  of  one  type."  Huxley  seems  to  use  the  term 
anamorphism  in  a  sense  differing  from  that  of  some  writers.  Thus  in 
Jourdan's  Die tionnaire  des  Termes  Usitis dans Tes  Sciences  Naturelles,  1834, 
it  is  defined  as  the  production  of  an  atypical  form  either  by  arrest  or 
excess  of  development. 


74  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  33  therefore  capable  [of]  and  generally  undergoing  further  de- 
velopment. 

Is  it  not  an  extraordinary  fact,  the  great  difference  in 
position  of  the  heart  in  different  species  of  Cleodora  ? !  I  am 
a  believer  that  when  any  part,  usually  constant,  differs  con- 
siderably in  different  allied  species  that  it  will  be  found 
in  some  degree  variable  within  the  limits  of  the  same  species. 
Thus,  I  should  expect  that  if  great  numbers  of  specimens 
of  some  of  the  species  of  Cleodora  had  been  examined  with 
this  object  in  view,  the  position  of  the  heart  in  some  of 
the  species  would  have  been  found  variable.  Can  you  aid 
me  with  any  analogous  facts  ? 

I  am  very  much  pleased  to  hear  that  you  have  not  given 
up  the  idea  of  noticing  my  cirripedial  volume.  All  that 
1  have  seen  since  confirms  everything  of  any  importance 
stated  in  that  volume — more  especially  I  have  been  able 
rigorously  to  confirm  in  an  anomalous  species,  by  the 
clearest  evidence,  that  the  actual  cellular  contents  of  the 
ovarian  tubes,  by  the  gland-like  action  of  a  modified  portion 
of  the  continuous  tube,  passes  into  the  cementing  stuff:  in 
fact  cirripedes  make  glue  out  of  their  own  unformed  eggs  ! 2 

Pray  believe  me, 

Yours  sincerely, 

C.  Darwin. 
I    told   the  above  case  to  Milne  Edwards,  and   I  saw  he 
did  not  place  the  smallest  belief  in  it. 

Letter  34  To  T.   H.   Huxley. 

Down,  Sept.  2nd,  [1854]. 

My  second  volume  on  the  everlasting  barnacles  is  at  last 
published,3  and  I  will  do  myself  the  pleasure  of  sending  you 
a  copy  to  Jermyn  Street  next  Thursday,  as  I  have  to  send 
another  book  then  to  Mr.  Baily. 

And  now  I  want  to  ask  you  a  favour — namely,  to  answer 
me  two  questions.  As  you  are  so  perfectly  familiar  with 
the  doings,  etc.,  of  all  Continental  naturalists,  I  want  you 
to  tell  me  a  few  names  of  those  whom  you  think  would  care 

1  A  genus  of  Ptcropods. 

2  On  Darwin's  mistake  in  this  point  see  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  2. 

3  A  Monograph  of  the  Sub-class  Cirripcdia.     II.  The  Balanidce,  the 

Verrucida.     Kay  Society,  1854. 


1844-1S58]  THE     VESTIGES  75 

for  my  volume.  I  do  not  mean  in  the  light  of  puffing  my  Letter  34 
book,  but  I  want  not  to  send  copies  to  those  who  from  other 
studies,  age,  etc.,  would  view  it  as  waste  paper.  From 
assistance  rendered  me,  I  consider  myself  bound  to  send 
copies  to:  (1)  Bosquet  of  Maestricht,  (2)  Milne  Edwards, 
(3)  Dana,  (4)  Agassiz,  (5)  MUller,  (6)  W.  Dunker  of  Hesse 
Cassel.  Now  I  have  five  or  six  other  copies  to  distribute, 
and  will  you  be  so  very  kind  as  to  help  me  ?  I  had  thought 
of  Von  Siebold,  Loven,  d'Orbigny,  Kolliker,  Sars,  Krdyer,  etc., 
but  I  know  hardly  anything  about  any  of  them. 

My  second  question,  it  is  merely  a  chance  whether  you 
can  answer,— it  is  whether  I  can  send  these  books  or  any  of 
them  (in  some  cases  accompanied  by  specimens),  through 
the  Royal  Society :  I  have  some  vague  idea  of  having  heard 
that  the  Royal  Society  did  sometimes  thus  assist  members. 

I  have  just  been  reading  your  review  of  the  Vestiges} 
and  the  way  you  handle  a  great  Professor  is  really  exquisite 
and  inimitable.  I  have  been  extremely  interested  in  other 
parts,  and  to  my  mind  it  is  incomparably  the  best  review  \ 
have  read  on  the  Vestiges  ;  but  I  cannot  think  but  that  you 
are  rather  hard  on  the  poor  author.  I  must  think  that  such 
a  book,  if  it  does  no  other  good,  spreads  the  taste  for  Natural 
Science. 

But  I  am  perhaps  no  fair  judge,  for  I  am  almost  as  un- 
orthodox about  species  as  the  Vestiges  itself,  though  I  hope 
not  quite  so  unphilosophical.  How  capitally  you  analyse 
his  notion  about  law.  I  do  not  know  when  I  have  read  a 
review  which  interested  me  so  much.  By  Heavens,  how 
the  blood  must  have  gushed  into  the  capillaries  when  a 
certain  great  man  (whom  with  all  his  faults  I  cannot  help 
liking)  read  it ! 

I  am  rather  sorry  you  do  not  think  more  of  Agassiz's 
embryological  stages,2  for  though  I  saw  how  excessively 
weak  the  evidence  was,  I  was  led  to  hope  in  its  truth. 

1  In  his  chapter  on  the  "Reception  of  the  Origin  of  Species"  {Life 
'and  Letters,  II.,  pp.  188-9),  Mr.  Huxley  wrote:  "and  the  only  review 
1  ever  have  qualms  of  conscience  about,  on  the  ground  of  needless 
savagery,  is  one  I  wrote  on  the  '  Vestiges.' "  The  article  is  in  the  British 
and  Foreign  Medico-chirurgical  Review,  XIII.,  1854,  p.  425.  The  "  great 
man"  referred  to  below  is  Owen:  see  Huxley's  review,  p.  439,  and 
Huxley's  Life.  I.,  p.  94. 

1  See  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  310  :  also  Letter  40,  Note  1,  p.  82 


76  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  35  To  J.   D.    Hooker. 

Down  [1854J. 

With  respect  to  "  highness  "  and  "  lowness,"  my  ideas  are 
only  eclectic  and  not  very  clear.  It  appears  to  me  that  an 
unavoidable  wish  to  compare  all  animals  with  men,  as 
supreme,  causes  some  confusion  ;  and  I  think  that  nothing 
besides  some  such  vague  comparison  is  intended,  or  perhaps 
is  even  possible,  when  the  question  is  whether  two  kingdoms 
such  as  the  Articulata  or  Mollusca  are  the  highest.  Within 
the  same  kingdom  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  "highest" 
usually  means  that  form  which  has  undergone  most "  morpho- 
logical differentiation "  from  the  common  embryo  or  arche- 
type of  the  class  ;  but  then  every  now  and  then  one  is 
bothered  (as  Milne  Edwards  has  remarked)  by  "  retrograde 
development,"  i.e.,  the  mature  animal  having  fewer  and  less 
important  organs  than  its  own  embryo.  The  specialisation  of 
parts  to  different  functions,  or  "  the  division  of  physiological 
labour"  '  of  Milne  Edwards  exactly  agrees  (and  to  my  mind 
is  the  best  definition,  when  it  can  be  applied)  with  what  you 
state  is  your  idea  in  regard  to  plants.  I  do  not  think 
zoologists  agree  in  any  definite  ideas  on  this  subject  ;  and  my 
ideas  are  not  clearer  than  those  of  my  brethren. 

Letter  36  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  July  2nd  [1854]. 

I  have  had  the  house  full  of  visitors,  and  when  I  talk'  I 
can  do  absolutely  nothing  else ;  and  since  then  I  have  been 
poorly  enough,  otherwise  I  should  have  answered  your  letter 
long  before  this,  for  I  enjoy  extremely  discussing  such  points 
as  those  in  your  last  note.  But  what  a  villain  you  are  to 
heap  gratuitous  insults  on  my  elastic  theory  :  you  might  as 
well  call  the  virtue  of  a  lady  elastic,  as  the  virtue  of  a  theory 
accommodating  in  its  favours.  Whatever  you  may  say,  I 
feel  that  my  theory  does  give  me  some  advantages  in  dis- 
cussing these  points.  Hut  to  business  :  I  keep  my  notes  in 
such  a  way,  viz.,  in  bulk,  that  I  cannot  possibly  lay  my  hand 
on  any  reference  ;  nor  as  far  as  the  vegetable  kingdom  is 
concerned  do  I  distinctly  remember  having  read  any  dis- 
cussion on  general  highness   or  lowness,  excepting  Schleidcn 

1  A  slip  of  the  pen  for  "  physiological  division  of  labour." 


1844— 1858]  HIGHNESS     AND    LOW  NESS  77 

(I  fancy)  on  Composite  being  highest.     Ad.  de  Jussieu,1   in   Letter  36 
Arch,  du  Must'ian,  Tome  3,  discusses  the  value  of  characters  of 
degraded  flowers  in  the  Malpighiaceae,  but  I  doubt  whether 
this  at  all  concerns  you.     Mirbel   somewhere  has  discussed 
some  such  question. 

Plants  He  under  an  enormous  disadvantage  in  respect  to 
such  discussions  in  not  passing  through  larval  stages.  I  do 
not  know  whether  you  can  distinguish  a  plant  low  from  non- 
development  from  one  low  from  degradation,  which  theoreti- 
cally, at  least,  are  very  distinct.  I  must  agree  with  Forbes 
that  a  mollusc  may  be  higher  than  one  articulate  animal  and 
lower  than  another ;  if  one  was  asked  which  was  highest  as  a 
whole,  the  Molluscan  or  Articulate  Kingdom,  I  should  look  to 
and  compare  the  highest  in  each,  and  not  compare  their 
archetypes  (supposing  them  to  be  known,  which  they  are 
not). 

But  there  are,  in  my  opinion,  more  difficult  cases  than 
any  we  have  alluded  to,  viz.,  that  of  fish — but  my  ideas  are 
not  clear  enough,  and  I  do  not  suppose  you  would  care  to 
hear  what  I  obscurely  think  on  this  subject.  As  far  as  my 
elastic  theory  goes,  all  I  care  about  is  that  very  ancient 
organisms  (when  different  from  existing)  should  tend  to 
resemble  the  larval  or  cmbryological  stages  of  the  existing. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  what  you  say  about  parallelism  :  I 
am  an  utter  disbeliever  of  any  parallelism  more  than  mere 
accident.  It  is  very  strange,  but  I  think  Forbes  is  often 
rather  fanciful  ;  his  "  Polarity  " 2  makes  me  sick — it  is  like 
"  magnetism  "  turning  a  table. 

If  I  can  think  of  any  one  likely  to  take  your  Illustrations? 
I  will  send  the  advertisement.  If  you  want  to  make  up 
some  definite  number  so  as  to  go  to  press,  I  will  put  my  name 
down  with  pleasure  (and  I  hope  and  believe  that  you  will 
trust  me  in  saying  so),  though  I  should  not  in  the  course  of 
nature  subscribe  to  any  horticultural  work  : — act  for  me. 

1  "  Monographic  de  la  Famille  des  Malpighiacees,"  by  Adrien  de 
Jussieu,  Arch,  du  Museum,  Vol.  III.,  p.   1,   1843. 

■  See  Letter  41,  Note  2. 

3  Illustrations  of  Himalayan  Plants  from  Drawings  made  by  J .  F 
Cathcart.     Folio,   1855. 


78  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  37  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  [May]  29th,  1S54. 

1  am  really  truly  sorry  to  hear  about  your  [health]. 
I  entreat  you  to  write  down  your  own  case, — symptoms, 
and  habits  of  life,— and  then  consider  your  case  as  that  of 
a  stranger ;  and  I  put  it  to  you,  whether  common  sense 
would  not  order  you  to  take  more  regular  exercise  and  work 
your  brain  less.  (N.B.  Take  a  cold  bath  and  walk  before 
breakfast.)  I  am  certain  in  the  long  run  you  would  not  lose 
time.  Till  you  have  a  thoroughly  bad  stomach,  you  will  not 
know  the  really  great  evil  of  it,  morally,  physically,  and  every 
way.  Do  reflect  and  act  resolutely.  Remember  your 
troubled  heart-action  formerly  plainly  told  how  your  con- 
stitution was  tried.  But  I  will  say  no  more — excepting  that 
a  man  is  mad  to  risk  health,  on  which  everything,  including 
his  children's  inherited  health,  depends.  Do  not  hate  me  for 
this  lecture.  Really  I  am  not  surprised  at  your  having  some 
headache  after  Thursday  evening,  for  it  must  have  been  no 
small  exertion  making  an  abstract  of  all  that  was  said  after 
dinner.  Your  being  so  engaged  was  a  bore,  for  there  were 
several  things  that  I  should  have  liked  to  have  talked  over 
with  you.  It  was  certainly  a  first-rate  dinner,  and  I  enjoyed 
it  extremely,  far  more  than  I  expected.  Very  far  from 
disagreeing  with  me,  my  London  visits  have  just  lately 
taken  to  suit  my  stomach  admirably  ;  I  begin  to  think  that 
dissipation,  high-living,  with  lots  of  claret,  is  what  I  want,  and 
what  I  had  during  the  last  visit.  We  are  going  to  act  on 
this  same  principle,  and  in  a  very  profligate  manner  have 
just  taken  a  pair  of  season-tickets  to  see  the  Queen  open  the 
Crystal  Palace.1  How  I  wish  there  was  any  chance  of  your 
being  there !  The  last  grand  thing  we  were  at  together 
answered,  1  am  sure,  very  well,  and  that  was  the  Duke's 
funeral. 

Have  you  seen  Forbes'  introductory  lecture  -  in  the 
Scotsman  (lent  mc  by  Horner)  ?  it  is  really  admirably  done, 
though  without  anything,  perhaps,  very  original,  which  could 

1  Queen  Victoria  opened  the  Crystal  Palace  at  Sydenham  on 
June  10th,  1854. 

''  Edward  Forbes  was  appointed  to  a  Professorship  at  Edinburgh  in 
May,  1854. 


i844— 185s]  ROYAL    SOCIETY  79 

hardly  be  expected  :  it  has  given  me  even  a  higher  opinion  Letter  37 
than  I  before  had,  of  the  variety  and  polish  of  his  intellect. 
It  is,  indeed,  an  irreparable  loss  to  London  natural  history 
society.  I  wish,  however,  he  would  not  praise  so  much  that 
old  brown  dry  stick  Jameson.  Altogether,  to  my  taste,  it  is 
much  the  best  introductory  lecture  I  have  ever  read.  I  hear 
his  anniversary  address  is  very  good. 

Adios,  my  dear  Hooker  ;  do  be  wise  and  good,  and  be 
careful  of  your  stomach,  within  which,  as  I  know  full  well,  lie 
intellect,  conscience,  temper,  and  the  affections. 


To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  3S 

Down,  Dec.  2nd  [1854]. 

You  are  a  pretty  fellow  to  talk  of  funking  the  returning 
thanks  at  the  dinner  for  the  medal.1  I  heard  that  it  was 
decidedly  the  best  speech  of  the  evening,  given  "  with 
perfect  fluency,  distinctness,  and  command  of  language,"  and 
that  you  showed  great  self-possession  :  was  the  latter  the 
proverbially  desperate  courage  of  a  coward  ?  But  you  are 
a  pretty  fellow  to  be  so  desperately  afraid  and  then  to  make 
the  crack  speech.  Many  such  an  ordeal  may  you  have  to 
go  through  !  I  do  not  know  whether  Sir  William  [Hooker] 
would  be  contented  with  Lord  Rosse's2  speech  on  giving 
you  the  medal  ;  but  I  am  very  much  pleased  with  it,  and 
really  the  roll  of  what  you  have  done  was,  I  think,  splendid. 
What  a  great  pity  he  half  spoiled  it  by  not  having  taken  the 
trouble  just  to  read  it  over  first.  Poor  Hofmann  3  came  off 
in  this  respect  even  worse.  It  is  really  almost  arrogant 
insolence  against  every  one  not  an  astronomer. 

The  next  morning  I  was  at  a  very  pleasant  breakfast 
party  at  Sir  R.  Inglis's.4  I  have  received,  with  very  many 
thanks,  the  aberrant  genera ;  but  I  have  not  had  time  to 
consider  them,  nor  your  remarks  on  Australian  botanical 
geography. 

1  The  Royal  medal  was  given  to  Sir  Joseph  in  1854. 

2  President  of  the  Royal  Society  1848-54. 

3  August  Wilhelm  Hofmann,  the  other  medallist  of  1854. 

4  Sir  Robert  Inglis,  President  of  the  British  Association  in  1847. 
Apparently  Darwin  was  present  at  the  afternoon  meeting,  but  not  at  the 
dinner. 


80  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

letter  39  To  T.   II.   Huxley. 

The  following  letter  shows  Darwin's  interest  in  the  adjudication  of  the 
Royal  medals.  The  year  1855  was  the  last  during  which  he  served  on 
the  Council  of  the  Society.     He  had  previously  served  in  1849-50. 

Down,   March  31st,   1855. 

I  have  thought  and  enquired  much  about  Wcstwood,1 
and  I  really  think  he  amply  deserves  the  gold  medal.  But 
should  you  think  of  some  one  with  higher  claim  I  am  quite 
ready  to  give  up.  Indeed,  I  suppose  without  I  get  some  one 
to  second  it,   I  cannot  propose  him. 

Will  you  be  so  kind  as  to  read  the  enclosed,  and  return  it 
to  me  ?  Should  I  send  it  to  Bell  ?  That  is,  without  you  demur 
or  convince  me.  I  had  thought  of  Hancock,2  a  higher  class 
of  labourer  ;  but,  as  far  as  I  can  weigh,  he  has  not,  as  yet, 
done  so  much  as  Westwood.  I  may  state  that  I  read  the 
whole  "  Classification  "  3  before  I  was  on  the  Council,  and  ever 
thought  on  the  subject  of  medals.  I  fear  my  remarks  are 
rather  lengthy,  but  to  do  him  justice  I  could  not  well  shorten 
them.  Pray  tell  me  frankly  whether  the  enclosed  is  the  right 
sort  of  thing,  for  though  I  was  once  on  the  Council  of  the 
Royal,  I  never  attended  any  meeting-,  owing  to  bad  health. 

With  respect  to  the  Copley  medal,'  I  have  a  strong  feeling 
that  Lycll  has  a  high  claim,  but  as  he  has  had  the  Royal  Medal 
I  presume  that  it  would  be  thought  objectionable  to  propose 

1  The  late  J.  O.  Westwood  (1805-93),  Professor  of  Entomology  at 
Oxford.  The  Royal  medal  was  awarded  to  him  in  1855.  He  was 
educated  at  a  Friends'  School  at  Sheffield,  and  subsequently  articled  to  a 
solicitor  in  London  ;  he  was  for  a  short  time  a  partner  in  the  firm,  but  he 
never  really  practised,  and  devoted  himself  to  science.  He  is  the  author 
of  between  350  and  400  papers,  chiefly  on  entomological  and  archaeo- 
logical subjects,  besides  some  twenty  books.  To  naturalists  he  is  known 
by  his  writings  on  insects,  but  he  was  also  "one  of  the  greatest  living 
authorities  on  Anglo-Saxon  and  mediaeval  manuscripts"  (Dictionary  of 
National  Biography). 

*  The  late  Albany  Hancock  (1806-73),  author  of  many  zoological 
and  pakeontological  papers.  His  best-known  work,  written  in  con- 
junction with  Joshua  Alder,  and  published  by  the  Ray  Society  is  on 
the  Hritish  Nudibranchiate  Mollusca.  The  Royal  Medal  was  awarded 
to  him  in   1858. 

3  Probably  Westwood's  Introduction  to  the  Modern  Classification  of 
Insects  ( 1 839). 

4  The  Copley  Medal  was  given  to  Lyell  in  1858. 


1844—1858]  BARRANDE  Si 

him  ;  and  as  I  intend  (you  not  objecting  and  converting  me)  Letter  39 
to  propose   W.   for   the  Royal,   it    would,    of  course,   appear 
intolerably  presumptuous  to  propose  for  the  Copley  also. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  40 

Down,  June   10th,    1855. 

Shall  you  attend  the  Council  of  the  Royal  Society  on 
Thursday  next  ?  I  have  not  been  very  well  of  late,  and 
I  doubt  whether  I  can  attend  ;  and  if  I  could  do  anything 
(pray  conceal  the  scandalous  fact),  I  want  to  go  to  the  Crystal 
Palace  to  meet  the  Homers,  Lyells,  and  a  party.  So  I  want 
to  know  whether  you  will  speak  for  me  most  strongly  for 
Barrande.1  You  know  better  than  I  do  his  admirable  labours 
on  the  development  of  trilobitcs,  and  his  most  important 
work  on  his  Lower  or  Primordial  Zone.  I  enclose  an  old  note 
of  Lyell's  to  show  what  he  thinks.  With  respect  to  Dana,2 
whom  I  also  proposed,  you  know  well  his  merits.  I  can 
speak  most  highly  of  his  classifkatory  work  on  Crustacea 
and  his  Geographical  Distribution.  His  Volcanic  Geology  is 
admirable,  and  he  has  done  much  good  work  on  coral  reefs. 

If  you  attend,  do  not  answer  this  ;  but  if  you  cannot  be- 
at the  Council,  please  inform  me,  and  I  suppose  I  must,  if 
I  can,  attend. 

1  Joachim  Barrande  (died  1S83)  devoted  himself  to  the  investigation 
of  the  Palaeozoic  fossils  of  Bohemia,  his  adopted  country.  His  greatest 
work  was  the  System?  Silurien  de  la  BoMme,  of  which  twenty-two  volumes 
were  published  before  his  death.  He  was  awarded  the  Wollaston  Medal 
of  the  Geological  Society  in  1S55.  Barrande  propounded  the  doctrine  of 
"colonies."  He  found  that  in  the  Silurian  strata  of  Bohemia,  containing 
a  normal  succession  of  fossils,  exceptional  bands  occurred  which 
yielded  fossils  characteristic  of  a  higher  zone.  He  named  these  bands 
"  colonies,"  and  explained  their  occurrence  by  supposing  that  the  later 
fauna  represented  in  these  "  precursory  bands  "  had  already  appeared  in 
a  neighbouring  region,  and  that  by  some  means  communication  was 
opened  at  intervals  between  this  region  and  that  in  which  the  normal 
Silurian  series  was  being  deposited.  This  apparent  intercalation  of 
younger  among  older  zones  has  now  been  accounted  for  by  infoldings 
and  faulting  of  the  strata.  See  J.  E.  Marr,  "  On  the  Pre-Devonian 
Rocks  of  Bohemia,"  Quart,  Journ.  Geo/.  Soc.,  Vol.  XXX VI.,  p.  591 
(1880)  ;  also  Defense  des  Colonies,  by  J.  Barrande  (Prag,  1S61),  and 
Geikie's  Text-book  of  Geology  (1893),  p.  773. 

3  For  a  biographical  note  on  Mr.  Dana,  see  Letter  162. 

6 


82  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  40  Thank  you  for  your  abstract  of  your  lecture  at  the  Royal 
Institution,  which  interested  me  much,  and  rather  grieved 
me,  for  I  had  hoped  things  had  been  in  a  slight  degree 
otherwise.1  I  heard  some  time  ago  that  before  long  I  might 
congratulate  you  on  becoming  a  married  man.2  From  my 
own  experience  of  sorric  fifteen  years,  I  am  very  sure  that 
there  is  nothing  in  this  wide  world  which  more  deserves  con- 
gratulation, and  most  sincerely  and  heartily  do  I  congratulate 
you,  and  wish  you  many  years  of  as  much  happiness  as 
this  world  can  afford. 

Letter  4 1  To  J.  D.   I  looker. 

The  following  Utter  illustrates  Darwin's  work  on  aberrant  genera.  In 
the  Origin,  Ed.  I.,  p.  429,  he  wrote  :  "  The  more  aberrant  any  form  is,  the 
greater  must  be  the  number  of  connecting  forms  which,  on  my  theory, 
have  been  exterminated  and  utterly  lost.  And  we  have  some  evidence 
of  aberrant  forms  having  suffered  severely  from  extinction,  for  they  are 
generally  represented  by  extremely  few  species  ;  and  such  species  as  do 
occur  are  generally  very  distinct  from  each  other,  which  again  implies 
extinction." 

Down,  Nov.  15th  [1S55?]. 

In  Schocnherr's  Catalogue  of  Curculionida?,3  the  6,717 
species  are  on  an  average  iO'i7  to  a  genus.  Waterhouse  (who 
knows  the  group  well,  and  who  has  published  on  fewness 
of  species  in  aberrant  genera)  has  given  me  a  list  of  62 
aberrant,  genera,  and  these  have  on  an  average  76  species; 
and  if  one  single  genus  be  removed  (and  which  I  cannot  yet 
believe  ought  to  be  considered  aberrant),  then  the  61  aberrant 

1  "  On  certain  Zoological  Arguments  commonly  adduced  in  favour  of 
the  hypothesis  of  the  Progressive  Development  of  Animal  Life,"  Dis- 
course, Friday,  April  20,  1855  :  Proceedings  R.I.  (1855).  Published  also 
in  Huxley's  Scientific  Memoirs,  The  lecturer  dwelt  chiefly  on  the  argu- 
ment of  Agassiz,  which  he  summarises  as  follows  :  "  Homocercal  fishes 
have  in  their  embryonic  state  heterocercal  tails  ;  therefore  heterocercality 
is,  so  far,  a  mark  of  an  embryonic  state  as  compared  with  homocercality, 
and  the  earlier  heterocercal  fish  are  embryonic  as  compared  with  the 
later  homocercal."  He  shows  that  facts  do  not  support  this  view,  and 
concludes  generally  "  that  there  is  no  real  parallel  between  the  successive 
forms  assumed  in  the  development  of  the  life  of  the  individual  at  present 
and  those  which  have  appeared  at  different  epochs  in  the  past." 

*  Mr.  Huxley  was  married  July  21st,  1855. 

3  Genera  et  Species  Curculionidum.  (C.  J.  Schoenherr :  Paris, 
1833-38.) 


1844     1S5S]  ABERRANT    GENERA  83 

genera  would  have  only  4-91  species  on  an  average.     I  tested  Letter  41 
these    results    in    another    way.       I    found    in    Schoenherr   9 
families,  including    only   1 1    genera,  and   these   genera  (9  of 
which  were  in  Watcrhouse's   list)  I  found   included  only  3-36 
species  on  an  average. 

This  last  result  led  me  to  Lindlcy's  Vegetable  Kingdom,  in 
which  I  found  (excluding  thallogcns  and  acrogens)  that  the 
genera  include  each  1046  species  (how  near  by  chance  to 
the  Curculionidae),  and  I  find  21  orders  including  single 
genera,  and  these  21  genera  have  on  average  795  species  ; 
but  if  Lindley  is  right  that  ErytJiroxylon  (with  its  75  species) 
ought  to  be  amongst  the  Malpighiads,  then  the  average  would 
be  only  46  per  genus. 

But  here  comes,  as  it  appears  to  me,  an  odd  thing  (I  hope 
I  shall  not  quite  weary  you  out).  There  are  29  other  orders, 
each  with  2  genera,  and  these  58  genera  have  on  an  average 
1507  species  :  this  great  number  being  owing  to  the  10 genera 
in  the  Smilaceas,  Salicaceai  (with  220  species),  Begoniaceae, 
Balsaminacea:,  Grossulariacea?,  without  which  the  remaining 
48  genera  would  have  on  an  average  only  591  species. 

This  case  of  the  orders  with  only  2  genera,  the  genera 
notwithstanding  having  1507  species  each,  seems  to  me  very 
perplexing  and  upsets,  almost,  the  conclusion  deduciblc  from 
the  orders  with  single  genera. 

I  have  gone  higher,  and  tested  the  alliances  with  1,  2,  and 
3  orders ;  and  in  these  cases  I  find  both  the  genera  few  in 
each  alliance,  and  the  species,  less  than  the  average  of  the 
whole  kingdom,  in  each  genus. 

All  this  has  amused  me,  but  I  daresay  you  will  have  a 
good  sneer  at  me,  and  tell  me  to  stick  to  my  barnacles.  By 
the  way,  you  agree  with  me  that  sometimes  one  gets  despond- 
ent—for instance,  when  theory  and  facts  will  not  harmonise  ; 
but  what  appears  to  me  even  worse,  and  makes  me  despair, 
is,  when  I  see  from  the  same  great  class  of  facts,  men  like 
Barrande   deduce  conclusions,  such   as   his  Colonies1  and  his 

1  Lyell  briefly  refers  to  Barrande's  Bohemian  work  in  a  letter  (August 
31st,  1856)  to  Fleming  {Life  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  II.,  p.  225)  :  "  He 
explained  to  me  on  the  spot  his  remarkable  discovery  of  a  '  colony '  of 
Upper  Silurian  fossils,  3,400  feet  deep,  in  the  midst  of  the  Lower  Silurian 
group.  This  has  made  a  great  noise,  but  I  think  I  can  explain  away  the 
supposed  anomaly  by,  etc."    (See  Letter  40,  Note  1.) 


84  EVOLUTION  [Chat.  II 

Lettei  41  agreement  with  E.  dc  Beaumont's  lines  of  Elevation,  or  such 
men  as  Eorbes  with  his  Polarity  ; '  I  have  not  a  doubt  that 
before  many  months  are  over  I  shall  be  longing  for  the  most 
dishonest  species  as  being  more  honest  than  the  honestest 
theories.  One  remark  more.  If  you  feel  any  interest,  or  can 
get  any  one  else  to  feel  any  interest  on  the  aberrant  genera 
question,  I  should  think  the  most  interesting  way  would  be 
to  take  aberrant  genera  in  any  great  natural  family,  and 
test  the  average  number  of  species  to  the  genera  in  that 
family. 

How  I  wish  we  lived  near  each  other  !  I  should  so  like 
a  talk  with  you  on  geographical  distribution,  taken  in  its 
greatest  features.  I  have  been  trying  from  land  productions 
to  take  a  very  general  view  of  the  world,  and  I  should  so  like 
to  see  how  far  it  agrees  with  plants. 

Letter  42  To  Mrs.  Lyell.2 

Down,  Jan.  26th  [1S56]. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  to  be  of  any  sort  of  use  to  you  in 
regard  to  the  beetles.  But  first  let  me  thank  you  for  your 
kind  note  and  offer  of  specimens  to  my  children.  My  boys 
are  all  butterfly  hunters  ;  and  all  young  and  ardent  lepidop- 
terists  despise,  from  the  bottom  of  their  souls,  coleopterists. 

The  simplest  plan  for  your  end  and  for  the  good  of 
entomology,  I  should  think,  would  be  to  offer  the  collection 
to  Dr.  J.  E.  Gray3  for  the  British  Museum  on  condition  that 

1  Edward  Forbes  "On  the  Manifestation  of  Polarity  in  the  Distribu- 
tion of  Organized  Beings  in  Time "  {Edinburgh  New  Phil.  Journal, 
Vol.  LV1I.,  1854,  p.  332).  The  author  points  out  that  "the  maximum 
development  of  generic  types  during  the  Palaeozoic  period  was  during  its 
earlier  epochs  ;  that  during  the  Neozoic  period  towards  its  later  periods." 
Thus  the  two  periods  of  activity  are  conceived  to  be  at  the  two  opposite 
poles  of  a  sphere  which  in  some  way  represents  for  him  the  system  of 
Nature. 

3  Mrs.  Lyell  is  a  daughter  of  the  late  Mr.  Leonard  Horner,  and  widow 
of  Lieut. -Col.  Lyell,  a  brother  of  Sir  Charles. 

3  Dr.  John  Edward  Gray,  F.R.S.  (1800-75)  became  an  assistant  to  the 
Natural  History  Department  of  the  British  Museum  in  1824,  and  was 
appointed  Keeper  in  1840.  Dr.  Gray  published  a  great  mass  of  zoological 
work,  and  devoted  himself  "  with  unflagging  energy  to  the  development 
of  the  collections  under  his  charge."  {Ann.  Mag.  Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  XV., 
p.  281,  1875-) 


1844-185S]  YOUNG    COLLECTORS  85 

a  perfect  set  was  made  out  for  you.  If  the  collection  was  at  Letter  42 
all  valuable,  I  should  think  he  would  be  very  glad  to  have  this 
done.  Whether  any  third  set  would  be  worth  making  out 
would  depend  on  the  value  of  the  collection.  I  do  not  suppose 
that  you  expect  the  insects  to  be  named,  for  that  would  be 
a  most  serious  labour.  If  you  do  not  approve  of  this  scheme, 
I  should  think  it  very  likely  that  Mr.  Waterhouse  '  would 
think  it  worth  his  while  to  set  a  series  for  you,  retaining 
duplicates  for  himself ;  but  I  say  this  only  on  a  venture. 
You  might  trust  Mr.  Waterhouse  implicitly,  which  I  fear,  as 
[illegible]  goes,  is  more  than  can  be  said  for  all  entomologists. 
I  presume,  if  you  thought  of  either  scheme,  Sir  Charles  Lyell 
could  easily  see  the  gentlemen  and  arrange  it  ;  but,  if  not,  I 
could  do  so  when  next  I  come  to  town,  which,  however,  will 
not  be  for  three  or  four  weeks. 

With  respect  to  giving  your  children  a  taste  for  Natural 
History,  1  will  venture  one  remark — viz.,  that  giving  them 
specimens  in  my  opinion  would  tend  to  destroy  such  taste. 
Youngsters  must  be  themselves  collectors  to  acquire  a  taste*; 
and  if  I  had  a  collection  of  English  lepidoptera,  I  would  be 
systematically  most  miserly,  and  not  give  my  boys  half  a 
dozen  butterflies  in  the  year.  Your  eldest  boy  has  the  brow 
of  an  observer,  if  there  be  the  least  truth  in  phrenology.  We 
are  all  better,  but  we  have  been  of  late  a  poor  household. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  43 

Down  [1855]. 
I  should  have  less  scruple  in  troubling  you  if  I  had  any 
confidence  what  my  work  would  turn  out.  Sometimes  I 
think  it  will  be  good  ;  at  other  times  I  really  feel  as  much 
ashamed  of  myself  as  the  author  of  the  Vestiges  ought  to  be 
of  himself.  I  know  well  that  your  kindness  and  friendship 
would  make  you  do  a  great  deal  for  me,  but  that  is  no  reason 
that  I  should  be  unreasonable.  I  cannot  and  ought  not  to 
forget  that  all  your  time  is  employed  in  work  certain  to  be 
valuable.  It  is  superfluous  in  me  to  say  that  I  enjoy  exceed- 
ingly writing  to  you,  and  that  your  answers  are  of  the  greatest 
possible  service  to  me.     I  return  with  many  thanks  the  proof 

1  George  Robert  Waterhouse  (1810-88)  held  the  post  of  Keeper  of  the 
Department  of  Geology  in  the  British  Museum  from  1851  to  1880. 


86  l.  VOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  43  on  Aquilcgia  : '  it  has  interested  me  much.  It  is  exactly  like 
my  barnacles  ;  but  for  my  particular  purpose,  most  unfortu- 
nately, both  Kolreuter  and  Gartner  have  worked  chiefly  on 
A.  vulgaris  and  canadensis  and  atro-purpurea,  and  these  are 
just  the  species  that  you  seem  not  to  have  studied.  N.B. 
Why  do  you  not  let  me  buy  the  Indian  Flora?  You  are 
too  magnificent. 

Now  for  a  short  ride  on  my  chief  (at  present)  hobby- 
horse, viz.  aberrant  genera.  What  you  say  under  your 
remarks  on  Lepidodendron  seems  just  the  case  that  I  want, 
to  give  some  sort  of  evidence  of  what  we  both  believe  in,  viz. 
how  groups  came  to  be  anomalous  or  aberrant  ;  and  I  think 
some  sort  of  proof  is  required,  for  I  do  not  believe  very  many 
naturalists  would  at  all  admit  our  view. 

Thank  you  for  the  caution  on  large  anomalous  genera  first 
catching  attention.  I  do  not  quite  agree  with  your  "  grave 
objection  to  the  whole  process,"  which  is  "  that  if  you  multiply 
the  anomalous  species  by  ioo,  and  divide  rhe  normal  by  the 
same,  you  will  then  reverse  the  names  .  .  ."  For,  to  take  an 
example,  Ornithorhyncluts  and  EcJiidna  would  not  be  less 
aberrant  if  each  had  a  dozen  (I  do  not  say  ioo,  because  we 
have  no  such  cases  in  the  animal  kingdom)  species  instead  of 
one.  What  would  really  make  these  two  genera  less  anomalous 
would  be  the  creation  of  many  genera  and  sub-families  round 
and  radiating  from  them  on  all  sides.  Thus  if  Australia  were 
destroyed,  Didelfhys  in  S.  America  would  be  wonderfully 
anomalous  (this  is  your  case  with  Proteaceae),  whereas  now 
there  arc  so  many  genera  and  little  sub-families  of  Marsupiata 
that  the  group  cannot  be  called  aberrant  or  anomalous. 
Sagitta  (and  the  earwig)  is  one  of  the  most  anomalous 
animals  in  the  world,  and  not  a  bit  the  less  because  there  are 
a  dozen  species.  Now,  my  point  (which,  I  think  is  a  slightly 
new  point  of  view)  is,  if  it  is  extinction  which  has  made  the 
genus  anomalous,  as  a  general  rule  the  same  causes  of  extinc- 

1  This  seems  to  refer  to  the  discussion  on  the  genus  Aquilegia  in  Hooker 
and  Thomson's  Flora  Indica,  1855,  Vol.  I.,  Systematic  Part,  p.  44.  The 
authors'  conclusion  is  that  "all  the  European  and  many  of  the  Siberian 
forms  generally  recognised  belong  to  one  very  variable  species."  With 
regard  to  cirripedes,  Mr.  Darwin  spoke  of  "certain  just  perceptible 
differences  which  blend  together  and  constitute  varieties  and  not 
species"  (Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  379). 


i844-l8S8]  DISUSE  87 

tion  would  allow  the  existence  of  only  a  few  species  in  such  Letter  43 
genera.  Whenever  we  meet  (which  will  be  on  the  23rd  [at 
the]  Club)  I  shall  much  like  to  hear  whether  this  strikes  you  as 
sound.  I  feel  all  the  time  on  the  borders  of  a  circle  of  truism. 
Of  course  I  could  not  think  of  such  a  request,  but  you  might 
possibly  : — if  Bentham  does  not  think  the  whole  subject 
rubbish,  ask  him  some  time  to  pick  out  the  dozen  most 
anomalous  genera  in  the  Leguminosae,  or  any  great  order  of 
which  there  is  a  monograph  by  which  I  could  calculate  the 
ordinary  percentage  of  species  to  genera.  I  am  the  more 
anxious,  as  the  more  I  enquire,  the  fewer  are  the  cases  in 
which  it  can  be  done.  It  cannot  be  done  in  birds,  or,  I  fear, 
in  mammifers.  I  doubt  much  whether  in  any  other  class  of 
insects  [other  than  Curculionidae]. 

I  saw  your  nice  notice  of  poor  Forbes  in  the  Gardeners' 
Chronicle,  and  I  see  in  the  Athenceum  a  notice  of  meeting  on 
last  Saturday  of  his  friends.  Of  course  I  shall  wish  to  subscribe 
as  soon  as  possible  to  any  memorial.  .  .  . 

I  have  just  been  testing  practically  what  disuse  does  in 
reducing  parts.  I  have  made  [skeletons]  of  wild  and  tame 
duck  (oh  the  smell  of  well-boiled,  high  duck  !),  and  I  find  the 
tame  duck  ought,  according  to  scale  of  wild  prototype,  to 
have  its  two  wings  360  grains  in  weight  ;  but  it  has  only  317, 
or  43  grains  too  little,  or  A  of  [its]  own  two  wings  too  little 
in  weight.     This  seems  rather  interesting  to  me.1 

P.S. — I  do  not  know  whether  you  will  think  this  worth 
reading  over.  I  have  worked  it  out  since  writing  my  letter, 
and  tabulate  the  whole. 

21  orders  with  1  genus,  having  7*95  species  (or  4'6  ?). 

29  orders  with  2  genera,  having  I5'o5  species  on  an  average. 

23  orders  each  with  3  genera,  and  these  genera  include  on  an  average 

8'2  species. 
20  orders  each  with  4  genera,  and  these  genera  include  on  an  average 

i2"2  species. 
27  orders  each  with  above  50  genera  (altogether  4716  genera),  and 

these  genera  on  an  average  have  997  species. 

1  On  the  conclusions  drawn  from  these  researches,  see  Mr.  Piatt  Ball, 
The  Effects  of  Use  and  Disuse  (Nature  Series),  1890,  p.  55.  With  regard 
to  his  pigeons,  Darwin  wrote,  in  Nov.  1855  :  "  I  love  them  to  that  extent 
that  I  cannot  bear  to  kill  and  skeletonise  them." 


SS  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  43  From  this  I  conclude,  whether  there  be  many  or  few 
genera  in  an  order,  the  number  of  species  in  a  genus  is  not 
much  affected  ;  hut  perhaps  when  [there  is]  only  one  genus 
in  an  order  it  will  be  affected,  and  this  will  depend  whether 
the  [genus]  Eiythroxylon  be  made  a  family  of. 


Letter  44  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  April  8th  [1856]. 
I  have  been  particularly  glad  to  get  your  splendid  e/oge  of 
Lindlcy.      His  name  has  been  lately  passing  through  my  head, 
and  I  had  hoped  that  Miers  would  have  proposed  him  for  the 
Royal  medal.     I  most  entirely  agree  that  the  Copley l  is  more 
appropriate,  and    1    daresay    he    would    not   have  valued  the 
Royal.     From  skimming  through  many  botanical  books,  and 
from  often  consulting  the  Vegetable  Kingdom^  I  had  (ignorant 
as  I  am)  formed  the  highest  opinion  of  his  claims  as  a  botanist. 
If  Sharpey  will  stick  up  strong  for  him,  we  should  have  some 
chance ;  but  the  natural  sciences  arc  but  feebly  represented 
in  the  Council.     Sir  P.  Egerton,2  I  daresay,  would  be  strong 
for  him.    You  know  Bell  is  out.     Now,  my  only  doubt  is,  and 
I  hope  that  you  will  consider  this,  that  the  natural  sciences 
being  weak  on  the  Council,  and  (I  fancy)  the  most  powerful 
man    in  the    Council,    Col.    S  [abine],    being   strong    against 
Lindley,  whether  we  should  have  any  chance  of  succeeding. 
It  would  be  so  easy  to  name  some  eminent  man  whose  name 
would  be  well  known  to  all  the  physicists.     Would  Lindley 
hear  of  and  dislike  being  proposed  for  the  Copley  and  not 
succeeding?     Would  it  not  be  better  on  this  view  to  propose 
him  for  the  Royal?     Do  think  of  this.     Moreover,  if  Lindley 
is    not  proposed    for  the   Royal,  I   fear  both    Royal    medals 
would  go  [to]  physicists  ;    for   I,  for  one,  should  not  like  to 
propose  another  zoologist,  though  Hancock  would  be  a  very 
good  man,  and  I  fancy  there  would  be  a  feeling  against  medals 
to  two  botanists.     But  for  whatever  Lindley  is  proposed,  I  will 
do  my  best.     We  will  talk  this  over  here. 

1  The  late  Professor  Lindley  never  attained  the  honour  of  the  Copley 
medal.     The  Royal  medal  was  awarded  to  him  in  1857. 

'  Sir  Philip  de  Malpas  Grey-Egerton  (1806-81)  devoted  himself  to 
the  study  of  fossil  fishes,  and  published  several  memoirs  on  his  collection, 
which  was  acquired  by  the  British  Museum. 


1844—1858]  THE    ATHEN/EUM  89 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  45 

Down,  May  9U1  [1856]. 
.  .  .  With  respect  to  Huxley,  I  was  on  the  point  of  speaking 
to  Crawford  and  Strezlecki  (who  will  be  on  Committee  of  the 
Athenaeum)  when  I  bethought  me  of  how  Owen  would  look 
and  what  he  would  say.  Cannot  you  fancy  him,  with  slow 
and  gentle  voice,  asking  "  Will  Mr.  Crawford  l  tell  me  what 
Mr.  Huxley  has  done,  deserving  this  honour;  I  only  know 
that  he  differs  from,  and  disputes  the  authority  of  Cuvier, 
Ehrenbergj  and  Agassiz  as  of  no  weight  at  all."  And  when 
I  began  to  tell  Mr.  Crawford  what  to  say,  I  was  puzzled,  and 
could  refer  him  only  to  some  excellent  papers  in  the  Pliil. 
Trans.,  for  which  the  medal  had  been  awarded.  But  I  doubt, 
with  an  opposing  faction,  whether  this  would  be  considered 
enough,  for  I  believe  real  scientific  merit  is  not  thought 
enough,  without  the  person  is  generally  well  known.  Now 
1  want  to  hear  what  you  deliberately  think  on  this  head  :  it 
would  be  bad  to  get  him  proposed  and  then  rejected  ;  and 
Owen  is  very  powerful. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  46 

Down  [1856]. 
I   have  got  the   Lectures,2  and  have  read  them.      Though 
I  believe,  as  far  as  my  knowledge  goes,  that  Huxley  is  right, 
yet  I  think  his  tone  very  much  too  vehement,  and  I   have 

1  John  Crawford  (1783— 1868),  Orientalist,  Ethnologist,  etc.  Mr. 
Crawford  wrote  a  review  on  the  Origin,  which,  though  hostile,  was  free 
from  bigotry  (see  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  237). 

3  The  reference  is  presumably  to  the  Royal  Institution  Lectures  given 
in  1854-56.  Those  which  we  have  seen — namely,  those  reprinted  in  the 
Scientific  Memoirs,  Vol.  I. — "On  the  Common  Plan  of  Animal  Form," 
p.  281  ;  "  On  certain  Zoological  Arguments,  etc.,"  p.  300  ;  "  On  Natural 
History  as  Knowledge,  Discipline,  and  Power,"  p.  305,  do  not  seem  to  us 
to  contain  anything  likely  to  offend  ;  but  Falconer's  attack  in  the  Ann. 
and  Mag.  of  Nat.  Hist.,  June  1856,  on  the  last-named  lecture,  shows 
strong  feeling.  A  reply  by  Mr.  Huxley  appeared  in  the  July  number 
of  the  same  Journal.  The  most  heretical  discussion  from  a  modern 
standpoint  is  at  p.  311,  where  he  asks  how  it  is  conceivable  that  the 
bright  colours  of  butterflies  and  shells  or  the  elegant  forms  of  Fora- 
minifera  can  possibly  be  of  service  to  their  possessors  ;  and  it  is  this 
which  especially  struck  Darwin,  judging  by  the  pencil  notes  on  his  copy 
of  the  Lecture. 


90  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  It 

Letter  46  ventured  to  say  so  in  a  note  to  Huxley.  I  had  not  thou. .lit 
of  these  lectures  in  relation  to  the  Athenaeum,1  but  I  am 
inclined  quite  to  agree  with  you,  and  that  we  had  better  pause 
before  anything  is  said.  .  .  .  (N.B.  I  found  Falconer  very 
indignant  at  the  manner  in  which  Huxley  treated  Cuvier 
in  his' Royal  Institution  lectures;  and  I  have  gently  told 
Huxley  so.)  1  think  wc  had  better  do  nothing  :  to  try  in 
earnest  to  get  a  great  naturalist  into  the  Athenaeum  and  fail, 
is  far  worse  than  doing  nothing, 

How  strange,  funny,  and  disgraceful  that  nearly  all 
(Faraday  and  Sir  J.  Herschel  at  least  exceptions)  our  great  men 
are  in  quarrels  in  couplets  ;  it  never  struck  me  before.  .  .  . 

Letter  47  C.  Lyell  to  C.  Darwin. 

In  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  72,  is  given  a  letter  (June  16th,  1856) 
to  Lyell,  in  which  Darwin  exhales  his  indignation  over  the  "ex- 
tensionists  "  who  created  continents  ad  libitum  to  suit  the  convenience 
of  their  theories.  On  page  74  a  fuller  statement  of  his  views  is  given  in 
a  letter  dated  June  25th.  We  have  not  seen  Lyell's  reply  to  this,  but 
his  reply  to  Darwin's  letter  of  June  16th  is  extant,  and  is  here  printed  for 
the  first  time. 

S3,  Harley  Street,  London,  June  17th,  1856. 

I  wonder  vou  did  not  also  mention  D.  Sharpe's  paper,2 
just  published,  by  which  the  Alps  were  submerged  as  far  as 
9,000  feet  of  their  present  elevation  above  the  sea  in  the 
Glacial  period  and  then  since  uplifted  again.  Without  ad- 
mitting this,  you  would  probably  convey  the  alpine  boulders 
to  the  Jura  by  marine  currents,  and  if  so,  make  the  Alps  and 
Jura  islands  in  the  glacial  sea.  And  would  not  the  Glacial 
theory,  as  now  very  generally  understood,  immerse  as  much 
df  Europe  as  I  did  in  my  original  map  of  Europe,  when  I 
simply  expressed  all  the  area  which  at  some  time  or  other 
had  been  under  water  since  the  commencement  of  the  Eocene 
period  ?  I  almost  suspect  the  glacial  submergence  would 
exceed  it. 

'  Mr,  Huxley  was  in  1858  elected  to  the  Athenaeum  Club  under  Rule  2, 
which  provides  for  the  annual  election  of  "  a  certain  number  of  persons 
of  distinguished  eminence  in  science,  literature,  or  the  arts,  or  for  public 
services." 

1  "  On  the  Last  Elevation  of  the  Alps,  &c."  {Quart.  Journ.  Geol.  Soc., 
Vol.  XII.,  1856,  p.  102). 


1844—1858]  ELEVATION    AND    SUBSIDENCE  91 

But   would   not  this   be   a    measure  of  the  movement  in   Letter  47 
ever)-    other    area,    northern    (arctic),    antarctic,    or   tropical, 
during  an   equal   period— oceanic    or   continental?     For  the 
conversion  of  sea  into  land  would  always  equal  the   turning 
of  much  land  into  sea. 

But  all  this  would  be  done  in  a  fraction  of  the  Pliocene 
period  ;  the  Glacial  shells  are  barely  1  per  cent,  extinct 
species.  Multiply  this  by  the  older  Pliocene  and  Miocene 
epochs. 

You  also  forget  an  author  who,  by  means  of  atolls,  con- 
trived to  submerge  archipelagoes(orcontinentsP),  the  mountains 
of  which  must  originally  have  differed  from  each  other  in 
height  8,000  (or  10,000  ?)  feet,  so  that  they  all  just  rose  to  the 
surface  at  one  level,  or  their  sites  are  marked  by  buoys  of 
coral.  I  could  never  feel  sure  whether  he  meant  this 
tremendous  catastrophe,  all  brought  about  by  what  Sedgwick 
called  "  Lyell's  niggling  operations,"  to  have  been  effected 
during  the  era  of  existing  species  of  corals.  Perhaps  you 
can  tell  me,  for  I  am  really  curious  to  know.1  .  .  . 

Now,  although  there  is  nothing  in  my  works  to  warrant  the 
building  up  of  continents  in  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  even 
since  the  Eocene  period,  yet,  as  some  of  the  rocks  in  the 
central  Alps  are  in  part  Eocene,  I  begin  to  think  that  all 
continents  and  oceans  may  be  chiefly,  if  not  all,  post-Eocene, 
and  Dana's  "  Atlantic  Ocean "  of  the  Lower  Silurian  is 
childish  (see  the  Anniversary  Address,  1856).2  But  how  far 
you  are  at  liberty  to  call  up  continents  from  "  the  vasty 
deep "  as  often  as  you  want  to  convey  a  Helix  from  the 
United  States  to  Europe  in  Miocene  or  Pliocene  periods  is 
a  question  ;  for  the  ocean  is  getting  deeper  of  late,  and 
Haughton  says  the  mean  depth  is  eleven  miles  !  by  his  late 
paper  on  tides.3  I  shall  be  surprised  if  this  turns  out  true  by 
soundings. 

I  thought  your  mind  was  expanding  so  much  in  regard 
to  time  that  you  would  have  been  going  ahead  in  regard  to 
the  possibility  of  mountain-chains  being  created  in  a  fraction 

1  The  author  referred  to  is  of  course  Darwin. 

2  Probably  Dana's  Anniversary  Address  to  the  American  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  published  in  the  Proceedings  1856. 

3  "  On  the   Depth  of  the  Sea  deducible  from  Tidal  Observations  " 
(Proc.  Irish  Acad.,  Vol.  VI.,  p.  354,  1S53-54). 


92  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  47  of  the  period  required  to  convert  a  swan  into  a  goose,  or  vice 
versa.  Nine  feet  did  the  Rimutaka  chain  of  New  Zealand 
gain  in  height  in  Jan.,  1855,  and  a  great  earthquake  has 
occurred  in  New  Zealand  every  seven  years  for  half  a  century 
nearly.  The  Washingtonia  (California!)  conifer)1  lately  ex- 
hibited was  four  thousand  years  old,  so  that  one  individual 
might  see  a  chain  of  hills  rise,  and  rise  with  it,  much  [more] 
a  species — and  those  islands  which  J.  Hooker  describes  as 
covered  with  New  Zealand  plants  three  hundred  (?)  miles  to  the 
N.E.  (?)  of  New  Zealand  may  have  been  separated  from  the 
mainland  two  or  three  or  four  generations  of  Washingtonia 
ago. 

If  the  identity  of  the  land-shells  of  all  the  hundreds  of 
British  Isles  be  owing  to  their  having  been  united  since  the 
Glacial  period,  and  the  discordance,  almost  total,  of  the  shells 
of  Porto  Santo  and  Madeira  be  owing  to  their  having  been 
separated  [during]  all  the  newer  and  possibly  older  Pliocene 
periods,  then  it  gives  us  a  conception  of  time  which  will  aid 
you  much  in  your  conversion  of  species,  if  immensity  of  time 
will  do  all  you  require  ;  for  the  Glacial  period  is  thus  shown, 
as  we  might  have  anticipated,  to  be  contemptible  in  duration 
or  in  distance  from  us,  as  compared  to  the  older  Pliocene, 
let  alone  the  Miocene,  when  our  contemporary  species  were, 
though  in  a  minority,  already  beginning  to  flourish. 

The  littoral  shells,  according  to  MacAndrew,  imply  that 
Madeira  and  the  Canaries  were  once  joined  to  the  mainland 
of  Europe  or  Africa,  but  that  those  isles  were  disjoined  so 
long  ago  that  most  of  the  species  came  in  since.  In  short, 
the  marine  shells  tell  the  same  story  as  the  land  shells.  Why 
do  the  plants  of  Porto  Santo  and  Madeira  agree  so  nearly  ? 
And  why  do  the  shells  which  are  the  same  as  European  or 
African  species  remain  quite  unaltered,  like  the  Crag  species, 
which  returned  unchanged  to  the  British  seas  after  being 
expelled  from  them  by  glacial  cold,  when  two  millions  (?)  of 
years  had  elapsed,  and  after  such  migration  to  milder  seas  ? 
Be  so  good  as  to  explain  all  this  in  your  next  letter. 

1  Washingtonia,  or  Wellingtonia,  better  known  as  Sequoia.  Asa 
Gray,  writing  in  1872,  states  his  belief  that  "no  Sequoia  now  alive  can 
sensibly  antedate  the  Christian  era"  {Scientific  Papers,  II.,  p.  144)- 


1844—  '858]  CONTINENTAL    EXTENSION  93 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  48 

Down,  July  5th  f  1856]. 

I  write  this  morning  in  great  tribulation  about  Tristan 
d'Acunha.1  The  more  I  reflect  on  your  Antarctic  flora  the 
more  I  am  astounded.  You  give  all  the  facts  so  clearly  and 
fully,  that  it  is  impossible  to  help  speculating  on  the  subject  ; 
but  it  drives  me  to  despair,  for  I  cannot  gulp  down  your 
continent ;  and  not  being  able  to  do  so  gives,  in  my  eyes,  the 
multiple  creationists  an  awful  triumph.  It  is  a  wondrous  case, 
and  how  strange  that  A.  De  Candolle  should  have  ignored 
it ;  which  he  certainly  has,  as  it  seems  to  me.  I  wrote  Lyell 
a  long  geological  letter2  about  continents,  and  I  have  had  a 
very  long  and  interesting  answer ;  but  I  cannot  in  the  least 
gather  his  opinion  about  all  your  continental  extensionists  ; 
and  I  have  written  again  beseeching  a  verdict.3  I  asked  him 
to  send  to  you  my  letter,  for  as  it  was  well  copied  it  would  not 
be  troublesome  to  read  ;  but  whether  worth  reading  I  really 
do  not  know  ;  I  have  given  in  it  the  reasons  which  make  mc 
strongly  opposed  to  continental  extensions. 

I  was  very  glad  to  get  your  note  some  days  ago  :  I  wish 
you  would  think  it  worth  while,  as  you  intend  to  have  the 
Laburnum  case  translated,  to  write  to  "  Wien  "  '  (that  unknown 
place),  and  find  out  how  the  Laburnum  has  been  behaving: 
it  really  ought  to  be  known. 

The  Entada 5  is  a  beast ;  I  have  never  differed  from  you 
about  the  growth  of  a  plant  in  a  new  island  being  a  far 
harder  trial  than  transportal,  though  certainly  that  seems 
hard  enough.  Indeed  I  suspect  I  go  even  further  than  you 
in  this  respect  ;  but  it  is  too  long  a  story. 

1  See  Flora  Antarctica,  p.  216.  Though  Tristan  d'Acunha  is  "only 
1,000  miles  distant  from  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  3,000  from  the 
Strait  of  Magalhaens,  the  botany  of  this  island  is  far  more  intimately 
allied  to  that  of  Fuegia  than  Africa." 

3  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  74. 

3  In  the  tenth  edition  of  the  Principles,  1872,  Lyell  added  a  chapter 
(Ch.  XLI.,  p.  406)  on  insular  floras  and  faunas  in  relation  to  the  origin 
of  species  ;  he  here  (p.  410)  gives  his  reasons  against  Forbes  as  an 
extensionist. 

4  There  is  a  tradition  that  Darwin  once  asked  Hooker  where  "  this 
place  Wien  is,  where  they  publish  so  many  books." 

6  The  large  seeds  of  Entada  scandens  are  occasionally  floated  across 
the  Atlantic  and  cast  on  the  shores  of  Europe. 


94  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter 48  Thank  you  for  the  Aristolochia  and  Viscutn  cases:  what 
species  were  they  ?  I  ask,  because  oddly  these  two  very 
genera  I  have  seen  advanced  as  instances  (I  forget  at  present 
by  whom,  but  by  good  men)  in  which  the  agency  of  insects 
was  absolutely  necessary  for  impregnation.  In  our  British 
dioecious  Viscutn  I  suppose  it  must  be  necessary.  Was  there 
anything  to  show  that  the  stigma  was  ready  for  pollen  in  these 
two  cases  ?  for  it  seems  that  there  are  many  cases  in  which 
pollen  is  shed  long  before  the  stigma  is  ready.  As  in  our 
Visaan,  insects  carry,  sufficiently  regularly  for  impregnation, 
pollen  from  flower  to  flower,  I  should  think  that  there  must  be 
occasional  crosses  even  in  an  hermaphrodite  /  'iscum.  I  have 
never  heard  of  bees  and  butterflies,  only  moths,  producing 
fertile  eggs  without  copulation. 

With  respect  to  the  Ray  Society,  I  profited  so  enormously 
by  its  publishing  my  Cirrepedia,  that  I  cannot  quite  agree 
with  you  on  confining  it  to  translations  ;  I  know  not  how  else 
I  could  possibly  have  published. 

I  have  just  sent  in  my  name  for  £20  to  the  Linnaean  Society, 
but  I  must  confess  I  have  done  it  with  heavy  groans,  whereas 
I  daresay  you  gave  your  £20  like  a  light-hearted  gentle- 
man. .  .  . 

P.S.  Wollaston  speaks  strongly  about  the  intermediate 
grade  between  two  varieties  in  insects  and  mollusca  being 
often  rarer  than  the  two  varieties  themselves.  This  is 
obviously  very  important  for  me,  and  not  easy  to  explain.  I 
believe  I  have  had  cases  from  you.  But,  if  you  believe  in  this, 
I  wish  you  would  give  me  a  sentence  to  quote  from  you  on 
this  head.  There  must,  I  think,  be  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  it ; 
otherwise  there  could  hardly  be  nearly  distinct  varieties  under 
any  species,  for  we  should  have  instead  a  blending  scries,  as 
in  brambles  and  willows. 

Letter  49  To  J-  D-   Hooker. 

July  13th,  1S56. 
What  a  book  a  devil's  chaplain  might  write  on  the  clumsy, 
wasteful,  blundering,  low,  and  horribly  cruel  works  of  nature ! 
With  respect  to  crossing,  from  one  sentence  in  your  letter  I 
think  you  misunderstand  me.  I  am  very  far  from  believing 
in  hybrids  :  only  in  crossing  of  the  same  species  or  of  close 


1844—18S8]  FLORAS  95 

varieties.    These  two  or  three  last  days  I  have  been  observing  Letter  49 

wheat,  and  have  convinced  myself  that  L.  Deslongchamps  is 

in  error  about  impregnation  taking  place  in  closed  flowers  ; 

i.e.,  of  course,  I  can  judge  only  from  external  appearances. 

By  the  way,   R.   Brown   once   told    mc   that   the   use   of  the 

brush   on   stigma  of  grasses   was   unknown.     Do   you   know 

its  use  ?  .  .   . 

You  say  most  truly  about  multiple  creations  and  my 
notions.  If  any  one  case  could  be  proved,  I  should  be 
smashed  ;  but  as  I  am  writing  my  book,  I  try  to  take  as 
much  pains  as  possible  to  give  the  strongest  cases  opposed 
to  me,  and  often  such  conjectures  as  occur  to  me.  I  have 
been  working  your  books  as  the  richest  (and  vilest)  mine 
against  mc  ;  and  what  hard  work  I  have  had  to  get  up  your 
New  Zealand  Flora  !  As  I  have  to  quote  you  so  often,  I 
should  like  to  refer  to  Midler's  case  of  the  Australian  Alps. 
Where  is  it  published  ?  Is  it  a  book  ?  A  correct  reference 
would  be  enough  for  me,  though  it  is  wrong  even  to  quote 
without  looking  oneself.  I  should  like  to  sec  very  much 
Forbcs's  sheets,  which  you  refer  to ;  but  I  must  confess  (I 
hardly  know  why)  I  have  got  rather  to  mistrust  poor  dear 
Forbes. 

There  is  wonderful  ill  logic  in  his  famous  and  admirable 
memoir  on  distribution,  as  it  appears  to  me,  now  that  I  have 
got  it  up  so  as  to  give  the  heads  in  a  page.  Depend  on  it, 
my  saying  is  a  true  one — viz.  that  a  compiler  is  a  great  man, 
and  an  original  man  a  commonplace  man.  Any  fool  can 
generalise  and  speculate  ;  but  oh,  my  heavens,  to  get  up  at 
second  hand  a  New  Zealand  Flora,  that  is  work.  .  .  . 

And  now  I  am  going  to  beg  almost  as  great  a  favour  as 
a  man  can  beg  of  another  :  and  I  ask  some  five  or  six  weeks 
before  I  want  the  favour  done,  that  it  may  appear  less  horrid. 
It  is  to  read,  but  well  copied  out,  my  pages  (about  forty  ! !) 
on  Alpine  floras  and  faunas,  Arctic  and  Antarctic  floras  and 
faunas,  and  the  supposed  cold  mundane  period.  It  would  be 
really  an  enormous  advantage  to  me,  as  I  am  sure  otherwise 
to  make  botanical  blunders.  I  would  specify  the  few  points 
on  which  I  most  want  your  advice.  But  it  is  quite  likely 
that  you  may  object  on  the  ground  that  you  might  be 
publishing  before  me  (I  hope  to  publish  in  a  year  at  furthest), 
so  that  it  would  hamper  and  bother  you  ;  and  secondly  you 


96  EVOLUTION  [Chaf.  I 

Letter  49  may  object  to  the  loss  of  time,  for  I  daresay  it  would  take  an 
hour  and  a  half  to  read.  It  certainly  would  be  of  immense 
advantage  to  me  ;  but  of  course  you  must  not  think  of  doing 
it  if  it  would  interfere  with  your  own  work. 

I  do  not  consider  this  request  in  futitro  as  breaking  my 
promise  to  give  no  more  trouble  for  some  time. 

From  Lyell's  letters,  he  is  coming  round  at  a  railway  pace 
on  the  mutability  of  species,  and  authorises  me  to  put  some 
sentences  on  this  head  in  my  preface. 

I  shall  meet  Lyell  on  Wednesday  at  Lord  Stanhope's,  and 
will  ask  him  to  forward  my  letter  to  you  ;  though,  as  my 
arguments  have  not  struck  him,  they  cannot  have  force,  and 
my  head  must  be  crotchety  on  the  subject  ;  but  the  crotchets 
keep  firmly  there.  I  have  given  your  opinion  on  continuous 
land,  I  see,  too  strongly. 

Letter  50  To  S.  P.  Woodward.1 

Down,  July   iSlh  [1856J. 

Very  many  thanks  for  your  kindness  in  writing  to  me  at 
such  length,  and  I  am  glad  to  say  for  your  sake  that  I  do  not 
see  that  I  shall  have  to  beg  any  further  favours.  What  a 
range  and  what  a  variability  in  the  Cyrena  ! 2  Your  list  of 
the  ranges  of  the  land  and  fresh-water  shells  certainly  is 
most  striking  and  curious,  and  especially  as  the  antiquity 
of  four  of  them  is  so  clearly  shown. 

I  have  got  Harvey's  seaside  book,  and  liked  it  ;  I  was 
not  particularly  struck  with  it,  but  I  will  re-read  the  first  and 
last  chapters. 

I  am  growing  as  bad  as  the  worst  about  species,  and 
hardly  have  a  vestige  of  belief  in  the  permanence  of  species 

1  Samuel  Pickworth  Woodward  (1821-65)  held  an  appointment  in  the 
British  Museum  Library  for  a  short  time,  and  then  became  Sub-Curator 
to  the  Geological  Society  (1839).  In  1845  he  was  appointed  Professor  of 
Geology  and  Natural  History  in  the  recently  founded  Royal  Agricultural 
College,  Cirencester ;  he  afterwards  obtained  a  post  as  first-class 
assistant  in  the  Department  of  Geology  and  Mineralogy  in  the  British 
Museum.  Woodward's  chief  work,  The  Manual  of  Mollusca,  was  pub- 
lished in  1851-56.  ("A  Memoir  of  Dr.  S.  P.Woodward,"  Trans.  Norfolk 
and  Norwich  Naturalists'  Society,  Vol.  III.,  p.  279,  1882.  By  H.  B. 
Woodward.) 

5  A  genus  of  Lamellibranchs  ranging  from  the  Lias  to  the 
present  day. 


1844—1858]  CIRRIPEDES  97 

left    in   me  ;  and    this   confession  will   make  you  think  very  Letter  50 
lightly  of  me,  but  I   cannot  help  it.     Such   has  become  my 
honest    conviction,    though    the    difficulties    and    arguments 
against  such  heresy  are  certainly  most  weighty. 


To   C.    Lyell.  Letter  51 

Nov.  10th  [1S56]. 
I  know  you  like  all  cases  of  negative  geological  evidence 
being  upset.  I  fancied  that  I  was  a  most  unwilling  believer 
in  negative  evidence  ;  but  yet  such  negative  evidence  did 
seem  to  me  so  strong  that  in  my  Fossil  Lepadidce  I  have 
stated,  giving  reasons,  that  I  did  not  believe  there  could  have 
existed  any  sessile  cirripedes  during  the  Secondary  ages. 
Now,  the  other  day  Bosquet  of  Maestricht  sends  me  a  perfect 
drawing  of  a  perfect  Chthamalus  1  (a  recent  genus)  from  the 
Chalk  !  Indeed,  it  is  stretching  a  point  to  make  it  specifically 
distinct  from  our  living  British  species.  It  is  a  genus  not 
hitherto  found  in  any  Tertiary  bed. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  52 

Down,  July  9th,  1857. 

I  am  extremely  much  obliged  to  you  for  having  so  fully 
entered  on  my  point.  I  knew  I  was  on  unsafe  ground,  but 
it  proves  far  unsafer  than  I  had  thought.  I  had  thought  that 
Brulle  -  had  a  wider  basis  for  his  generalisation,  for  I  made 
the  extract  several  years  ago,  and  I  presume  (I  state  it  as 
some  excuse  for  myself)  that  I  doubted  it,  for,  differently 
from  my  general  habit,  I  have  not  extracted   his  grounds.     It 

1  Chthamalus,  a  genus  of  Cirripedia.  (A  Monograph  on  the  Sub- 
class Cirripedia,  by  Charles  Darwin,  p.  447.  London,  1854.)  A  fossil 
species  of  this  genus  of  Upper  Cretaceous  age  was  named  by  Bosquet 
Chthamalus  Darwini.  See  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  284  ;  also  Zittel,  Traitd 
de  PaUontologie,  Traduit  par  Dr.  C.  Barrois,  Vol.  II.,  p.  540,  fig.  748. 
Paris,  1887. 

2  This  no  doubt  refers  to  A.  Bridle's  paper  in  the  Comptes  rendus 
1844,  of  which  a  translation  is  given  in  the  Annals  and  Mag.  of  Natural 
History,  1844,  p.  484.  In  speaking  of  the  development  of  the  Articulata, 
the  author  says  "that  the  appendages  are  manifested  at  an  earlier  period 
of  the  existence  of  an  Articulate  animal  the  more  complex  its  degree  of 
organisation,  and  vice  versa  that  they  make  their  appearance  the  later, 
the  fewer  the  number  of  transformations  which  it  has  to  undergo." 


98  l  \  OLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  52  was  meeting  with  Barneoud's1  paper  which  made  mc  think 
there  might  be  truth  in  the  doctrine.  Your  instance  of 
heart  and  brain  of  fish  seems  to  me  very  good.  It  was  a 
very  stupid  blunder  on  my  part  not  thinking  of  the  posterior 
part  of  the  time  of  development.  I  shall,  of  course,  not 
allude  to  this  subject,  which  I  rather  grieve  about,  as  I 
wished  it  to  be  true;  but,  alas!  a  scientific  man  ought  to 
have  no  wishes,  no  affections — a  mere  heart  of  stone. 

There  is  only  one  point  in  your  letter  which  at  present  1 
cannot  quite  follow  you  in  :  supposing  that  Barneoud's  (I  do 
not  say  Bridles)  remarks  were  true  and  universal — i.e.,  that  the 
petals  which  have  to  undergo  the  greatest  amount  of  develop- 
ment and  modification  begin  to  change  the  soonest  from  the 
simple  and  common  embryonic  form  of  the  petal — if  this 
were  a  true  law,  then  I  cannot  but  think  that  it  would  thn>\v 
light  on  Milne  Edwards'  proposition  that  the  wider  apart  the 
classes  of  animals  are,  the  sooner  do  they  diverge  from  the 
common  embryonic  plan — which  common  embryonic  [plan] 
may  be  compared  with  the  similar  petals  in  the  early  bud, 
the  several  petals  in  one  flower  being  compared  to  the 
distinct  but  similar  embryos  of  the  different  classes.  I  much 
wish  that  you  would  so  far  keep  this  in  mind,  that  whenever 
we  meet  I  might  hear  how  far  you  differ  or  concur  in  this. 
I  have  always  looked  at  Barneoud's  and  Brulle's  proposition 
as  only  in  some  degree  analogous. 

P.S.  I  see  in  my  abstract  of  Milne  Edwards'  paper,  he 
speaks  of  "the  most  perfect  and  important  organs"  as  being 
first  developed,  and  I  should  have  thought  that  this  was 
usually  synonymous  with  the  most  developed  or  modified. 

Letter  53  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

The  following  letter  is  chiefly  of  interest  as  showing  the  amount  and 
kind  of  work  required  for  Darwin's  conclusions  on  "  large  genera  varying," 
which  occupy  no  more  than  two  or  three  pages  in  the  Origin  (Ed.  I., 
p.  55).  Some  correspondence  on  the  subject  is  given  in  the  Life  and 
Letters,  II.,  pp.  102-5. 

1  Apparently  Barneoud  "On  the  Organogeny  of  Irregular  Corollas," 
from  the  Comptes  rendus,  1847,  as  given  in  Annals  and  Mag.  of  Natural 
History,  1847,  p.  440.  The  paper  chiefly  deals  with  the  fact  that  in  their 
earliest  condition  irregular  flowers  are  regular.  The  view  attributed  to 
Barneoud  does  not  seem  so  definitely  given  in  this  paper  as  in  a  previous 
one  {Ann.  Sc.  Nat.,  Bot.,  Tom.  VI.,  p.  268). 


1S44 — 1858]  LARGE    GENERA  99 

Down,  August  22nd  [1857].  Letter  53 

Your  handwriting  always  rejoices  the  cockles  of  my 
heart  ;  though  you  have  no  reason  to  be  "  overwhelmed 
with  shame,"  as  I  did  not  expect  to  hear. 

I  write  now  chiefly  to  know  whether  you  can  tell  me  how 
to  write  to  Hermann  Schlagenheit  (is  this  spelt  right  ?),'  for  I 
believe  he  is  returned  to  England,  and  he  has  poultry  skins 
for  me  from  W.  Elliot  of  Madras. 

I  am  very  glad  to  hear  that  you  have  been  tabulating 
some  Floras  about  varieties.  Will  you  just  tell  me  roughly 
the  result?  Do  you  not  find  it  takes  much  time?  I  am 
employing  a  laboriously  careful  schoolmaster,  who  does 
the  tabulating  and  dividing  into  two  great  cohorts,  more 
carefully  than  I  can.  This  being  so,  I  should  be  very  glad 
some  time  to  have  Koch,  Webb's  Canaries,  and  Ledebour, 
and  Grisebach,  but  I  do  not  know  even  where  Rumelia  is.  I 
shall  work  the  British  flora  with  three  separate  Floras  ;  and 
I  intend  dividing  the  varieties  into  two  classes,  as  Asa  Gray 
and  Henslow  give  the  materials,  and,  further,  A.  Gray  and 
H.  C.  Watson  have  marked  for  me  the  forms,  which  they 
consider  real  species,  but  yet  are  very  close  to  others  ;  and  it 
will  be  curious  to  compare  results.  If  it  will  all  hold  good 
it  is  very  important  for  me  ;  for  it  explains,  as  I  think,  all 
classification,  i.e.  the  quasi-branching  and  sub-branching  of 
forms,  as  if  from  one  root,  big  genera  increasing  and 
splitting  up,  etc.,  as  you  will  perceive.  But  then  comes  in, 
also,  what  I  call  a  principle  of  divergence,  which  I  think 
I  can  explain,  but  which  is  too  long,  and  perhaps  you  would 
not  care  to  hear.  As  you  have  been  on  this  subject,  you 
might  like  to  hear  what  very  little  is  complete  (for  my 
schoolmaster  has  had  three  weeks'  holidays) — only  three 
cases  as  yet,  I  see. 

Babington— British  Flora. 


593  species  in  genera  of  5  and 
upwards  have  in  a  thousand  species 
presenting  vars.  iVuV ' 


593  (odd  chance  equal)  in  genera 
of  3  and  downwards  have  in  a 
thousand  presenting  vars.  ^,It,. 


1  Schlagintweit. 

3  This  sentence  may  be  interpreted  as  follows  :  The  number  of 
species  which  present  varieties  are  134  per  thousand  in  genera  of 
5  species  and  upwards.  The  result  is  obtained  from  tabulation  of  593 
species. 


IOO  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  53  HOOKER— NEW   ZEALAND. 

Genera  with  4  species  and   up-  I       With     3     species     and     down- 
wards, i'oVj.  I   wards,    ftftrV- 

Godkon— Central  France. 


With  5  species  and  upwards,  A.',.",. 


With  3  species  and  downwards 


I  do  not  enter  into  details  on  omitting  introduced  plants 
and  very  varying  genera,  as  Ruins,  Salix,  Rosa,  etc.,  which 
would  make  the  result  more  in  favour. 

I  enjoyed  seeing  ilenslow  extremely,  though  I  was  a 
good  way  from  well  at  the  time.  Farewell,  my  dear  Hooker : 
do  not  forget  your  visit  here  some  time. 

LeUer  54  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Nov.  14th  [1S57]. 

On  Tuesday  I  will  send  off  from  London,  whither  I  go 
on  that  day,  Ledebour's  three  remaining  vols.,  Grisebach  and 
Cybele,  i.e.,  all  that  I  have,  and  most  truly  am  I  obliged  to 
you  for  them.  I  find  the  rule,  as  yet,  of  the  species  varying 
most  in  the  large  genera  universal,  except  in  Miquel's  very 
brief  and  therefore  imperfect  list  of  the  Holland  flora,  which 
makes  me  very  anxious  to  tabulate  a  fuller  flora  of  Holland. 
I  shall  remain  in  London  till  Friday  morning,  and  if  quite 
convenient  to  send  me  two  vols,  of  D.C.  Prodrowus,  I 
could  take  them  home  and  tabulate  them.  I  should  think 
a  vol.  with  a  large  best  known  natural  family,  and  a  vol. 
with  several  small  broken  families  would  be  best,  always 
supposing  that  the  varieties  are  conspicuously  marked  in 
both.  Have  you  the  volume  published  by  Lowe  on 
Madeira?  If  so  and  if  any  varieties  are  marked  I  should 
much  like  to  see  it,  to  see  if  I  can  make  out  anything  about 
habitats  of  vars.  in  so  small  an  area — a  point  on  which  I  have 
become  very  curious.  I  fear  there  is  no  chance  of  your 
possessing  Forbes  and  Hancock  British  Shells,  a  grand  work, 
which  I  much  wish  to  tabulate. 

Very  many  thanks  for  seed  of  Adlumia  cirrhosa,  which  I 
will  carefully  observe.  My  notice  in  the  G.  Ch.  on  Kidney 
Beans  l  has  brought  me  a  curious  letter  from  an  intelligent 

1  "  On  the  Agency  of  Bees  in  the  Fertilisation  of  Papilionaceous 
Flowers"  (Gardeners'  Chronicle,  1857,  p.  725). 


1844—1858]  DIVERGENT    AFFINITIES  IOI 

gardener,  with  a  most  remarkable  lot  of  beans,  crossed  in  Letter  54 
a  marvellous  manner  in  the  first  generation,  like  the  peas  sent 
to  you  by  Berkeley  and  like  those  experimentalised  on  by 
Gartner  and  by  Wiegmann.  It  is  a  very  odd  case  ;  I  shall 
sow  these  seeds  and  sec  what  comes  up.  How  very  odd  that 
pollen  of  one  form  should  affect  the  outer  coats  and  size  of 
the  bean  produced  by  pure  species  !  .  .  . 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  55 

Down  [1857  ?]. 
You  know  how  I  work  subjects :  namely,  if  I  stumble  on 
any  general  remark,  and  if  I  find  it  confirmed  in  any  other 
very  distinct  class,  then  I  try  to  find  out  whether  it  is  true, — if 
it  has  any  bearing  on  my  work.  The  following,  perhaps,  may 
be  important  to  me.  Dr.  Wight  remarks  that  Cucurbitaceae  ! 
is  a  very  isolated  family,  and  has  very  diverging  affinities- 
I  find,  strongly  put  and  illustrated,  the  very  same  remark  in 
the  genera  of  hymenoptera.  Now,  it  is  not  to  me  at  first 
apparent  why  a  very  distinct  and  isolated  group  should  be 
apt  to  have  more  divergent  affinities  than  a  less  isolated 
group.  I  am  aware  that  most  genera  have  more  affinities  than 
in  two  ways,  which  latter,  perhaps,  is  the  commonest  case. 
I  see  how  infinitely  vague  all  this  is  ;  but  I  should  very  much 
like  to  know  what  you  and  Mr.  Bentham  (if  he  will  read  this), 
who  have  attended  so  much  to  the  principles  of  classification, 
think  of  this.  Perhaps  the  best  way  would  be  to  think  of 
half  a  dozen  most  isolated  groups  of  plants,  and  then  consider 
whether  the  affinities  point  in  an  unusual  number  of  directions. 
Very  likely  you  may  think  the  whole  question  too  vague  to 
be  worth  consideration. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  50 

Down,  April  8th  [1857]. 
I  now  want  to  ask  your  opinion,  and  for  facts  on  a  point ; 
and  as  I  shall  often  want  to  do  this  during  the  next  year  or 
two,  so  let  me  say,  once  for  all,  that  you  must  not  take  trouble 
out  of  mere  good  nature  (of  which  towards  me  you  have 
a  most  abundant  stock),  but   you   must   consider,  in  regard 

1  Wight,  "  Remarks  on  the  Fruit  of  the  Natural  Order  Cucur- 
bitaceae" {Ami.  Mag.  Nat.  Hist.,  VIII.,  p.  261).  R.  Wight,  F.R.S. 
(1796—1872)  was  Superintendent  of  the  Madras   Botanic  Garden. 


102  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  56  to  the  trouble  any  question  may  take,  whether  you  think  it 
worth  while — as  all  loss  of  time  so  far  lessens  your  original 
work — to  give  me  facts  to  be  quoted  on  your  authority  in  my 
work.  Do  not  think  I  shall  be  disappointed  if  you  cannot 
spare  time ;  for  already  I  have  profited  enormously  from 
your  judgment  and  knowledge.  I  earnestly  beg  you  to  act 
as  I  suggest,  and  not  take  trouble  solely  out  of  good-nature. 

My  point  is  as  follows  :  Harvey  gives  the  case  of  Fucus 
varying  remarkably,  and  yet  in  same  way  under  most 
different  conditions.  D.  Don  makes  same  remark  in  regard 
to  Juncus  bufonius  in  England  and  India.  Polygala  vulgaris 
has  white,  red,  and  blue  flowers  in  Faroe,  England,  and  I 
think  Herbert  says  in  Zante.  Now  such  cases  seem  to  me 
very  striking,  as  showing  how  little  relation  some  variations 
have  to  climatal  conditions. 

Do  you  think  there  are  many  such  cases  ?  Does  Oxalis 
corniculata  present  exactly  the  same  varieties  under  very 
different  climates? 

How  is  it  with  any  other  British  plants  in  New  Zealand, 
or  at  the  foot  of  the  Himalaya?  Will  you  think  over  this 
and  let  me  hear  the  result? 

One  other  question  :  do  you  remember  whether  the 
introduced  Sonchus  in  New  Zealand  was  less,  equally,  or 
more  common  than  the  aboriginal  stock  of  the  same  species, 
where  both  occurred  together?  I  forget  whether  there  is 
any  other  case  parallel  with  this  curious  one  of  the  Sonchus  .... 

I  have  been  making  good,  though  slow,  progress  with  my 
book,  for  facts  have  been  falling  nicely  into  groups,  enlighten- 
ing each  other. 

Letter  57  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Moor  Park,  Farnham,   Surrey  [1857?]. 

Your  letter  has  been  forwarded  to  me  here,  where  I  am 
profiting  by  a  few  weeks'  rest  and  hydropathy.  Your  letter 
has  interested  and  amused  me  much.  I  am  extremely  glad 
you  have  taken  up  the  Aphis  1  question,  but,  for  Heaven's  sake, 

1  Professor  Huxley's  paper  on  the  organic  reproduction  of  Aphis  is  in 
the  Trans.  Linn.  Soc,  XXII.  (1858),  p.  193.  Prof.  Owen  had  treated  the 
subject  in  his  introductory  Hunterian  lecture  On  Parthenogenesis  (1849). 
His  theory  cannot  be  fully  given  here.  Briefly,  he  holds  that  partheno- 
genesis is  due  to  the  inheritance  of  a  "remnant  of  spermatic  virtue": 


iS44— 1858]  PARTHENOGENESIS  IO3 

do  not  come  the  mild  Hindoo  (whatever  he  may  be)  to  Owen  ;  Letter  57 
your  father  confessor  trembles  for  you.  I  fancy  Owen  thinks 
much  of  this  doctrine  of  his  ;  I  never  from  the  first  believed 
it,  and  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  same  power  is  concerned 
in  producing  aphides  without  fertilisation,  and  producing,  for 
instance,  nails  on  the  amputated  stump  of  a  man's  fingers,  or 
the  new  tail  of  a  lizard.  By  the  way,  I  saw  somewhere  during 
the  last  week  or  so  a  statement  of  a  man  rearing  from  the 
same  set  of  eggs  winged  and  wingless  aphides,  which  seemed 
new  to  me.  Does  not  some  Yankee  say  that  the  American 
viviparous  aphides  are  winged  ?  I  am  particularly  glad  that 
you  are  ruminating  on  the  act  of  fertilisation  :  it  has  long 
seemed  to  me  the  most  wonderful  and  curious  of  physiological 
problems.  I  have  often  and  often  speculated  for  amusement 
on  the  subject,  but  quite  fruitlessly.  Do  you  not  think  that 
the  conjugation  of  the  Diatomaceae  will  ultimately  throw  light 
on  the  subject?  But  the  other  day  I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  some  day  we  shall  have  cases  of  young  being  produced 
from  spermatozoa  or  pollen  without  an  ovule.  Approaching 
the  subject  from  the  side  which  attracts  me  most,  viz.,  inherit- 
ance, I  have  lately  been  inclined  to  speculate,  very  crudely 
and  indistinctly,  that  propagation  by  true  fertilisation  will 
turn  out  to  be  a  sort  of  mixture,  and  not  true  fusion,  of  two 
distinct  individuals,  or  rather  of  innumerable  individuals,  as 
each  parent  has  its  parents  and  ancestors.  I  can  understand 
on  no  other  view  the  way  in  which  crossed  forms  go  back  to 
so  large  an  extent  to  ancestral  forms.  But  all  this,  of  course, 
is  infinitely  crude.  I  hope  to  be  in  London  in  the  course  of 
this  month,  and  there  are  two  or  three  points  which,  for  my 
own  sake,  I  want  to  discuss  briefly  with  you. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  58 

Down,  Sept.  26th  [1857]. 

Thanks  for  your  very  pleasant  note.  It  amuses  me  to  see 
what  a  bug-bear  I  have  made  myself  to  you  ;  when  having 
written  some  very  pungent  and  good  sentence  it  must  be  very 
disagreeable  to  have  my  face  rise  up  like  an  ugly  ghost.1     I 

when  the  "spermatic  force"  or  "virtue"  is  exhausted  fresh  impregnation 
occurs.     Huxley  severely  criticises  both  Owen's  facts  and  his  theory. 

1  This  probably  refers  to  Darwin's  wish  to  moderate  a  certain 
pugnacity  in  Huxley. 


104  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  58  have  always  suspected  Agassiz  of  superficiality  and  wretched 
reasoning  powers  ;  but  I  think  such  men  do  immense  good  in 
their  way.  See  how  he  stirred  up  all  Europe  about  glaciers. 
By  the  way,  Lyell  has  been  at  the  glaciers,  or  rather  their 
effects,  and  seems  to  have  done  good  work  in  testing  and 
judging  what  others  have  done.  .  .  . 

In  "regard  to  classification  and  all  the  endless  disputes 
about  the  "  Natural  System,"  which  no  two  authors  define  in 
the  same  way,  I  believe  it  ought,  in  accordance  to  my  hetero- 
dox notions,  to  be  simply  genealogical.  But  as  we  have  no 
written  pedigrees  you  will,  perhaps,  say  this  will  not  help 
much  ;  but  1  think  it  ultimately  will,  whenever  heterodoxy 
becomes  orthodoxy,  for  it  will  clear  away  an  immense  amount 
of  rubbish  about  the  value  of  characters,  and  will  make  the 
difference  between  analogy  and  homology  clear.  The  time 
will  come,  I  believe,  though  I  shall  not  live  to  see  it,  when  we 
shall  have  very  fairly  true  genealogical  trees  of  each  great 
kingdom  of  Nature. 

Letter  59  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Down,   Dec.    16th  [1857]. 

In  my  opinion  your  Catalogue1  is  simply  the  very  best 
resume,  by  far,  on  the  whole  science  of  Natural  History,  which 
I  have  ever  seen.  I  really  have  no  criticisms  :  I  agree  with 
every  word.  Your  metaphors  and  explanations  strike  me 
as  admirable.  In  many  parts  it  is  curious  how  what  you 
have  written  agrees  with  what  I  have  been  writing,  only  with 
the  melancholy  difference  for  me  that  you  put  everything  in 
twice  as  striking  a  manner  as  I  do.  I  append,  more  for  the 
sake  of  showing  that  I  have  attended  to  the  whole  than  for 
any  other  object,  a  few  most  trivial  criticisms. 

I  was  amused  to  meet  with  some  of  the  arguments,  which 
you  advanced  in  talk  with  me,  on  classification  ;  and  it 
pleases  me,  [that]  my  long  proses  were  so  far  not  thrown 
away,  as  they  led  you  to  bring  out  here  some  good  sentences. 

1  It  appears  from  a  letter  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  (Dec.  25th,  1857)  that 
the  reference  is  to  the  proofs  of  Huxley's  Explanatory  Preface  to  the 
Catalogue  of  the  I'aUcontological  Collection  in  the  Museum  of  Practical 
Geology,  by  T.  H.  Huxley  and  K.  Etheridge,  1865.  Mr.  Huxley  appends 
a  note  at  p.  xlix  :  "  It  should  be  noted  that  these  pages  were  written 
before  the  appearance  of  Mr.  Darwin's  book  on  The  Origin  of  Species— 
a  work  which  has  effected  a  revolution  in  biological  speculation." 


1844— 1858]  LARGE    GENERA  105 

But  on  classification  '  I  am  not  quite  sure  that  I  yet  wholly  Letter  59 
go  with  you,  though  I  agree  with  every  word  you  have  here 
said.     The  whole,  I  repeat,  in  my  opinion  is  admirable  and 
excellent. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  60 

Down,  Feb.   2Sth  [1858]. 

Hearty  thanks  for  De  Candolle  received.  I  have  put  the 
big  genera  in  hand.  Also  many  thanks  for  your  valuable 
remarks  on  the  affinities  of  the  species  in  great  genera,  which 
will  be  of  much  use  to  me  in  my  chapter  on  classification. 
Your  opinion  is  what  I  had  expected  from  what  little  I  knew, 
but  I  much  wanted  it  confirmed,  and  many  of  your  remarks 
were  more  or  less  new  to  me  and  all  of  value. 

You  give  a  poor  picture  of  the  philosophy  of  Botany. 
From  my  ignorance,  I  suppose,  I  can  hardly  persuade  myself 
that  things  are  quite  as  bad  as  you  make  them, — you  might 
have  been  writing  remarks  on  Ornithology!  I  shall  meditate 
much  on  your  remarks,  which  will  also  come  in  very  useful 
when  I  write  and  consider  my  tables  of  big  and  small  genera. 
I  grieve  for  myself  to  say  that  Watson  agrees  with  your  view, 
but  with  much  doubt.  I  gave  him  no  guide  what  your 
opinion  was.  I  have  written  to  A.  Gray  and  to  X.,  who — - 
i.e.  the  latter — on  this  point  may  be  looked  at  as  S.  Smith's 
Foolometer. 

I  am  now  working  several  of  the  large  local  Floras,  with 
leaving  out  altogether  all  the  smallest  genera.  When  I  have 
done  this,  and  seen  what  the  sections  of  the  largest  genera 
say,  and  seen  what  the  results  are  of  range  and  commonness 
of  varying  species,  I  must  come  to  some  definite  conclusion 
whether  or  not  entirely  to  give  up  the  ghost.  I  shall  then 
show  how  my  theory  points,  how  the  facts  stand,  then  state 
the  nature  of  your  grievous  assault  and  yield  entirely  or 
defend  the  case  as  far  as  I  can  honestly. 

Again  I  thank  you  for  your  invaluable  assistance.  I  have 
not  felt  the  blow  [Hooker's  criticisms]  so  much  of  late,  as 
I  have  been  beyond  measure  interested  on  the  constructive 
instinct  of  the  hive-bee.  Adios,  you  terrible  worrier  of  poor 
theorists  ! 


1  This  probably  refers  to  Mr.  Huxley's  discussion  on  "  Natural  Classi- 
fication," a  subject  hardly  susceptible  of  fruitful  treatment  except  from  an 
evolutionary  standpoint. 


Letter  61 


106  EVOLUTION  [(  hap.  II 

To  J.   D.    I  looker. 

Down  [1858?] 

Many  thanks  for  Ledcbour  and  still  more  for  your  letter, 
with  its  admirable  risutni  of  all  your  objections.  It  is  really 
most  kind  of  you  to  take  so  very  much  trouble  about  what 
seems  to  you,  and  probably  is,  mere  vagaries. 

I  will  earnestly  try  and  be  cautious.  I  will  write  out  my 
tables  and  conclusion,  and  (when  well  copied  out)  I  hope  you 
will  be  so  kind  as  to  read  it.  I  will  then  put  it  by  and  after 
some  months  look  at  it  with  fresh  eyes.  I  will  briefly  work 
in  all  your  objections  and  Watson's.  I  labour  under  a  great 
difficulty  from  feeling  sure  that,  with  what  very  little  sys- 
tematic work  I  have  done,  small  genera  were  more  interesting 
and  therefore  more  attracted  my  attention. 

One  of  your  remarks  I  do  not  see  the  bearing  of  under 
your  point  of  view — namely,  that  in  monotypic  genera  "  the 
variation  and  variability  "  are  "  much  more  frequently 
noticed"  than  in  polytypic  genera.  I  hardly  like  to  ask,  but 
this  is  the  only  one  of  your  arguments  of  which  I  do  not  see 
the  bearing  ;  and  I  certainly  should  be  very  glad  to  know.  I 
believe  I  am  the  slowest  (perhaps  the  worst)  thinker  in 
England  ;  and  I  now  consequently  fully  admit  the  full 
hostility  of  Urticacea;,  which   I   will  give  in  my  tables. 

I  will  make  no  remarks  on  your  objections,  as  I  do  hope 
you  will  read  my  MS.,  which  will  not  cost  you  much  trouble 
when  fairly  copied  out.  From  my  own  experience,  I  hardly 
believe  that  the  most  sagacious  observers,  without  counting, 
could  have  predicted  whether  there  were  more  or  fewer 
recorded  varieties  in  large  or  small  genera  ;  for  I  found,  when 
actually  making  the  list,  that  I  could  never  strike  a  balance 
in  my  mind, — a  good  many  varieties  occurring  together,  in 
small  or  in  large  genera,  always  threw  me  off  the  balance.  .  .  . 

P.S. — I  have  just  thought  that  your  remark  about  the 
much  variation  of  monotypic  genera  was  to  show  me  that 
even  in  these,  the  smallest  genera,  there  was  much  variability. 
If  this  be  so,  then  do  not  answer  ;  and  I  will  so  understand  it. 


i844—  «S58]  LARGE    GENERA  107 

To   J.    D.    Hooker.  Letter  62 

Feb.   23rd  [1858]. 

Will  you  think  of  some  of  the  largest  genera  with  which 
you  are  well  acquainted,  and  then  suppose  |  of  the  species 
utterly  destroyed  and  unknown  in  the  sections  (as  it  were)  as 
much  as  possible  in  the  centre  of  such  great  genera.  Then 
would  the  remaining  |  of  the  species,  forming  a  few  sections, 
be,  according  to  the  general  practice  of  average  good  Botanists, 
ranked  as  distinct  genera?  Of  course  they  would  in  that 
case  be  closely  related  genera.  The  question,  in  fact,  is,  are 
all  the  species  in  a  gigantic  genus  kept  together  in  that  genus, 
because  they  are  really  so  very  closely  similar  as  to  be 
inseparable  ?  or  is  it  because  no  chasms  or  boundaries  can 
be  drawn  separating  the  many  species  ?  The  question  might 
have  been  put  for  Orders. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  63 

Down,  Feb.  9th  [1858].        * 

I  should  be  very  much  obliged  for  your  opinion  on  the  en- 
closed. You  may  remember  in  the  three  first  vols,  tabulated, 
all  orders  went  right  except  Labiata:.  By  the  way,  if  by  any 
extraordinary  chance  you  have  not  thrown  away  the  scrap  of 
paper  with  former  results,  I  wish  you  would  return  it,  for'  I 
have  lost  my  copy,  and  I  shall  have  all  the  division  to  do 
again  ;  but  do  not  hunt  for  it,  for  in  any  case  I  should  have 
gone  over  the  calculation  again. 

Now  I  have  done  the  three  other  vols.  You  will  see  that 
all  species  in  the  six  vols,  together  go  right,  and  likewise 
all  orders  in  the  three  last  vols.,  except  Verbenaccse.  Is  not 
Verbenacese  very  closely  allied  to  Labiatae  ?  If  so,  one  would 
think  that  it  was  not  mere  chance,  this  coincidence.  The  species 
in  Labiatae  and  Verbenaceae  together  are  between  i  and  \ 
of  all  the  species  (15,645),  which  I  have  now  tabulated. 

Now,  bearing  in  mind  the  many  local  Floras  which  I  have 
tabulated  (belting  the  whole  northern  hemisphere),  and  con- 
sidering that  they  (and  authors  of  D.C.  Prodromus)  would 
probably  take  different  degrees  of  care  in  recording  varieties, 
and  the  genera  would  be  divided  on  different  principles  by 
different  men,  etc.,  I  am  much  surprised  at  the  uniformity  of 
the  result,  and  I  am  satisfied  that  there  must  be  truth  in  the 


K>S  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  63  rule  that  the  small  genera  vary  less  than  the  large.  What  do 
you  think  ?  Hypothetically  I  can  conjecture  how  the  Labiatae 
might  fail — namely,  if  some  small  divisions  of  the  Order  were 
now  coming  into  importance  in  the  world  and  varying  much 
and  making  species.  This  makes  me  want  to  know  whether 
you  could  divide  the  Labiata:  into  a  few  great  natural  divi- 
sions, and  then  I  would  tabulate  them  separately  as  sub- 
orders. I  see  Lindley  makes  so  many  divisions  that  there 
would  not  be  enough  in  each  for  an  average.  I  send  the 
table  of  the  Labiatae  for  the  chance  of  your  being  able  to 
do  this  for  me.  You  might  draw  oblique  lines  including  and 
separating  both  large  and  small  genera.  I  have  also  divided 
all  the  species  into  two  equal  masses,  and  my  rule  holds 
good  for  all  the  species  in  a  mass  in  the  six  volumes  ;  but  it 
fails  in  several  (four)  large  Orders — viz.  Labiatae,  Scrophu- 
lariaceae,  Acanthaceas,  and  Proteacea?.  But,  then,  when  the 
species  are  divided  into  two  almost  exactly  equal  divisions, 
the  divisions  with  large  genera  are  so  very  few  :  for  instance, 
in  Solanaceae,  Solarium  balances  all  others.  In  Labiata;  seven 
gigantic  genera  balance  all  others  (viz.  1 1 3),  and  in  Proteacea: 
five  genera  balance  all  others.  Now,  according  to  my 
hypothetical  notions,  I  am  far  from  supposing  that  all  genera 
go  on  increasing  for  ever,  and  therefore  I  am  not  surprised 
at  this  result,  when  the  division  is  so  made  that  only 
a  very  few  genera  are  on  one  side.  But,  according  to  my 
notions,  the  sections  or  sub-genera  of  the  gigantic  genera 
ought  to  obey  my  rule  {i.e.,  supposing  a  gigantic  genus  had 
come  to  its  maximum,  whatever  increase  was  still  going  on 
ought  to  be  going  on  in  the  larger  sub-genera).  Do  you  think 
that  the  sections  of  the  gigantic  genera  in  D.C.  Prodromus 
arc  generally  natural:  i.e.  not  founded  on  mere  artificial  char- 
acters? If  you  think  that  they  are  generally  made  as  natural 
as  they  can  be,  then  I  should  like  very  much  to  tabulate  the 
sub-genera,  considering  them  for  the  time  as  good  genera. 
In  this  case,  and  if  you  do  not  think  me  unreasonable  to  ask 
it,  I  should  be  very  glad  of  the  loan  of  Vols.  X.,  XI.,  XII.,  and 
XIV.,  which  include  Acanthaces,  Scrophulariaceae,  Labiata;, 
and  Proteaceae, — that  is,  the  orders  which,  when  divided  quite 
equally,  do  not  accord  with  my  rule,  and  in  which  a  very  few 
genera  balance  all  the  others. 

I  have  written  you  a  tremendous  long  prose. 


1844—1858]  LARGE    GENERA  109 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  64 

Down,  June  8th  [1S58]. 

I  am  confined  to  the  sofa  with  boils,  so  you  must  let  me 
write  in  pencil.  You  would  laugh  if  you  could  know  how 
much  your  note  pleased  me.  I  had  the  firmest  conviction 
that  you  would  say  all  my  MS.  was  bosh,  and,  thank  God, 
you  are  one  of  the  few  men  who  dare  speak  the  truth. 
Though  I  should  not  have  much  cared  about  throwing  away 
what  you  have  seen,  yet  I  have  been  forced  to  confess  to 
myself  that  all  was  much  alike,  and  if  you  condemned  that 
you  would  condemn  all  my  life's  work,  and  that  I  confess 
made  me  a  little  low  ;  but  I  could  have  borne  it,  for  I  have 
the  conviction  that  I  have  honestly  done  my  best.  The  dis- 
cussion comes  in  at  the  end  of  the  long  chapter  on  variation 
in  a  state  of  nature,  so  that  I  have  discussed,  as  far  as  I  am 
able,  what  to  call  varieties.  I  will  try  to  leave  out  all  allusion 
to  genera  coming  in  and  out  in  this  part,  till  when  I  discuss 
the  "  Principle  of  Divergence,"  which,  with  "  Natural  Selec- 
tion," is  the  keystone  of  my  book  ;  and  I  have  very  great* 
confidence  it  is  sound.  I  would  have  this  discussion  copied 
out,  if  I  could  really  think  it  would  not  bore  you  to  read, — 
for,  believe  me,  I  value  to  the  full  every  word  of  criticism 
from  you,  and  the  advantage  which  I  have  derived  from  you 
cannot  be  told.  .  .  . 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  poor  old  Brown  is  dying  so 
easily.  .  .  . 

You  will  think  it  paltry,  but  as  I  was  asked  to  pay  for 
printing  the  Diploma  [from  a  Society  of  which  he  had  been 
made  an  honorary  member],  I  did  not  like  to  refuse,  so  I  sent 
£1.  But  I  think  it  a  shabby  proceeding.  If  a  gentleman 
did  me  some  service,  though  unasked  to  do  it,  and  then 
demanded  payment,  I  should  pay  him,  and  think  him  a 
shabby  dog;  and  on  this  principle  I   sent  my  £1. 

The  following  four  letters  refer  to  an  inquiry  instituted  in  1858  by  the 
Trustees  of  the  British  Museum  as  to  the  disposal  of  the  Natural  History 
Collections.  The  inquiry  was  one  of  the  first  steps  towards  the 
establishment  of  the  Cromwell  Road  Museum,  which  was  effected  in  1875. 

To  R.  I.  Murchi.SOn.  Letter  65 

Down.  June  19th  [1S5S]. 

I  have  just  received  your  note.  Unfortunately  I  cannot 
attend  at  the  British  Museum  on  Monday.     I  do  not  suppose 


HO  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  65  my  opinion  on  the  subject  of  your  note  can  be  of  any 
value,  as  I  have  not  much  considered  the  subject,  or  had  the 
advantage  of  discussing  it  with  other  naturalists.  But  my 
impression  is,  that  there  is  much  weight  in  what  you  say 
about  not  breaking  up  the  natural  history  collection  of  the 
British  Museum.  I  think  a  national  collection  ought  to  be 
in  London.  I  can,  however,  see  that  some  weighty  arguments 
might  be  advanced  in  favour  of  Kew,  owing  to  the  immense 
value  of  Sir  W.  Hooker's  collection  and  library  ;  but  these 
are  private  property,  and  I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  any 
certainty  of  their  always  remaining  at  Kew.  Had  this  been 
the  case,  I  should  have  thought  that  the  botanical  collection 
might  have  been  removed  there  without  endangering  the 
other  branches  of  the  collections.  But  I  think  it  would  be 
the  greatest  evil  which  could  possibly  happen  to  natural 
science  in  this  country  if  the  other  collections  were  ever  to 
be  removed  from  the  British  Museum  and  Library. 

Letter  66  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  memorial  referred  to  in  the  following  letter  was  addressed  on 
Nov.  1 8th  to  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  It  was  signed  by 
Huxley,  Bentham,  W.  H.  Harvey,  Henfrey,  Henslow,  Lindley,  Busk, 
Carpenter,  and  Darwin.  The  memorial,  which  is  accessible,  as  pub- 
lished in  the  Gardeners'  Chronicle,  Nov.  27th,  1858,  p.  861,  recommended, 
speaking  generally,  the  consolidation  of  the  National  Botanical  collections 
at  Kew. 

In  February,  1900,  a  Committee  was  appointed  by  the  Lords  Commis- 
sioners of  the  Treasury  "  to  consider  the  present  arrangements  under 
which  botanical  work  is  done  and  collections  maintained  by  the  Trustees 
of  the  British  Museum,  and  under  the  First  Commissioner  of  Works  at 
Kew,  respectively  ;  and  to  report  what  changes  (if  any)  in  those  arrange- 
ments are  necessary  or  desirable  in  order  to  avoid  duplication  of  work 
and  collections  at  the  two  institutions."  The  Committee  published  their 
report  in  March,  1901,  recommending  an  arrangement  similar  to  that 
proposed  in   1858. 

Down,  Oct.  23rd  [1858]. 

The  names  which  you  give  as  supporting  your  memorial 
make  me  quite  distrust  my  own  judgment  ;  but,  as  I  must  say 
yea  or  nay,  I  am  forced  to  say  that  I  doubt  the  wisdom  of 
the  movement,  and  am  not  willing  at  present  to  sign.  My 
reasons,  perhaps  of  very  little  value,  are  as  follows.  The 
governing  classes  are  thoroughly  unscientific,  and  the  men  of 


1844-1858]  BRITISH    MUSEUM  III 

art  and  of  archaeology  have  much  greater  weight  with  Govern-  Letter  66 
ment  than  we  have.  If  we  make  a  move  to  separate  from 
the  British  Museum,  I  cannot  but  fear  that  we  may  go  to 
the  dogs.  I  think  we  owe  our  position  in  large  part  to  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  who  visit  the  British 
Museum,  attracted  by  the  heterogeneous  mixture  of  objects. 
If  we  lost  this  support,  as  I  think  we  should — for  a  mere 
collection  of  animals  docs  not  seem  very  attractive  to  the 
masses  (judging  from  the  Museum  of  the  Zoological  Society, 
formerly  in  Leicester  Square) — then  I  do  not  think  we 
should  get  nearly  so  much  aid  from  Government.  Therefore 
I  should  be  inclined  to  stick  to  the  mummies  and  Assyrian 
gods  as  long  as  we  could.  If  we  knew  that  Government  was 
going  to  turn  us  out,  then,  and  not  till  then,  I  should  be 
inclined  to  make  an  energetic  move.  If  we  were  to  separate, 
I  do  not  believe  that  we  should  have  funds  granted  for  the 
many  books  required  for  occasional  reference :  each  man 
must  speak  from  his  own  experience.  I  have  so  repeatedb/ 
required  to  see  old  Transactions  and  old  Travels,  etc.,  that 
I  should  regret  extremely,  when  at  work  at  the  British 
Museum,  to  be  separated  from  the  entire  library.  The 
facilities  for  working  at  certain  great  classes — as  birds,  large 
fossils,  etc. — are  no  doubt  as  bad  as  possible,  or  rather  im- 
possible, on  the  open  days  ;  but  I  have  found  the  working 
rooms  of  the  Assistants  very  convenient  for  all  other  classes 
on  all  days. 

In  regard  to  the  botanical  collections,  I  am  too  ignorant 
to  express  any  opinion.  The  point  seems  to  be  how  far 
botanists  would  object  to  travel  to  Kew  ;  but  there  arc 
evidently  many  great  advantages  in  the  transportation. 

If  I  had  my  own  way,  I  would  make  the  British  Museum 
collection  only  a  typical  one  for  display,  which  would  be  quite 
as  amusing  and  far  more  instructive  to  the  populace  (and 
I  think  to  naturalists)  than  the  present  enormous  display  of 
birds  and  mammals.  I  would  save  expense  of  stuffing,  and 
would  keep  all  skins,  except  a  few  "  typicals,"  in  drawers. 
Thus  much  room  would  be  saved,  and  a  little  more  space 
could  be  given  to  real  workers,  who  could  work  all  day. 
Rooms  fitted  up  with  thousands  of  drawers  would  cost  very 
little.  With  this  I  should  be  contented.  Until  I  had  pretty 
sure  information  that    we   were   going  to   be   turned   out,  I 


112  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  66  would  not  stir  in  the  matter.  With  such  opponents  as  you 
name,  I  daresay  I  am  quite  wrong ;  but  this  is  my  best, 
though  doubtful,  present  judgment.  .  .  . 

It  seems  to  me  dangerous  even  to  hint  at  a  new  Scientific 
Museum — a  popular  Museum,  and  to  subsidise  the  Zoological 
Gardens ;  it  would,  I  think,  frighten  any  Government. 

tetter 67  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Moor  Park,  Farnham,   Surrey  [Oct.]  29th  [1858]. 

As  you  say  that  you  have  good  private  information  that 
Government  does  intend  to  remove  the  collection  from  the 
British  Museum,  the  case  to  me  individually  is  wholly 
changed  ;  and  as  the  memorial  now  stands,  with  such  ex- 
pression at  its  head,  I  have  no  objection  whatever  to  sign. 
I  must  express  a  very  strong  opinion  that  it  would  be  an 
immense  evil  to  remove  to  Kensington,  not  on  account  of  the 
men  of  science  so  much  as  for  the  masses  in  the  whole  eastern 
and  central  part  of  London.  I  further  think  it  would  be  a 
great  evil  to  separate  a  typical  collection  (which  I  can  by  no 
means  look  at  as  only  popular)  from  the  collection  in  full. 
Might  not  some  expression  be  added,  even  stronger  than  those 
now  used,  on  the  display  (which  is  a  sort  of  vanity  in  the 
curators)  of  such  a  vast  number  of  birds  and  mammals,  with 
such  a  loss  of  room.  I  am  low  at  the  conviction  that  Govern- 
ment will  never  give  money  enough  for  a  really  good  library. 

I  do  not  want  to  be  crotchety,  but  I  should  hate  signing 
without  some  expression  about  the  site  being  easily  accessible 
to  the  populace  of  the  whole  of  London. 

I  repeat,  as  things  now  stand,  I  shall  be  proud  to  sign. 

Letter  68  To   T-    H-    Huxley. 

Down,  Nov.  3rd  [1858]. 

I  most  entirely  subscribe  to  all  you  say  in  your  note. 
I  have  had  some  correspondence  with  Hooker  on  the  subject. 
As  it  seems  certain  that  a  movement  in  the  British  Museum 
is  generally  anticipated,  my  main  objection  is  quite  removed  ; 
and,  as  I  have  told  Hooker,  I  have  no  objection  whatever 
to  sign  a  memorial  of  the  nature  of  the  one  he  sent  me  or 
that  now  returned.  Both  seem  to  me  very  good.  I  cannot 
help  being  fearful  whether  Government  will  ever  grant  money 


1844-1S58]  ROYAL    SOCIETY  113 

enough  for  books.  I  can  see  many  advantages  in  not  being  Letter  68 
under  the  unmotherly  wing  of  art  and  archaeology,  and  my 
only  fear  was  that  we  were  not  strong  enough  to  live  without 
some  protection,  so  profound,  I  think,  is  the  contempt  for 
and  ignorance  of  Natural  Science  amongst  the  gentry  of 
England.  Hooker  tells  me  that  I  should  be  converted  into 
favour  of  Kensington  Gore  if  I  heard  all  that  could  be  said  in 
its  favour  ;  but  I  cannot  yet  help  thinking  so  western  a  locality 
a  great  misfortune.  Has  Lyell  been  consulted?  His  would 
be  a  powerful  name,  and  such  names  go  for  much  with  our 
ignorant  Governors.  You  seem  to  have  taken  much  trouble 
in  the  business,  and  I  honour  you  for  it. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  69 

Down,  Nov.  9th  [1858]. 
I  am  quite  delighted  to  hear  about  the  Copley  '  and  Lyell. 
I  have  grown  hot  with  indignation  many  times  thinking  of 
the  way  the  proposal  was  met  last  year,  according  to  your 
account  of  it.  I  am  also  very  glad  to  hear  of  Hancock  -  ;  it 
will  show  the  provincials  arc  not  neglected.  Altogether  the 
medals  are  capital.  I  shall  be  proud  and  bound  to  help  in 
any  way  about  the  eloge,  which  is  rather  a  heavy  tax  on 
proposers  of  medals,  as  I  found  about  Richardson  and  West- 
wood  ;  but  Lycll's  case  will  be  twenty  times  as  difficult.  I 
will  begin  this  very  evening  clotting  down  a  few  remarks  on 
Lyell  ;  though,  no  doubt,  most  will  be  superfluous,  and  several 
would  require  deliberate  consideration.  Anyhow,  such  notes 
may  be  a  preliminary  aid  to  you  ;  I  will  send  them  in  a  few 
days'  time,  and  will  do  anything  else  you  may  wish.  .  .  . 

P.S. — I  have  had  a  letter  from  Henslow  this  morning. 
He  comes  here  on  [Thursday]  25th,  and  I  shall  be  delighted 
to  see  him  ;  but  it  stops  my  coming  to  the  Club,  as  I  had 
arranged  to  do,  and  now  I  suppose  I  shall  not  be  in  London 
till  Dec.  1 6th,  if  odds  and  ends  do  not  compel  me  to  come 
sooner.  Of  course  I  have  not  said  a  word  to  Henslow  of 
my  change  of  plans.  I  had  looked  forward  with  pleasure  to 
a  chat  with  you  and  others. 

1  The  Copley   Medal   of  the   Royal  Society  was   awarded   to  Lyell 
in  1858. 

J  Albany  Hancock  received  a  Royal  Medal  in  185S. 


114  IXOLUTION  [Chap.  II 

Letter  69  P.S.  2. —  I  worked  all  yesterday  evening  in  thinking,  and 
have  written  the  paper  sent  by  this  post  this  morning.  Not  one 
sentence  would  do,  but  it  is  the  sort  of  rough  sketch  which 
I  should  have  drawn  out  if  I  had  had  to  do  it.  God  knows 
whether  it  will  at  all  aid  you.  It  is  miserably  written,  with 
horridly  bad  metaphors,  probably  horrid  bad  grammar.  It  is 
my  deliberate  impression,  such  as  I  should  have  written  to 
any  friend  who  had  asked  me  what  I  thought  of  Lyell's  merits. 
I  will  do  anything  else  which  you  may  wish,  or  that  I  can. 

Letter  70  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Dec.  30th  [1S58]. 
I  have  had  this  copied  to  save  you  trouble,  as  it  was  vilely 
written,  and  is  now  vilely  expressed. 

Your  letter  has  interested  me  greatly  ;  but  how  inex- 
tricable arc  the  subjects  which  we  are  discussing  !  I  do  not 
think  I  said  that  1  thought  the  productions  of  Asia  were 
liiglier1  than  those  of  Australia.  I  intend  carefully  to  avoid 
this  expression,2  for  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  has  a  definite 
idea  what  is  meant  by  higher,  except  in  classes  which  can 
loosely  be  compared  with  man.  On  our  theory  of  Natural 
Selection,  if  the  organisms  of  any  area  belonging  to  the 
Eocene  or  Secondary  periods  were  put  into  competition  with 
those  now  existing  in  the  same  area  (or  probably  in  any  part 
of  the  world)  they  (i.e.  the  old  ones)  would  be  beaten  hollow 
and  be  exterminated  ;  if  the  theory  be  true,  this  must  be  so. 
In  the  same  manner,  I  believe,  a  greater  number  of  the 
productions  of  Asia,  the  largest  territory  in  the  world,  would 
beat  those  of  Australia,  than  conversely.  So  it  seems  to  be 
between  Europe  and  North  America,  for  I  can  hardly  believe 
in  the  difference  of  the  stream  of  commerce  causing  so  great 
a  difference  in  the  proportions  of  immigrants.  But  this  sort 
of  highness  (I  wish  I  could  invent  some  expression,  and  must 
try  to  do  so)  is  different  from  highness  in  the  common 
acceptation  of  the  word.  It  might  be  connected  with  degra- 
dation of  organisation  :  thus  the  blind  degraded  worm-like 
snake  (Typhlops)  might  supplant  the  true  earthworm.     Here 

1  On  the  use  of  the  terms  "  higher "  and  "  lower "  see  Letters  35 
and  36. 

3  In  a  paper  of  pencilled  notes  pinned  into  Darwin's  copy  of  the 
Vestiges  occur  the  words  :  "  Never  use  the  word  {sic)  higher  and  lower." 


1844—1858]  HIGHNESS    AND    LOWNESS  IIS 

then  would  be  degradation  in  the  class,  but  certainly  increase  Letter  70 
in  the  scale  of  organisation  in  the  general  inhabitants  of  the 
country.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  quite  as  easy  to 
believe  that  true  earthworms  might  beat  out  the  Typhlops.  I 
do  not  see  how  this  "  competitive  highness  "  can  be  tested  in 
any  way  by  us.  And  this  is  a  comfort  to  me  when  mentally 
comparing  the  Silurian  and  Recent  organisms.  Not  that  I 
doubt  a  long  course  of  "  competitive  highness  "  will  ultimately 
make  the  organisation  higher  in  every  sense  of  the  word ; 
but  it  seems  most  difficult  to  test  it.  Look  at  the  Erigcron 
canadensis  on  the  one  hand  and  Anacharis  l  on  the  other  ; 
these  plants  must  have  some  advantage  over  European  pro- 
ductions, to  spread  as  they  have.  Yet  who  could  discover  it  ? 
Monkeys  can  co-exist  with  sloths  and  opossums,  orders  at 
the  bottom  of  the  scale  ;  and  the  opossums  might  well  be 
beaten  by  placental  insectivores,  coming  from  a  country  where 
there  were  no  monkeys,  etc.  I  should  be  sorry  to  give  up  the 
view  that  an  old  and  very  large  continuous  territory  would 
generally  produce  organisms  higher  in  the  competitive  sense 
than  a  smaller  territory.  I  may,  of  course,  be  quite  wrong 
about  the  plants  of  Australia  (and  your  facts  are,  of  course, 
quite  new  to  me  on  their  highness),  but  when  I  read  the 
accounts  of  the  immense  spreading  of  European  plants  in 
Australia,  and  think  of  the  wool  and  corn  brought  thence  to 
Europe,  and  not  one  plant  naturalised,  I  can  hardly  avoid  the 
suspicion  that  Europe  beats  Australia  in  its  productions.  If 
many  {i.e.  more  than  one  or  two)  Australian  plants  are  truly 
naturalised  in  India  (N.B.  Naturalisation  on  Indian  mountains 
hardly  quite  fair,  as  mountains  are  small  islands  in  the  land) 
I  must  strike  my  colours.  I  should  be  glad  to  hear  whether 
what  I  have  written  very  obscurely  on  this  point  produces 
any  effect  on  you  ;  for  I  want  to  clear  my  mind,  as  perhaps 
I  should  put  a  sentence  or  two  in  my  abstract 2  on  this 
subject. 

I  have  always  been  willing  to  strike  my  colours  on  former 
immense  tracts  of  land  in  oceans,  if  any  case  required  it  in 
an  eminent  degree.     Perhaps  yours  may  be  a  case,  but  at 

1  Anacharis  {Elodca  canadensis)  and  Erigcron  canadensis  are  both 
successful  immigrants  from  America. 

-  Abstract  was  Darwin's  name  for  the  Origin  during  parts  of  1858 
and  1859. 


Il6  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  TI 

Letter  70  present  I  greatly  prefer  land  in  the  Antarctic  regions,  where 
now  there  is  only  ice  and  snow,  but  which  before  the  Glacial 
period  might  well  have  been  clothed  by  vegetation.  You 
have  thus  to  invent  far  less  land,  and  that  more  central ;  and 
aid  is  got  by  floating  ice  for  transporting  seed. 

I  hope  I  shall  not  weary  you  by  scribbling  my  notions  at 
this  length.  After  writing  last  to  you  I  began  to  think  that 
the  Malay  Land  might  have  existed  through  part  of  the 
Glacial  epoch.  Why  1  at  first  doubted  was  from  the  difference 
of  existing  mammals  in  different  islands  ;  but  many  are  very 
close,  and  some  identical  in  the  islands,  and  I  am  constantly 
deceiving  myself  from  thinking  of  the  little  change  which  the 
shells  and  plants,  whilst  all  co-existing  in  their  own  northern 
hemisphere,  have  undergone  since  the  Glacial  epoch  ;  but  I 
am  convinced  that  this  is  most  false  reasoning,  for  the  relations 
of  organism  to  new  organisms,  when  thrown  together,  are  by 
far  the  most  important. 

When  you  speak  of  plants  having  undergone  more 
change  since  old  geological  periods  than  animals,  are  you  not 
rather  comparing  plants  with  higher  animals  ?  Think  how 
little  some,  indeed  many,  mollusca  have  changed.  Remember 
Silurian  Nautilus,  Lingula  and  other  Brachiopods,  and  Nucula, 
and  amongst  Echinoderms,  the  Silurian  Asterias,  etc. 

What  you  say  about  lowness  of  brackish-water  plants 
interests  me.  I  remember  that  they  are  apt  to  be  social 
(/>.  many  individuals  in  comparison  to  specific  forms),  and  I 
should  be  tempted  to  look  at  this  as  a  case  of  a  very  small 
area,  and  consequently  of  very  few  individuals  in  comparison 
with  those  on  the  land  or  in  pure  fresh-water  ;  and  hence 
less  development  (odious  word  !)  than  on  land  or  fresh-water. 
But  here  comes  in  your  two-edged  sword  !  I  should  like 
much  to  see  any  paper  on  plants  of  brackish  water  or  on 
the  edge  of  the  sea  ;  but  I  suppose  such  has  never  been 
published. 

Thanks  about  Nelumbium,  for  I  think  this  was  the  very 
plant  which  from  the  size  of  seed  astonished  me,  and  which 
A.  De  Candolle  adduced  as  a  marvellous  case  of  almost 
impossible  transport.  I  now  find  to  my  surprise  that  herons 
do  feed  sometimes  on  [illegible]  fruit ;  and  grebes  on  seeds 
of  Composite. 

Many  thanks    for  offer   of  help   about   a   grant    for   the 


1844-1S5S]         GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  117 

Abstract  ;  but   I  should    hope  it   would  sell  enough    to    pay  Letter  70 
expenses. 

I  am  reading  your  letter  and  scribbling  as  I  go  on. 

Your  oak  and  chestnut  case  seems  very  curious  ;  is  it  not 
the  more  so  as  beeches  have  gone  to,  or  come  from  the 
south?  But  I  vehemently  protest  against  you  or  any  one 
making  such  cases  especial  marvels,  without  you  are  prepared 
to  say  why  each  species  in  any  flora  is  twice  or  thrice,  etc., 
rarer  than  each  other  species  which  grows  in  the  same  soil. 
The  more  I  think,  the  more  evident  is  it  to  me  how  utterly 
ignorant  we  are  of  the  thousand  contingencies  on  which 
range,  frequency,  and  extinction  of  each  species  depend. 

I  have  sometimes  thought,  from  Edentata !  and  Marsupialia, 
that  Australia  retains  a  remnant  of  the  former  and  ancient 
state  of  the  fauna  of  the  world,  and  I  suppose  that  you  arc 
coming  to  some  such  conclusion  for  plants  ;  but  is  not  the 
relation  between  the  Cape  and  Australia  too  special  for  such 
views  ?  I  infer  from  your  writings  that  the  relation  is  too 
special  between  Fuegia  and  Australia  to  allow  us  to  look  afr 
the  resemblances  in  certain  plants  as  the  relics  of  mundane 
resemblances.  On  the  other  hand,  [have]  not  the  Sandwich 
Islands  in  the  Northern  Hemisphere  some  odd  relations  to 
Australia  ?  When  we  are  dead  and  gone  what  a  noble 
subject  will  be  Geographical  Distribution  ! 

You  may  say  what  you  like,  but  you  will  never  convince 
me  that  I  do  not  owe  you  ten  times  as  much  as  you  can  owe 
me.  Farewell,  my  dear  Hooker.  I  am  sorry  to  hear  that 
you  are  both  unwell  with  influenza.  Do  not  bother  yourself 
in  answering  anything  in  this,  except  your  general  impression 
on  the  battle  between  N.  and  S. 


1  No  doubt  a  slip  of  the  pen  for  Monotre  m:a 


CHAPTER    III. 

Evolution 
1859— 1863. 
Letter  71  To  A.  R.  Wallace. 

Down,  April  6th,   1859. 

I  this  morning  received  your  pleasant  and  friendly  note  of 
November  30th.  The  first  part  of  my  MS.  is  in  Murray's 
hands  to  see  if  he  likes  to  publish  it.  There  is  no  preface, 
but  a  short  introduction,  which  must  be  read  by  every  one 
who  reads  my  book.  The  second  paragraph  in  the  intro- 
duction x  I  have  had  copied  verbatim  from  my  foul  copy,  and 
you  will,  I  hope,  think  that  I  have  fairly  noticed  your  paper 
in  the  Linn.  Journal?  You  must  remember  that  I  am  now 
publishing  only  an  abstract,  and  I  give  no  references.  I  shall, 
of  course,  allude  to  your  paper  on  distribution  3 ;  and  I  have 
added  that  I  know  from  correspondence  that  your  explanation 
of  your  law  is  the  same  as  that  which  I  offer.  You  arc  right, 
that  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  selection  was  the  principle 
of  change  from  the  study  of  domesticated  productions  ;  and 
then,  reading  Malthus,  I  saw  at  once  how  to  apply  this 
principle.     Geographical  distribution  and  geological  relations 

1  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  I.,  1859,  pp.  1  and  2. 

2  "  On  the  Tendency  of  Species  to  form  Varieties,  and  on  the 
Perpetuation  of  Varieties  and  Species  by  Natural  Means  of  Selection." 
By  Charles  Darwin  and  Alfred  Russell  Wallace.  Communicated  by  Sir 
Charles  Lyell  and  J.  D.  Hooker.  Journ.  Linn.  Soc.,Vo\.  III.,  p.  45, 
1859.     (Read  July  1st,  1858.) 

3  "  On  the  Law  which  has  regulated  the  Introduction  of  New 
Species"  (A.  R.  Wallace).  Ann.  Mag.  Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  XVI.,  p.  184, 
1855.  The  law  alluded  to  is  thus  stated  by  Wallace:  "Every  species 
has  come  into  existence  coincident  both  in  space  and  time  with  a  pre- 
existing closely  allied  species"  (toe.  cit.,  p.  186). 

u8 


1859-1863]  WALLACE  119 

of  extinct  to  recent  inhabitants  of  South  America  first  led  me  Letter  71 
to  the  subject :  especially  the  case  of  the  Galapagos  Islands. 
I  hope  to  go  to  press  in  the  early  part  of  next  month.  It 
will  be  a  small  volume  of  about  five  hundred  pages  or  so. 
I  will  of  course  send  you  a  copy.  I  forget  whether  I  told 
you  that  Hooker,  who  is  our  best  British  botanist  and 
perhaps  the  best  in  the  world,  is  a  full  convert,  and  is  now 
going  immediately  to  publish  his  confession  of  faith  ;  and 
I  expect  daily  to  see  proof-sheets.1  Huxley  is  changed,  and 
believes  in  mutation  of  species  :  whether  a  convert  to  us, 
I  do  not  quite  know.  We  shall  live  to  see  all  the  younger 
men  converts.  My  neighbour  and  an  excellent  naturalist, 
J.  Lubbock,  is  an  enthusiastic  convert.  I  see  that  you  are 
doing  great  work  in  the  Archipelago  ;  and  most  heartily  do 
I  sympathise  with  you.  For  God's  sake  take  care  of  your 
health.  There  have  been  few  such  noble  labourers  in  the 
cause  of  Natural  Science  as  you  are. 

I'.S.  You  cannot  tell  how  I  admire  your  spirit,  in  *he 
manner  in  which  you  have  taken  all  that  was  done  about 
publishing  all  our  papers.  I  had  actually  written  a  letter  to 
you,  stating  that  I  would  not  publish  anything  before  you 
had  published.  I  had  not  sent  that  letter  to  the  post  when 
I  received  one  from  Lyell  and  Hooker,  urging  me  to  send 
some  MS.  to  them,  and  allow  them  to  act  as  they  thought 
fair  and  honestly  to  both  of  us  ;  and   I  did  so. 

The  following  is  the  passage  from  the  Introduction  to  the  Origin  of 
Species,  referred  to  in  the  first  paragraph  of  the  above  letter. 

"  My  work  is  now  nearly  finished  ;  but  as  it  will  take  me 
two  or  three  years  more  to  complete  it,  and  as  my  health  is 
far  from  strong,  I  have  been  urged  to  publish  this  Abstract. 
I  have  more  especially  been  induced  to  do  this,  as  Mr. 
Wallace,  who  is  now  studying  the  Natural  History  of  the 
Malay  Archipelago,  has  arrived  at  almost  exactly  the  same 
general  conclusions  that  I  have  on  the  origin  of  species. 
Last  year  he  sent  to  me  a  memoir  on  this  subject,  with  a 
request  that  I  would  forward  it  to  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  who 
sent  it   to  the  Linnean   Society,  and   it  is   published   in   the 

1  Tlie  Flora  of  Australia,  etc.,  an  Introductory  Essay  to  the  Flora  of 
Tasmania.     London,  1859. 


120  EVOLUTION  [Chai-.  Ill 

Letter  71  third  volume  of  the  Journal  of  that  Society.  Sir  C.  Lycll  and 
Dr.  Hooker,  who  both  knew  of  my  work— the  latter  having 
read  my  sketch  of  1844 — honoured  me  by  thinking  it 
advisable  to  publish,  with  Mr.  Wallace's  excellent  memoir, 
some  brief  extracts  from  my  manuscripts." 


Letter  72  To  J.   D.   Hooker. 

Down,   May  3rd,   1859. 

With  respect  to  reversion,  I  have  been  raking  up  vague 
recollections  of  vague  facts  ;  and  the  impression  on  my  mind 
is  rather  more  in  favour  of  reversion  than  it  was  when  you 
were  here. 

In  my  abstract1  I  give  only  a  paragraph  on  the  general 
case  of  reversion,  though  I  enter  in  detail  on  some  cases  of 
reversion  of  a  special  character.  I  have  not  as  yet  put  all 
my  facts  on  this  subject  in  mass,  so  can  come  to  no  definite 
conclusion.  But  as  single  characters  ma)-  revert,  I  must  say 
that  I  see  no  improbability  in  several  reverting.  As  I  do  not 
believe  any  well-founded  experiments  or  facts  are  known, 
each  must  form  his  opinion  from  vague  generalities.  I  think 
you  confound  two  rather  distinct  considerations  ;  a  variation 
arises  from  any  cause,  and  reversion  is  not  opposed  to  this, 
but  solely  to  its  inheritance.  Not  but  what  I  believe  what  we 
must  call  perhaps  a  dozen  distinct  laws  are  all  struggling 
against  each  other  in  every  variation  which  ever  arises.  To 
give  my  impression,  if  I  were  forced  to  bet  whether  or  not, 
after  a  hundred  generations  of  growth  in  a  poor  sandy  soil, 
a  cauliflower  and  red  cabbage  would  or  would  not  revert  to 
the  same  form,  I  must  say  I  would  rather  stake  my  money 
that  they  would.  But  in  such  a  case  the  conditions  of  life 
are  changed  (and  here  comes  the  question  of  direct  influence 
of  condition),  and  there  is  to  be  no  selection,  the  comparatively 
sudden  effect  of  man's  selection  are  left  to  the  free  play  of 
reversion. 

In  short,  I  dare  not  come  to  any  conclusion  without 
comparing  all  facts  which  I  have  collected,  and  I  do  not 
think  there  arc  many. 

Please  do  not  say  to  any  one  that  I  thought  my  book  on 


1   1  lie  Origin  of  Species. 


1859—  l863l  BEES     CELLS.  121 

species  would  be  fairly  popular  and  have  a  fairly  remunera-  Letter  72 
tive  sale  (which   was   the   height  of  my  ambition),   for  if   it 
prove  a  dead  failure  it  would  make  me  the  more  ridiculous. 


To  W.   II.  Miller.1  Later  73 

Down,  June  5th  [1859]. 

I  thank  you  much  for  your  letter.  Had  I  seen  the 
interest  of  my  remark  I  would  have  made  many  more 
measurements,  though  I  did  make  several.  I  stated  the  facts 
merely  to  give  the  general  reader  an  idea  of  the  thickness  of 
the  walls.2 

Especially  if  I  had  seen  that  the  fact  had  any  general 
bearing,  I  should  have  stated  that  as  far  as  I  could  measure, 
the  walls  are  by  no  means  perfectly  of  the  same  thickness. 
Also  I  should  have  stated  that  the  chief  difference  is  when 
the  thickness  of  walls  of  the  upper  part  of  the  hexagon  and 
■ * 

1  William  Hallowes  Miller,  F.R.S.  (1801 -So),  held  the  Chair  of 
Mineralogy  at  Cambridge  from  1832  to  1880  (see  "Obituary  Notices 
of  Fellows,"  Proc.  R.  Sac,  Vol.  XXXI.,  1881).  He  is  referred  to  in  the 
Origin  of  Species  (Ed.  VI.,  p.  221)  as  having  verified  Darwin's  state- 
ment as  to  the  structure  of  the  comb  made  by  Melipona  domestica, 
a  Mexican  species  of  bee.  The  cells  of  Melipona  occupy  an  inter- 
mediate position  between  the  perfect  cells  of  the  hive-bee  and  the  much 
simpler  ones  of  the  humble-bee  ;  the  comb  consists  "of  cylindrical  cells 
in  which  the  young  are  hatched,  and,  in  addition,  some  large  cells  of  wax 
for  holding  honey.  These  latter  cells  are  nearly  spherical  and  of  nearly 
equal  sizes,  and  are  aggregated  into  an  irregular  mass.  But  the  important 
point  to  notice  is  that  these  cells  are  always  made  at  that  degree  of 
nearness  to  each  other  that  they  would  have  intersected  or  broken  into 
each  other  if  the  spheres  had  been  completed  ;  but  this  is  never  per- 
mitted, the  bees  building  perfectly  flat  walls  of  wax  between  the  spheres 
which  thus  tend  to  intersect."  It  occurred  to  Darwin  that  certain 
changes  in  the  architecture  of  the  Melipona  comb  would  produce  a 
structure  "  as  perfect  as  the  comb  of  the  hive-bee."  He  made  a  calcu- 
lation, therefore,  to  show  how  this  structural  improvement  might  be 
effected,  and  submitted  the  statement  to  Professor  Miller.  By  a  slight 
modification  of  the  instincts  possessed  by  Melipona  domestica,  this  bee 
would  be  able  to  build  with  as  much  mathematical  accuracy  as  the 
hive-bee;  and  by  such  modifications  of  instincts  Darwin  believed  that 
''  the  hive-bee  has  acquired,  through  natural  selection,  her  inimitable 
architectural  powers"  {Joe.   eit.,  p.  222). 

2  The  walls  of  bees'  cells  :  see  Letter  173. 


122  INVOLUTION  [C»Ar.  Ill 

Letter  73  of  the  pyramidal  basal  plates  are  contrasted.  Will  you 
oblige  mc  by  looking  with  a  strong  lens  at  the  bit  of  comb, 
brushing  off  with  a  knife  the  upper  thickened  edges,  and  then 
compare,  by  eye  alone,  the  thickness  of  the  walls  there  with 
the  thickness  of  the  basal  plates,  as  seen  in  any  cross  section. 
I  should  very  much  like  to  hear  whether,  even  in  this  way, 
the  difference  is  not  perceptible.  It  is  generally  thus  per- 
ceptible by  comparing  the  thickness  of  the  walls  of  the 
hexagon  (if  not  taken  very  close  to  the  angle)  near  to  the 
basal  plates,  where  the  comparison  by  eye  is  of  course  easier. 
Your  letter  actually  turned  me  sick  with  panic  ;  from  not 
seeing  any  great  importance  [in  the]  fact,  till  I  looked  at  my 
notes,  I  did  not  remember  that  I  made  several  measurements. 
I  have  now  repeated  the  same  measurements,  roughly  with 
the  same  general  results,  but  the  difference,  I  think,  is  hardly 
double. 

I  should  not  have  mentioned  the  thickness  of  the  basal 
plates  at  all,  had  1  not  thought  it  would  give  an  unfair 
notion  of  the  thickness  of  the  walls  to  state  the  lesser 
measurements  alone. 

Letter  74  To  W.  H.  Miller. 

[1S59] 
I  had  no  thought  that  you  would  measure  the  thickness 
of  the  walls  of  the  cells  ;  but  if  you  will,  and  allow  me  to  give 
your  measurements,  it  will  be  an  immense  advantage.  As  it 
is  no  trouble,  I  send  more  specimens.  If  you  measure,  please 
observe  that  I  measured  the  thickness  of  the  walls  of  the 
hexagonal  prisms  not  very  near  the  base  ;  but  from  your  very 
interesting  remarks  the  lower  part  of  the  walls  ought  to  be 
measured. 

Thank  you  for  the  suggestion  about  how  bees  judge  of 
angles  and  distances.  I  will  keep  it  in  mind.  It  is  a  com- 
plete perplexity  to  mc,  and  yet  certainly  insects  can  rudely 
somehow  judge  of  distance.  There  are  special  difficulties  on 
account  of  the  gradation  in  size  between  the  worker-cells  and 
the  larger  drone-cells.  1  am  trying  to  test  the  case  practi- 
cally by  getting  combs  of  different  species,  and  of  our  own 
bee  from  different  climates.  I  have  lately  had  some  from 
the  \V.  Indies  of  our  common  bee,  but  the  cells  seem  certainly 
to  be  larger;  but  they  have  not  yet  been  carefully  measured. 


1859—1863]  bees'  cells  123 

I    will   keep   your  suggestion   in  mind  whenever   I   return  to  Letter  74 
experiments  on  living  bees  ;  but  that  will  not  be  soon. 

As  you  have  been  considering  my  little  discussion  in 
relation  to  Lord  Brougham,1  and  as  I  have  been  more 
vituperated  for  this  part  than  for  almost  any  other,  I  should 
like  just  to  tell  you  how  I  think  the  case  stands.  The 
discussion  viewed  by  itself  is  worth  little  more  than  the  paper 
on  which  it  is  printed,  except  in  so  far  as  it  contains  three  or 
four  certainly  new  facts.  But  to  those  who  are  inclined  to 
believe  the  general  truth  of  the  conclusion  that  species  and 
their  instincts  are  slowly  modified  by  what  I  call  Natural 
Selection,  I  think  my  discussion  nearly  removes  a  very  great 
difficulty.  I  believe  in  its  truth  chiefly  from  the  existence 
of  the  Melipona,  which  makes  a  comb  so  intermediate  in 
structure  between  that  of  the  humble  and  hive-bee,  and 
especially  from  the  new  and  curious  fact  of  the  bees  making 
smooth  cups  or  saucers  when  they  excavated  in  a  thick  piece 
of  wax,  which  saucers  stood  so  close  that  hexagons  were  built 
on  their  intersecting  edges.  And,  lastly,  because  when  they 
excavated  on  a  thin  slip  of  wax,  the  excavation  on  both 
sides  of  similar  smooth  basins  was  stopped,  and  flat  planes 
left  between  the  nearly  opposed  basins.  If  my  view  were 
wholly  false  these  cases  would,  I  think,  never  have  occurred. 
Sedgwick  and  Co.  may  abuse  me  to  their  hearts'  content,  but 
I  shall  as  yet  continue  to  think  that  mine  is  a  rational 
explanation  (as  far  as  it  goes)  of  their  method  of  work. 

To  W.   H.   Miller.  Letter  75 

Down,  Dec.  1st  [1859]. 
Some  months  ago  you  were  so  kind  as  to  say  you  would 
measure  the  thickness  of  the  walls  of  the  basal  and  side 
plates  of  the  cell  of  the  bee.  Could  you  find  time  to  do 
so  soon  ?  Why  I  want  it  soon,  is  that  I  have  lately  heard 
from  Murray  that  he  sold  at  his  sale  far  more  copies  than  he 
has  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  and  that  I  must  immediately 
prepare  a  new  edition,  which  I  am  now  correcting.  By  the 
way,  I  hear  from  Murray  that  all  the  attacks  heaped  on  my 
book  do  not  seem  to  have  at  all  injured  the  sale,  which  will 

1  Lord  Brougham's  paper  on  "The  Mathematical  Structure  of  Bees' 
Cells,"  read  before  the  National  Institute  of  France  in  May,  1858. 


124  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  75  make  poor  dear  old  Sedgwick  groan.  If  the  basal  plates  and 
walls  do  differ  considerably  in  thickness,  as  they  certainly  did 
in  the  one  or  two  cells  which  I  measured  without  particular 
care  (as  I  never  thought  the  point  of  any  importance),  will 
you  tell  me  the  bearing  of  the  fact  as  simply  as  you  can,  for 
the  chance  of  one  so  stupid  as  I  am  in  geometry  being  able 
to  understand  ? 

Would  the  greater  thickness  of  the  basal  plates  and  of  the 
rim  of  the  hexagons  be  a  good  adaptation  to  carry  the  vertical 
weight  of  the  cells  filled  with  honey  and  supporting  clusters 
of  living  bees  ? 

Will  you  endeavour  to  screw  out  time  and  grant  me  this 
favour  ? 

P.S.  If  the  result  of  your  measurement  of  the  thickness 
of  the  walls  turns  out  at  all  what  I  have  asserted,  would  it  not 
be  worth  while  to  write  a  little  bit  of  a  paper  on  the  subject 
of  your  former  note  ;  and  "  pluck  "  the  bees  if  they  deserve 
this  degradation  ?  Many  mathematicians  seem  to  have 
thought  the  subject  worthy  of  attention.  When  the  cells 
are  full  of  honey  and  hang  vertically  they  have  to  support 
a  great  weight.  Can  the  thicker  basal  plates  be  a  con- 
trivance to  give  strength  to  the  whole  comb,  with  less 
consumption  of  wax,  than  if  all  the  sides  of  the  hexagons 
were  thickened  ? 

This  crude  notion  formerly  crossed  my  mind  ;  but  of 
course  it  is  beyond  me  even  to  conjecture  how  the  case 
would  be. 

A  mathematician,  Mr.  Wright,  has  been  writing  on  the 
geometry  of  bee-cells  in  the  United  States  in  consequence  of 
my  book ;  but  I  can  hardly  understand  his  paper.1 

Letter  76  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  date  of  this  letter  is  unfortunately  doubtful,  otherwise  it  would 
prove  that  at  an  early  date  he  was  acquainted  with  Erasmus  Darwin's 
views  on  evolution,  a  fact  which  has  not  always  been  recognised.  We 
can  hardly  doubt  that  it  was  written  in  1859,  for  at  this  time  Mr.  Huxley 
was  collecting  facts  about  breeding  for  his  lecture  given  at  the  Royal 
Institution  on  Feb.  10th,  i860,  on  "Species  and  Races  and  their  Origin." 
See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  281. 

1  Chauncey  Wright,  "  Remarks  on  the  Architecture  of  Bees  "  (A»ier. 
Acad.  Proc.,  IV.,  1857-60,  p.  432). 


1859— 1863]  ERASMUS    DARWIN  125 

Down  [June?]  9  [1859?].  Letter  76 

If  on  the  nth  you  have  half  an  hour  to  spare,  you  might 
like  to  see  a  very  good  show  of  pigeons,  and  the  enclosed 
card  will  admit  you. 

The  history  of  error  is  quite  unimportant,  but  it  is  curious 
to  observe  how  exactly  and  accurately  my  grandfather  (in 
Zoonomia,  Vol.  I.,  p.  504,  1794)  gives  Lamarck's  theory.  I 
will  quote  one  sentence.  Speaking  of  birds'  beaks,  he  says  : 
"  All  which  seem  to  have  been  gradually  produced  during 
many  generations  by  the  perpetual  endeavour  of  the  creatures 
to  supply  the  want  of  food,  and  to  have  been  delivered  to  their 
posterity  with  constant  improvement  of  them  for  the  pur- 
poses required."  Lamarck  published  Hist  Zoolog.  in  1809. 
The  Zoonomia  was  translated  into  many  languages. 

To  C.  Lycll.  Letter  77 

Down,  2S  [June  1859]. 

It  is  not  worth  while  troubling  you,  but  my  conscience* is 
uneasy  at  having  forgotten  to  thank  you  for  your  Etna,1 
which  seems  to  me  a  magnificent  contribution  to  volcanic 
geology,  and  I  should  think  you  might  now  rest  on  your  oars 
in  this  department. 

As  soon  as  ever  I  can  get  a  copy  of  my  book  2  ready,  in 
some  six  weeks'  or  two  months'  time,  it  shall  be  sent  you  ; 
and  if  you  approve  of  it,  even  to  a  moderate  extent,  it  will 
be  the  highest  satisfaction  which  I  shall  ever  receive  for  an 
amount  of  labour  which  no  one  will  ever  appreciate. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  ?8 

The  reference  in  the  following  letter  is  to  the  proofs  of  Hooker's 
Australian  Flora. 

Down,  28  [July  1859]. 

The  returned  sheet  is  chiefly  that  which  I  received  in  MS. 
Parts  seem  to  me  (though  perhaps  it  may  be  forgetfulness) 
much  improved,  and  I  retain  my  former  impression  that 
the   whole   discussion   on   the   Australian    flora   is   admirably 

1  "  On  the  Structure  of  Lavas  which  have  been  consolidated  on  Steep 
Slopes,  with  remarks  on  the  Mode  of  Origin  of  Mount  Etna,  and  on  the 
Theory  of  '  Craters  of  Elevation'  "{Phil.  Trans.  R.  Soc,  Vol.  CXLVIII. 
1858,  p.  703). 

'  The  Origin  of  Species,  London,  1859. 


126  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Later  78  good  and  original.  I  know  you  will  understand  and  not 
object  to  my  thus  expressing  my  opinion  (for  one  must  form 
one)  so  presumptuously.  I  have  no  criticisms,  except  perhaps 
I  should  like  you  somewhere  to  '.say,  when  you  refer  to  me, 
that  you  refer  only  to  the  notice  in  the  Linnean  Journal  ;  not 
that,  on  my  deliberate  word  of  honour,  I  expect  that  you  will 
think  more  favourably  of  the  whole  than  of  the  suggestion 
in  the  Journal.  I  am  far  more  than  satisfied  at  what  you  say 
of  my  work  ;  yet  it  would  be  as  well  to  avoid  the  appearance 
of  your  remarks  being  a  criticism  on  my  fuller  work. 

I  am  very  sorry  to  hear  you  are  so  hard-worked.  I  also 
get  on  very  slowly,  and  have  hardly  as  yet  finished  half  my 
volume.  ...  I  returned  on  last  Tuesday  from  a  week's 
hydropathy. 

Take  warning  by  me,  and  do  not  work  too  hard.  For 
God's  sake,  think  of  this. 

It  is  dreadfully  uphill  work  with  me  getting  my  confounded 
volume  finished. 

I  wish  you  well  through  all  your  labours.     Adios. 

Letter  79  To  Asa  Gra7- 

Down,  Nov.  29th  [1859]. 

This  shall  be  such  an  extraordinary  note  as  you  have 
never  received  from  me,  for  it  shall  not  contain  one  single 
question  or  request.  I  thank  you  for  your  impression  on  my 
views.  Every  criticism  from  a  good  man  is  of  value  to  me. 
What  you  hint  at  generally  is  very,  very  true  :  that  my  work 
will  be  grievously  hypothetical,  and  large  parts  by  no  means 
worthy  of  being  called  induction,  my  commonest  error  being 
probably  induction  from  too  few  facts.  I  had  not  thought  of 
your  objection  of  my  using  the  term  "  natural  selection  "  as 
an  agent.  I  use  it  much  as  a  geologist  does  the  word  denuda- 
tion— for  an  agent,  expressing  the  result  of  several  combined 
actions.  I  will  take  care  to  explain,  not  merely  by  inference, 
what  I  mean  by  the  term  ;  for  I  must  use  it,  otherwise  I 
should  incessantly  have  to  expand  it  into  some  such  (here 
miserably  expressed)  formula  as  the  following  :  "  The  tendency 
to  the  preservation  (owing  to  the  severe  struggle  for  life  to 
which  all  organic  beings  at  some  time  or  generation  are 
exposed)  of  any,  the  slightest,  variation  in  any  part,  which  is 
of  the  slightest  use  or  favourable  to  the  life  of  the  individual 


1859     "863]  NATURAL    SELECTION  127 

which  has  thus  varied  ;  together  with  the  tendency  to  its  Letter  79 
inheritance."  Any  variation,  which  was  of  no  use  whatever 
to  the  individual,  would  not  be  preserved  by  this  process  of 
"natural  selection."  But  I  will  not  weary  you  by  going  on, 
as  I  do  not  suppose  I  could  make  my  meaning  clearer  without 
large  expansion.  I  will  only  add  one  other  sentence  :  several 
varieties  of  sheep  have  been  turned  out  together  on  the 
Cumberland  mountains,  and  one  particular  breed  is  found  to 
succeed  so  much  better  than  all  the  others  that  it  fairly  starves 
the  others  to  death.  I  should  here  say  that  natural  selection 
picks   out    this   breed,    and    would   tend    to    improve   it,    or 

aboriginally  to  have  formed  it 

You  speak  of  species  not  having  any  material  base  to  rest  on, 
but  is  this  any  greater  hardship  than  deciding  what  deserves 
to  be  called  a  variety,  and  be  designated  by  a  Greek  letter  ? 
When  I  was  at  systematic  work  I  know  I  longed  to  have  no 
other  difficulty  (great  enough)  than  deciding  whether  the  form 
was  distinct  enough  to  deserve  a  name,  and  not  to  be  haunted 
with  undefined  and  unanswerable  questions  whether  it  was 
a  true  species.  What  a  jump  it  is  from  a  well-marked  variety, 
produced  by  natural  cause,  to  a  species  produced  by  the 
separate  act  of  the  hand  of  God  !  But  I  am  running  on 
foolishly.  By  the  way,  I  met  the  other  day  Phillips,  the 
palaeontologist,  and  he  asked  me,  "  How  do  you  define  a 
species?"  I  answered,  "I  cannot."  Whereupon  he  said, 
"  At  last  I  have  found  out  the  only  true  definition, — any  form 
which  has  ever  had  a  specific  name  !  "  .  .  . 

To   C.    Lycll.  Letter  80 

Ilkley,  Oct.  31st  [1859]. 

That  you  may  not  misunderstand  how  far  I  go  with 
Pallas  and  his  many  disciples  I  should  like  to  add  that, 
though  I  believe  that  our  domestic  dogs  have  descended  from 
several  wild  forms,  and  though  I  must  think  that  the  sterility, 
which  they  would  probably  have  evinced,  if  crossed  before 
being  domesticated,  has  been  eliminated,  yet  I  go  but  a  very 
little  way  with  Pallas  &  Co.1  in  their  belief  in  the  importance 

1  "  With  our  domesticated  animals,  the  various  races  when  crossed 
together  are  quite  fertile  ;  yet  in  many  cases  they  are  descended  from 
two  or  more  wild  species.  From  this  fact  we  must  conclude  either  that 
the  aboriginal  parent-species  at  first  produced  perfectly  fertile  hybrids,  or 


128  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  So  of  the  crossing  and  blending  of  the  aboriginal  stocks.  You 
will  sec  this  briefly  put  in  the  first  chapter.  Generally,  with 
respect  to  crossing,  the  effects  may  be  diametrically  opposite. 
If  you  cross  two  very  distinct  races,  you  may  make  (not  that 
I  believe  such  has  often  been  madc_)  a  third  and  new  inter- 
mediate race  ;  but  if  you  cross  two  exceedingly  close  races, 
or  two  slightly  different  individuals  of  the  same  race,  then  in 
fact  you  annul  and  obliterate  the  difference.  In  this  latter 
way  I  believe  crossing  is  all-important,  and  now  for  twenty 
years  I  have  been  working  at  flowers  and  insects  under  this 
point  of  view.  I  do  not  like  Hooker's  terms,  centripetal 
and  centrifugal '  :  they  remind  me  of  Forbes'  bad  term  of 
Polarity.2 

I  daresay  selection  by  man  would  generally  work  quicker 
than  Natural  Selection  ;  but  the  important  distinction  between 
them  is,  that  man  can  scarcely  select  except  external  and 
visible  characters,  and  secondly,  he  selects  for  his  own  good  ; 
whereas  under  nature,  characters  of  all  kinds  are  selected 
exclusively  for  each  creature's  own  good,  and  arc  well 
exercised  ;  but  you  will  find  all  this  in  Chapter  IV. 

Although  the  hound,  greyhound,  and  bull-dog  may  possi- 
bly have  descended  from  three  distinct  stocks,  I  am  convinced 
that  their  present  great  amount  of  difference  is  mainly  due 
to  the  same  causes  which  have  made  the  breeds  of  pigeons 
so  different  from  each  other,  though  these  breeds  of  pigeons 
have  all  descended  from  one  wild  stock  ;  so  that  the  Pallasian 
doctrine  I  look  at  as  but  of  quite  secondary  importance. 

In  my  bigger  book  I  have  explained  my  meaning  fully; 
whether  I  have  in  the  Abstract  I  cannot  remember. 

that  the  hybrids  subsequently  reared  under  domestication  became  quite 
fertile.  This  latter  alternative,  which  was  first  propounded  by  Pallas, 
seems  by  far  the  most  probable,  and  can,  indeed,  hardly  be  doubted  " 
{Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  240). 

1  Hooker's  Introductory  Essay  to  the  Flora  of  Tasmania,  pp.  viii 
and  ix. 

-  Forbes,  "On  the  Manifestation  of  Polarity  in  the  Distribution  of 
Organised  Beings  in  Time."     R.  Institution  Proc,  I.,   1851-54. 


1859-1863]  FRANCIS    GALTON  I  29 

To   C.    Lyell.  Letler  81 

[Dec.   5th,  1859.] 

I  forget  whether  you  take  in  the  Times  ;  for  the  chance 
of  your  not  doing  so,  I  send  the  enclosed  rich  letter.1  It  is, 
I  am  sure,  by  Fitz-Roy.  ...  It  is  a  pity  he  did  not  add  his 
theory  of  the  extinction  of  Mastodon,  etc.,  from  the  door  of 
the  Ark  being  made  too  small.2 

Francis  Galton  to  Charles  Darwin.  Letter  82 

42,  Rutland  Gate,  London,  S.W.,  Dec.  otli,  1859. 
Pray  let  me  add  a  word  of  congratulation  on  the  com- 
pletion of  your  wonderful  volume,  to  those  which  I  am  sure 
you  will  have  received  from  every  side.  I  have  laid  it  down 
in  the  full  enjoyment  of  a  feeling  that  one  rarely  experiences 
after  boyish  days,  of  having  been  initiated  into  an  entirely 
new  province  of  knowledge,  which,  nevertheless,  connects 
itself  with  other  things  in  a  thousand  ways.  I  hear  you 
are  engaged  on  a  second  edition.  There  is  a  trivial  error  in 
page  68,  about  rhinoceroses,3  which  I  thought  I  might  as  well 
point  out,  and  have  taken  advantage  of  the  same  opportunity 
to  scrawl  down  half  a  dozen  other  notes,  which  may,  or  may 
not,  be  worthless  to  you. 

The  three  next  letters  refer  to  Huxley's  lecture  on  Evolution,  given  at 
the  Royal  Institution  on  Feb.  10th,  i860,  of  which  the  peroration  is  given 
in  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  282,  together  with  some  letters  on  the  subject. 

To    T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  83 

Nov.  25th  [1S59]. 

I  rejoice   beyond   measure   at   the  lecture.      I   shall  be  at 
home   in  a  fortnight,  when   I  could  send  you  splendid  folio 

1  See  the  Times,  Dec.  1st  and  Dec.  5th,  1859:  two  letters  signed 
"Senex,"  dealing  with  "Works  of  Art  in  the  Drift." 

2  A  postscript  to  this  letter,  here  omitted,  is  published  in  the  Life  ami 
Letters,  II.,  p.  240. 

3  Darwin  {Joe.  eit.)  says  that  neither  the  elephant  nor  the  rhinoceros 
is  destroyed  by  beasts  of  prey.  Mr.  Galton  wrote  that  the  wild  dogs 
hunt  the  young  rhinoceros  and  "  exhaust  them  to  death  ;  they  pursue 
them  all  day  long,  tearing  at  their  ears,  the  only  part  their  teeth  can 
fasten  on."  The  reference  to  the  rhinoceros  is  omitted  in  later  editions 
of  the  Origin. 

9 


no 


EVOLUTION 


[Chap.  Ill 


Letter  83  coloured  drawings  of  pigeons.  Would  this  be  in  time?  If 
not,  I  think  I  could  write  to  my  servants  and  have  them  sent 
to  you.  If  I  do  not  hear  I  shall  understand  that  about 
fifteen  or  sixteen   days   will  be  in  time. 

I  have  had  a  kind  yet  slashing  letter  against  me  from 
poor  dear  old  Sedgwick,  "  who  has  laughed  till  his  sides  ached 
at  my  book." 

Phillips  is  cautious,  but  decidedly,  I  fear,  hostile.  Hurrah 
for  the  Lecture — it  is  grand  ! 


Letter  S4  To  T.  H.   Huxley. 

Down,   Dec.   13th  [1S59]. 

I  have  got  fine  large  drawings1  of  the  Pouter,  Carrier,  and 
Tumbler  ;  I  have  only  drawings  in  books  of  Fantails,  Barbs, 
and  Scanderoon  Runts.  If  you  had  them,  you  would  have 
a  grand  display  of  extremes  of  diversity.  Will  they  pay  at 
the  Royal  Institution  for  copying  on  a  large  size  drawings 
of  these  birds  ?  I  could  lend  skulls  of  a  Carrier  and  a 
Tumbler  (to  show  the  great  difference)  for  the  same  purpose, 
but  it  would  not  probably  be  worth  while. 

I  have  been  looking  at  my  MS.  What  you  want  I 
believe  is  about  hybridism  and  breeding.  The  chapter  on 
hybridism  is  in  a  pretty  good  state — about  150  folio  pages 
with  notes  and  references  on  the  back.  My  first  chapter  on 
breeding  is  in  too  bad  and  imperfect  a  state  to  send  ;  but  my 
discussion  on  pigeons  (in  about  100  folio  pages)  is  in  a  pretty 
good  state.  I  am  perfectly  convinced  that  you  would  never 
have  patience  to  read  such  volumes  of  MS.  I  speak  now  in 
the  palace  of  truth,  and  pray  do  you  :  if  you  think  you  would 
read  them  I  will  send  them  willingly  up  by  my  servant,  or 
bring  them  myself  next  week.  But  I  have  no  copy,  and  I 
never  could  possibly  replace  them  ;  and  without  you  really 
thought  that  you  would  use  them,  I  had  rather  not  risk  them. 
But  I  repeat  I  will  willingly  bring  them,  if  you  think  you 
would  have  the  vast  patience  to  use  them.  Please  let  me 
hear  on  this  subject,  and  whether  I  shall  send  the  book 
with  small  drawings  of  three  other  breeds  or  skulls.  I  have 
heard  a  rumour  that  Busk  is  on  our  side  in  regard  to  species. 
Is  this  so?     It  would  be  very  good. 

1  For  Mr   Huxley's  R.  I.  lecture. 


1859— 1S63]  HUXLEY'S    LECTURE  131 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  85 

Down,  Dec.  16th  [1S59]. 

I  thank  you  for  your  very  pleasant  and  amusing  note 
and  invitation  to  dinner,  which  I  am  sorry  to  say  I  cannot 
accept.  I  shall  come  up  (stomach  willing)  on  Thursday  for 
Phil.  Club  dinner,  and  return  on  Saturday,  and  I  am  engaged 
to  my  brother  for  Friday.  But  I  should  very  much  like  to 
call  at  the  Museum  on  Friday  or  Saturday  morning  and  see 
you.  Would  you  let  me  have  one  line  either  here  or  at 
57)  Queen  Anne  Street,  to  say  at  what  hour  you  generally 
come  to  the  Museum,  and  whether  you  will  be  probably  there 
on  Friday  or  Saturday?  Even  if  you  are  at  the  Club,  it  will 
be  a  mere  chance  if  we  sit  near  each  other. 

I  will  bring  up  the  articles  on  Thursday  afternoon,  and 
leave  them  under  charge  of  the  porter  at  the  Museum. 
They  will  consist  of  large  drawings  of  a  Pouter,  a  Carrier,  and 
rather  smaller  drawings  of  some  sub-varieties  (which  breed 
nearly  true)  of  short-faced  Tumblers.  Also  a  small  drawing 
of  Scanderoon,  a  kind  of  Runt,  and  a  very  remarkable  breed. 
Also  a  book  with  very  moderately  good  drawings  of  Fantail 
and  Barb,  but  I  very  much  doubt  whether  worth  the  trouble 
of  enlarging. 

Also  a  box  (for  Heaven's  sake,  take  care  !)  with  a  skull  of 
Carrier  and  short-faced  Tumbler ;  also  lower  jaws  (largest 
size)  of  Runt,  middle  size  of  Rock-pigeon,  and  the  broad 
one  of  Barb.  The  form  of  ramus  of  jaw  differs  curiously 
in  these  jaws. 

Also  MS.  of  hybridism  and  pigeons,  which  will  just 
weary  you  to  death.  I  will  call  myself  for  or  send  a  servant 
for  the  MS.  and  bones  whenever  you  have  done  with  them  ; 
but  do  not  hurry. 

You  have  hit  on  the  exact  plan,  which,  on  the  advice  of 
Lyell,  Murray,  etc.,  I  mean  to  follow — viz.,  bring  out  separate 
volumes  in  detail — and  I  shall  begin  with  domestic  produc- 
tions ;  but  I  am  determined  to  try  and  [work]  very  slowly,  so 
that,  if  possible,  I  may  keep  in  a  somewhat  better  state  of 
health.  I  had  not  thought  of  illustrations  ;  that  is  capital 
advice.  Farewell,  my  good  and  admirable  agent  for  the 
promulgation  of  damnable  heresies  ! 


132  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  86  To   L.    Horner.1 

Down,  Dec.  23rd  [1859]. 
I  must  have  the  pleasure  of  thanking  you  for  your 
extremely  kind  letter.  I  am  very  much  pleased  that  you 
approve  of  my  book,  and  that  you  arc  going  to  pay  me  the 
extraordinary  compliment  of  reading  it  twice.  I  fear  that  it 
is  tough  reading,  but  it  is  beyond  my  powers  to  make  the 
subject  clearer.     Lycll  would  have  done  it  admirably. 

You  must  enjoy  being  a  gentleman  at  your  ease,  and  I 
hear  that  you  have  returned  with  ardour  to  work  at  the 
Geological  Society.  We  hope  in  the  course  of  the  winter  to 
persuade  Mrs.  Horner  and  yourself  and  daughters  to  pay  us 
a  visit,  llkley  did  me  extraordinary  good  during  the  latter 
part  of  my  stay  and  during  my  first  week  at  home  ;  but  I 
have  gone  back  latterly  to  my  bad  ways,  and  fear  I  shall 
never  be  decently  well  and  strong. 

P.S. — When  an}'  of  your  party  write  to  Mildenhall  I 
should  be  much  obliged  if  you  would  say  to  Bunbury  that 
I  hope  he  will  not  forget,  whenever  he  reads  my  book,  his 
promise  to  let  me  know  what  he  thinks  about  it  ;  for  his 
knowledge  is  so  great  and  accurate  that  every  one  must 
value  his  opinions  highly.  I  shall  be  quite  contented  if  his 
belief  in  the  immutability  of  species  is  at  all  staggered. 

Letter  87  To    C.    Lycll. 

In  the  Origin  of  Species  a  section  of  Chapter  X.  re  devoted  to  "The 
succession  of  the  same  types  within  the  same  areas,  during  the  late 
Tertiary  period  "  (Ed.  I.,  p.  339).  Mr.  Darwin  wrote  as  follows:  "Mr. 
Clift  many  years  ago  showed  that  the  fossil  mammals  from  the  Australian 
caves  were  closely  allied  to  the  living  marsupials  of  that  continent." 
After  citing  other  instances  illustrating  the  same  agreement  between 
fossil  and  recent  types,  Mr.  Darwin  continues  :  "  I  was  so  much  impressed 
with  these  facts  that  I  strongly  insisted,  in  1839  and  1845,  on  this  'law  of 
the  succession  of  types,'  on  '  this  wonderful  relationship  in  the  same 
continent  between  the  dead  and  the  living.'  Professor  Owen  has 
subsequently  extended  the  same  generalisation  to  the  mammals  of  the 
Old  World." 

1  For  biographical  notes  on  Horner  and  Sir  C.  Bunbury  see  a  letter 
to  Horner,  Jan.  1847  (Geology). 


1859-1S63]  OWEN  133 

Down,  [Dec]  27th  [1859].  Letter  87 

Owen  wrote  to  me  to  ask  for  the  reference  to  Gift.1  As 
my  own  notes  for  the  late  chapters  are  all  in  chaos,  I 
bethought  me  who  was  the  most  trustworthy  man  of  all 
others  to  look  for  references,  and  I  answered  myself,  "  Of 
course  Lyell."  In  the  {Principles  of  Geology\  edition  of  1833, 
Vol.  III.,  ch.  xi.,  p.  144,  you  will  find  the  reference  to  Gift 
in  the  Edinburgh  New  Phil.  Journal,  No.  XX.,  p.  304.2  You 
will  also  find  that  you  were  greatly  struck  with  the  fact 
itself,3  which  I  had  quite  forgotten.  I  copied  the  passage, 
and  sent  it  to  Owen.  Why  I  gave  in  some  detail  references 
to  my  own  work  is  that  Owen  (not  the  first  occasion  with 
respect  to  myself  and  others)  quietly  ignores  my  having 
ever  generalised  on  the  subject,  and  makes  a  great  fuss 
on  more  than  one  occasion  at  having  discovered  the  law  of 
succession.  In  fact,  this  law,  with  the  Galapagos  distribu- 
tion, first  turned  my  mind  on  the  origin  of  species.  My  own 
references  are  [to  the  Naturalist's  Voyage] : 

Large  8vo,  ed.  1839,  Murray,  ed.  1845, 

p.  210.  p.  173.  On  succession, 

p.  153.  pp.  131-32.       On    splitting    up    of    old 

geographical  provinces. 

Long  before  Owen  published  I  had  in  MS.  worked  out  the 
succession  of  types  in  the  Old  World  (as  I  remember  telling 
Sedgwick,  who  of  course  disbelieved  it). 

Since  receiving  your  last  letter  on  Hooker,  I  have  read  his 
introduction  as  far  as  p.  xxiv,4  where  the  Australian  flora 
begins,  and  this  latter  part  I  liked  most  in  the  proofs.  It  is 
a  magnificent  essay.  I  doubt  slightly  about  some  assertions, 
or  rather  should  have  liked  more  facts — as,  for  instance, 
in   regard  to  species  varying   most  on    the   confines  of  their 

1  William  Clift  (1775 — 1849),  Conservator  of  the  Museum  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons. 

2  The  correct  reference  to  Clift's  "  Report  "  on  fossil  bones  from  New 
Holland  is  Edinburgh  New  Phil.  Journal,  1831,  p.  394. 

3  This  refers  to  the  discovery  of  recent  and  fossil  species  of  animals 
in  an  Australian  cave-breccia.  Mr.  Clift  is  quoted  as  having  identified 
one  of  the  bones,  which  was  much  larger  than  the  rest,  as  that  of  a 
hippopotamus. 

*  On  the  Flora  of  Australia,  etc.;  Icing  an  Introductory  Essay  to  the 
Flora  of  Tasmania:  London,  1859. 


134  EVOLUTION  [CiiAr.  Ill 

Letter  87  range.  Naturally  I  doubt  a  little  his  remarks  about  diver- 
gence,1 and  about  domestic  races  being  produced  under  nature 
without  selection.  It  would  take  much  to  persuade  me  that 
a  Pouter  Pigeon,  or  a  Carrier,  etc.,  could  have  been  produced 
by  the  mere  laws  of  variation  without  long  continued  selec- 
tion, though  each  little  enlargement  of  crop  and  beak  are 
due  to  variation.  I  demur  greatly  to  his  comparison  of  the 
products  of  sinking  and  rising  islands2;  in  the  Indian  Ocean 
he  compares  exclusively  many  rising  volcanic  and  sinking 
coral  islands.  The  latter  have  a  most  peculiar  soil,  and  are 
excessively  small  in  area,  and  are  tenanted  by  very  few 
species ;  moreover,  such  low  coral  islands  have  probably 
been  often,  during  their  subsidence,  utterly  submerged,  and 
restocked  by  plants  from  other  islands.  In  the  Pacific  Ocean 
the  floras  of  all  the  best  cases  are  unknown.  The  comparison 
ought  to  have  been  exclusively  between  rising  and  fringed 
volcanic  islands,  and  sinking  and  encircled  volcanic  islands. 
I  have  read  Naudin,3  and  Hooker  agrees  that  he  does  not 
even  touch  on  my  views. 

Letter  88  J.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin. 

[1S59  or  1S60.] 

I  have  had  another  talk  with  Bcntham,  who  is  greatly 
agitated  by  your  book  :  evidently  the  stern,  keen  intellect  is 
aroused,  and  he  finds  that  it  is  too  late  to  halt  between  two 
opinions.  How  it  will  go  we  shall  see.  I  am  intensely 
interested  in  what  we  shall  come  to,  and  never  broach  the 
subject  to  him.  I  finished  the  geological  evidence  chapters 
yesterday  ;  they  are  very  fine  and  very  striking,  but  I  cannot 
see  they  arc  such  forcible  objections  as  you  still  hold  them  to 
be.     I  would  say  that  you  still  in  your  secret  soul  underrate 

1  "  Variation  is  effected  by  graduated  changes  ;  and  the  tendency  of 
vanel'ies,  both  in  nature  and  under  cultivation,  when  further  varying,  is 
rather  to  depart  more  and  more  widely  from  the  original  type  than  to 
revert  to  it."  On  the  margin  Darwin  wrote  :  "  Without  selection 
doubtful "  {loc.  a'/.,  p.  viii). 

2  "  I  venture  to  anticipate  that  a  study  of  the  vegetation  of  the  islands 
witn  reference  to  the  peculiarities  of  the  generic  types  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  the  geological  conditions  (whether  as  rising  or  sinking)  on  the 
other,  may,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  advance  other  subjects 
of  distribution  and  variation  considerably  "  {loc.  cit.,  p.  xv). 

3  Naudin,  Rdvue  Hortkole,  185; 


1859-1863]  NATURAL    SELECTION  135 

the  imperfection  of  the  Geological  Record,  though  no  language  Letter  88 
can  be  stronger  or  arguments  fairer  and  sounder  against  it.  Of 
course  I  am  influenced  by  Botany,  and  the  conviction  that  we 
have  not  in  a  fossilised  condition  a  fraction  of  the  plants  that 
have  existed,  and  that  not  a  fraction  of  those  we  have  are 
recognisable  specifically.  I  never  saw  so  clearly  put  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  intermediates  between  existing  species  we  want, 
but  between  these  and  the  unknown  tertium  quid. 

You  certainly  make  a  hobby  of  Natural  Selection,  and  pro- 
bably ride  it  too  hard  ;  that  is  a  necessity  of  your  case.  If 
the  improvement  of  the  creation-by-variation  doctrine  is  con- 
ceivable, it  will  be  by  unburthening  your  theory  of  Natural 
Selection,  which  at  first  sight  seems  overstrained — i.e.,  to 
account  for  too  much.  I  think,  too,  that  some  of  your 
difficulties  which  you  override  by  Natural  Selection  may  give 
way  before  other  explanations.  But,  oh  Lord  !  how  little  wc 
do  know  and  have  known  to  be  so  advanced  in  knowledge  by 
one  theory.  If  we  thought  ourselves  knowing  dogs  before 
you  revealed  Natural  Selection,  what  d — d  ignorant  ones  u/e 
must  surely  be  now  wc  do  know  that  law. 

I  hear  you  may  be  at  the  Club  on  Thursday.  I  hope  so. 
Huxley  will  not  be  there,  so  do  not  come  on  that  ground. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  S9 

Jan.  1st  [1S60]. 

I  write  one   line   merely  to  thank   you   for  your  pleasant 

note,  and  to  say  that  I  will   keep  your  secret.     I   will  shake 

my  head  as  mysteriously  as  Lord  Burleigh.     Several  persons 

have  asked  me  who  wrote  that  "  most  remarkable  article  "  in 

the  Times}     As  a  cat  may  look  at  a  king,  so  I  have  said  that 

I    strongly   suspected  you.     X   was  so    sharp   that    the    first 

sentence  revealed  the  authorship.     The  Z.'s   (God   save  the 

mark)  thought   it  was   Owen's  !     You   may  rely  on  it  that  it 

has  made  a  deep  impression,  and  I  am  heartily  glad  that  the 

subject  and  I  owe  you  this  further  obligation.     But  for  God's 

sake,    take    care   of   your    health  ;  remember   that    the  brain 

takes  years  to  rest,  whilst  the  muscles  take  only  hours.    There 

is  poor  Dana,  to  whom  I  used  to  preach   by  letter,  writes  to 

1  The  Times,  December  26th,  1859,  p.  8.  The  opening  paragraphs 
were  by  one  of  the  staff  of  the  Times.  See  Life  ami  Letters,  1 1.,  p.  255, 
for  Mr.  Huxley's  interesting  account  of  his  share  in  the  matter. 


136  EVOLUTION  [Chap.III 

Letter  89  me  that  my  prophecies  are  come  true  :  he  is  in  Florence 
quite  done  up,  can  read  nothing  and  write  nothing,  and 
cannot  talk  for  half  an  hour.  I  noticed  the  "  naughty 
sentence " 1  about  Owen,  though  my  wife  saw  its  bearing 
first.     Farewell  you  best  and  worst  of  men  ! 

That  sentence  about  the  bird  and  the  fish  dinners 
charmed  us.     Lyell  wrote  to  me — style  like  yours. 

Have  you  seen  the  slashing  article  of  December  26th  in 
the  Daily  ATews,  against  my  stealing  from  my  "  master,"  the 
author  of  the  Vestiges  ? 

Letter  90  To  J.  L.  A.  de  Quatrefages.2 

[Undated] 

How  I  should  like  to  know  whether  Milne  Edwards  has 
read  the  copy  which  I  sent  him,  and  whether  he  thinks  I 
have  made  a  pretty  good  case  on  our  side  of  the  question. 
There  is  no  naturalist  in  the  world  for  whose  opinion  I  have 
so  profound  a  respect.  Of  course  I  am  not  so  silly  as  to 
expect  to  change  his  opinion. 

Letter  91  To  C.  Lyell. 

The  date  of  this  letter  is  doubtful  ;  but  as  it  evidently  refers  to  the 
2nd  edition  of  the  Origin,  which  appeared  on  January  7th,  i860,  we 
believe  that  December  9th,  1859,  is  right.  The  letter  of  Sedgwick's  is 
doubtless  that  given  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  247  ;  it  is  there  dated 
December  24th,  1859,  but  from  other  evidence  it  was  probably  written 

on  November  24th. 

[Dec.?]  9th  [1S59]. 

I  send  Sedgwick's  letter  ;  it  is  terribly  muddled,  and 
really  the  first  page  seems  almost  childish. 

I  am  sadly  over-worked,  so  will  not  write  to  you.  I  have 
worked  in  a  number  of  your  invaluable  corrections — indeed, 
all  as  far  as  time  permits.     I  infer  from  a  letter  from  Huxley 

1  Mr.  Huxley,  after  speaking  of  the  rudimental  teeth  of  the  whale, 
of  rudimental  jaws  in  insects  which  never  bite,  and  rudimental  eyes  in 
blind  animals,  goes  on  :  "And  we  would  remind  those  who,  ignorant  of 
the  facts,  must  be  moved  by  authority,  that  no  one  has  asserted  the 
incompetence  of  the  doctrine  of  final  causes,  in  its  application  to 
physiology  and  anatomy,  more  strongly  than  our  own  eminent  anatomist, 
Professor  Owen,  who,  speaking  of  such  cases,  says  {On  tlic  Nature  of 
Limbs,  pp.  39,  40),  '  I  think  it  will  be  obvious  that  the  principle  of  final 
adaptations  fails  to  satisfy  all  the  conditions  of  the  problem.'"—  The 
Times,  Dec.  26th,  1859. 

*  For  a  biographical  note  see  Letter  126. 


i8S9~i86j]  STERILITY    OF    HYBRIDS  1 37 

that  Ramsay1  is  a  convert,  and  I  am  extremely  glad  to  get  Letter  91 
pure  geologists,  as  the)'  will  be  very  few.  Many  thanks  for 
your  very  pleasant  note.  What  pleasure  you  have  given  me. 
I  believe  I  should  have  been  miserable  had  it  not  been  for 
you  and  a  few  others,  for  I  hear  threatening  of  attacks  which 
I  daresay  will  be  severe  enough.  But  I  am  sure  that  I  can 
now  bear  them. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  92 

The  point  here  discussed  is  one  to  which  Mr.  Huxley  attached  great, 
in  our  opinion  too  great,  importance. 

Down,  Jan.   nth  [i860?]. 

I  fully  agree  that  the  difficulty  is  great,  and  might  be 
made  much  of  by  a  mere  advocate.  Will  you  oblige  me  by 
reading  again  slowly  from  pp.  267  to  2J2?  I  may  add  to 
what  is  there  said,  that  it  seems  to  me  quite  hopeless  to 
attempt  to  explain  why  varieties  are  not  sterile,  until  we 
know  the  precise  cause  of  sterility  in  species. 

Reflect  for  a  moment  on  how  small  and  on  what  very 
peculiar  causes  the  unequal  reciprocity  of  fertility  in  the 
same  two  species  must  depend.  Reflect  on  the  curious  case 
of  species  more  fertile  with  foreign  pollen  than  their  own. 
Reflect  on  many  cases  which  could  be  given,  and  shall  be 
given  in  my  larger  book  (independently  of  hybridity)  of  very 
slight  changes  of  conditions  causing  one  species  to  be  quite 
sterile  and  not  affecting  a  closely  allied  species.  How  pro- 
foundly ignorant  we  are  on  the  intimate  relation  between 
conditions  of  life  and  impaired  fertility  in  pure  species  ! 

The  only  point  which  I  might  add  to  my  short  discussion 
on  this  subject,  is  that  I  think  it  probable  that  the  want  of 
adaptation  to  uniform  conditions  of  life  in  our  domestic 
varieties  has  played  an  important  part  in  preventing  their 
acquiring  sterility  when  crossed.  For  the  want  of  uniformity, 
and  changes  in  the  conditions  of  life,  seem  the  only  cause  of 
the  elimination  of  sterility  (when  crossed)  under  domestica- 
tion.3    This   elimination,  though  admitted  by  many  authors, 

1  See  a  letter  to  Huxley,  Nov.  27th,  1859,  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  282. 

2  The  reference  is  to  the  Origin,  Ed.  1. :  the  section  on  "The  Fertility 
of  Varieties  when  crossed,  and  of  their  Mongrel  Offspring"  occupies 
pages  267-72. 

:t  The  meaning  which  we  attach  to  this  obscure  sentence  is  as 
follows  :    Species   in   a   state    of  nature  are  closely  adapted  to  definite 


138  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  92  rests  on  very  slight  evidence,  yet  I  think  is  very  probably 
true,  as  may  be  inferred  from  the  case  of  dogs.  Under 
nature  it  seems  improbable  that  the  differences  in  the  repro- 
ductive constitution,  on  which  the  sterility  of  any  two  species 
when  crossed  depends,  can  be  acquired  directly  by  Natural 
Selection  ;  for  it  is  of  no  advantage  to  the  species.  Such 
differences  in  reproductive  constitution  must  stand  in  cor- 
relation with  some  other  differences  ;  but  how  impossible  to 
conjecture  what  these  are !  Reflect  on  the  case  of  the 
variations  of  Vcrbasatm,  which  differ  in  no  other  respect 
whatever  besides  the  fluctuating  element  of  the  colour  of  the 
flower,  and  yet  it  is  impossible  to  resist  Gartner's  evidence, 
that  this  difference  in  the  colour  does  affect  the  mutual 
fertility  of  the  varieties. 

The  whole  case  seems  to  me  far  too  mysterious  to  rest '  a 
valid  attack  on  the  theory  of  modification  of  species,  though, 
as  you  say,  it  offers  excellent  ground  for  a  mere  advocate. 

I  am  surprised,  considering  how  ignorant  we  are  on 
very  many  points,  [that]  more  weak  parts  in  my  book  have 
not  as  yet  been  pointed  out  to  me.  No  doubt  many  will  be. 
H.  C.  Watson  founds  his  objection  in  MS.  on  there  being  no 
limit  to  infinite  diversification  of  species  :  I  have  answered  this, 
I  think,  satisfactorily,  and  have  sent  attack  and  answer  to 
Lyell  and  Hooker.  If  this  seems  to  you  a  good  objection, 
I  would  send  papers  to  you.  Andrew  Murray  "  disposes  of" 
the  whole  theory  by  an  ingenious  difficulty  from  the  distri- 
bution of  blind  cave  insects  ;2  but  it  can,  I  think,  be  fairly 
answered. 

conditions  of  life,  so  that  the  sexual  constitution  of  species  A  is  attuned, 
as  it  were,  to  a  condition  different  from  that  to  which  B  is  attuned,  and  this 
leads  to  sterility.  But  domestic  varieties  are  not  strictly  adapted  by 
Natural  Selection  to  definite  conditions,  and  thus  have  less  specialised 
sexual  constitutions. 

1  The  word  "rest"  seems  to  be  used  in  place  of  "to  serve  as  a 
foundation  for." 

2  See  L.ife  and  Letters,  Vol.  II.,  p.  265.  The  reference  here  is  to 
Murray's  address  before  the  Botanical  Society,  Edinburgh.  Mr.  Darwin 
seems  to  have  read  Murray's  views  only  in  a  separate  copy  reprinted 
from  the  Proc.  R.  Soc.  Edin.  There  is  some  confusion  about  the  date 
of  the  paper  ;  the  separate  copy  is  dated  Jan.  16th,  while  in  the  volume 
of  the  Proc.  R.  Soc.  it  is  Feb.  20th.  In  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  261 
it  is  erroneously  stated  that  these  arc  two  different  papers, 


1859—1863]  GERMAN    TRANSLATION  139 

To  T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  93 

Down,  [Feb.]  2nd  [i860]. 

1  have  had  this  morning  a  letter  from  old  Bronn  J  (who, 
to  my  astonishment,  seems  slightly  staggered  by  Natural 
Selection),  and  he  says  a  publisher  in  Stuttgart  is  willing  to 
publish  a  translation,  and  that  he,  Bronn,  will  to  a  certain 
extent  superintend.  Have  you  written  to  Kolliker  ?  if  not, 
perhaps  I  had  better  close  with  this  proposal — what  do  you 
think  ?  If  you  have  written,  I  must  wait,  and  in  this  case 
will  you  kindly  let  me  hear  as  soon  as  you  hear  from 
Kolliker  ? 

My  poor  dear  friend,  you  will  curse  the  day  when  you 
took  up  the  "general  agency  "  line  ;  but  really  after  this  I  will 
not  give  you  any  more  trouble. 

Do  not  forget  the  three  tickets  for  us  for  your  lecture,  and 
the  ticket  for  Baily,  the  poulterer. 

Old  Bronn  has  published  in  the  Year-book  for  Mineralogy 
a  notice  of  the  Origin"  ;  and  says  he  has  himself  published 
elsewhere  a  foreboding  of  the  theory  ! 

To   J.    D.    Hooker.  Letter  94 

Down,   Feb.   14th  [i860]. 

I  succeeded  in  persuading  myself  for  twenty-four  hours 
that  Huxley's  lecture3  was  a  success.  Parts  were  eloquent 
and  good,  and  all  very  bold  ;  and  I  heard  strangers  say,  "What 
a  good  lecture!"  I  told  Huxley  so  ;  but  I  demurred  much  to 
the  time  wasted  in  introductory  remarks,  especially  to  his 
making  it  appear  that  sterility  was  a  clear  and  manifest  dis- 
tinction of  species,  and  to  his  not  having  even  alluded  to  the 
more  important  parts  of  the  subject.  He  said  that  he  had 
much  more  written  out,  but  time  failed.  After  conversation 
with  others  and  more  reflection,  I  must  confess  that  as  an 
exposition  of  the  doctrine  the  lecture  seems  to  mc  an  entire 
failure.  I  thank  God  I  did  not  think  so  when  I  saw  Huxley; 
for  he  spoke  so  kindly  and  magnificently  of  me,  that  I  could 
hardly  have  endured  to  say  what  I  now  think.  He  gave  no 
just  idea  of  Natural  Selection.     I  have  always  looked  at  the 

1  See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  277. 

3  Neucs  Jahrb.fiir  Min.,  i860,  p.  112. 

3  At  the  Royal  Institution.     See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  282. 


140  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  94  doctrine  of  Natural  Selection  as  an  hypothesis,  which,  if  it 
explained  several  large  classes  of  facts,  would  deserve  to  be 
ranked  as  a  theory  deserving  acceptance  ;  and  this,  of  course, 
is  my  own  opinion.  But,  as  Huxley  has  never  alluded  to  my 
explanation  of  classification,  morphology,  embryology,  etc., 
I  thought  he  was  thoroughly  dissatisfied  with  all  this  part  of 
my  book.  But  to  my  joy  I  find  it  is  not  so,  and  that  he 
agrees  with  my  manner  of  looking  at  the  subject  ;  only  that 
he  rates  higher  than  I  do  the  necessity  of  Natural  Selection 
being  shown  to  be  a  vera  causa  always  in  action.  He  tells 
me  he  is  writing  a  long  review  in  the  Westminster.  It  was 
really  provoking  how  he  wasted  time  over  the  idea  of  a 
species  as  exemplified  in  the  horse,  and  over  Sir  J.  Hall's 
old  experiment  on  marble.  Murchison  was  very  civil  to  me 
over  my  book  after  the  lecture,  in  which  he  was  disappointed. 
I  have  quite  made  up  my  mind  to  a  savage  onslaught ;  but 
with  Lyell,  you,  and  Huxley,  I  feel  confident  wc  are  right, 
and  in  the  long  run  shall  prevail.  I  do  not  think  Asa  Gray 
has  quite  done  you  justice  in  the  beginning  of  the  review1  of 
me.  The  review  seemed  to  me  very  good,  but  I  read  it  very 
hastily. 

Letter  95 

To  C.  Lyell. 

Down,  [Feb.]  1 8th  [i860]. 

I  send  by  this  post  Asa  Gray,  which  seems  to  me  very 
good,  with  the  stamp  of  originality  on  it.  Also  Bronn's 2 
Jahrbuch  fiir  Mineralogie. 

The  united  intellect  of  my  family  has  vainly  tried  to  make 
it  out.  I  never  tried  such  confoundedly  hard  gcrman  ;  nor 
does  it  seem  worth  the  labour.  He  sticks  to  Priestley's  Green 
Matter,  and  seems  to  think  that  till  it  can  be  shown  how 
life  arises  it  is  no  good  showing  how  the  forms  of  life  arise. 
This  seems  to  me  about  as  logical  (comparing  very  great 
things  with  little)  as  to  say  it  was  no  use  in  Newton  showing 
the  laws  of  attraction  of  gravity  and  the  consequent  move- 

1  "  Review  of  Darwin's  Theory  on  the  Origin  of  Species  by  means  of 
Natural  Selection,"  by  "A.  G."  (Amer.Jour.  Set.,  Vol.  XXIX.,  p.  153, 
i860).  In  a  letter  to  Asa  Gray  on  Feb.  18th,  i860,  Darwin  writes: 
"  Your  review  seems  to  me  admirable  ;  by  far  the  best  which  I  have 
read."    {Life  and  Letters,  II.,  18S7,  p.  286.) 

3  See  Letter  93. 


1859-1863]  REVIEWS  141 

ment  of  the  planets,  because  he  could  not  show  what  the  Letter  95 
attraction  of  gravity  is. 

The  expression  "  Wahl  dcr  Lebens- Weise  "  '  makes  me 
doubt  whether  B.  understands  what  I  mean  by  Natural 
Selection,  as  I  have  told  him.  He  says  (if  I  understand  him) 
that  you  ought  to  be  on  the  same  side  with  me. 

P.S.  Sunday  afternoon. — I  have  kept  back  this  to  thank 
you  for  your  letter,  with  much  news,  received  this  morning. 
My  conscience  is  uneasy  at  the  time  you  waste  in  amusing 
and  interesting  me.  I  was  very  curious  to  hear  about 
Phillips.  The  review  in  the  Annals  is,  as  I  was  convinced,  by 
Wollaston,2  for  I  have  had  a  very  cordial  letter  from  him  this 
morning. 

I  send  by  this  post  an  attack  in  the  Gardeners  Chronicle 
by  Harvey 3  (a  first-rate  botanist,  as  you  probably  know). 
It  seems  to  me  rather  strange  ;  he  assumes  the  permanence 
of  monsters,  whereas  monsters  are  generally  sterile,  and  not 
often  inheritable.  But  grant  his  case,  it  comes  [to  this],  that 
I  have  been  too  cautious  in  not  admitting  great  and  sudden 
variations.  Here  again  comes  in  the  mischief  of  my  abstract. 
In  fuller  MS.  I  have  discussed  the  parallel  case  of  a  normal 
fish  like  a  monstrous  gold-fish. 

I  end  my  discussion  by  doubting,  because  all  cases  of 
monstrosities  which  resemble  normal  structures  which  I  could 

1  "  Die  fruchtbarste  unci  allgemeinste  Ursache  der  Varietaten- 
Bildung  ist  jedoch  die  Wahl  der  Lebens-Weise  "  (Joe.  cit.,  p.   112). 

2  A  Bibliographical  Notice  "On  the  Origin  of  Species  by  means  of 
Natural  Selection  ;  or  the  Preservation  of  Favoured  Races  in  the  Struggle 
for  Life."  (Annals  and  Mag.,  Vol.  V.,  pp.  132-43,  i860).  The  notice 
is  not  signed.  Referring  to  the  article,  in  a  letter  to  Lyell,  Feb.  15th, 
i860,  Darwin  writes  :  "  I  am  perfectly  convinced  .  .  .  that  the  review 
in  the  Annals  is  by  Wollaston  ;  no  one  else  in  the  world  would  have 
used  so  many  parentheses"  (Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  284). 

,3  William  Henry  Harvey  (181 1-66)  was  the  author  of  several  botanical 
works,  principally  on  Algae  ;  he  held  the  botanical  Professorship  at 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  in  1857  succeeded  Professor  Allman  in  the 
Chair  of  Botany  in  Dublin  University.  (See  Life  and  Letters,  II., 
pp.  274-75).  In  the  Gardeners*  Chronicle  of  Feb.  iSth,  i860,  Harvey 
described  a  case  of  monstrosity  in  Begonia  frigida,  which  he  argued  was 
hostile  to  the  theory  of  Natural  Selection.  The  passage  about  Harvey's 
attack  was  published  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  275. 


142  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  95  find  were  not  in  allied  groups.  Trees  like  Aspicarpa}  with 
flowers  of  two  kinds  (in  the  Origi)i),  led  me  also  to  speculate 
on  the  same  subject  ;  but  I  could  find  only  one  doubtfully 
analogous  case  of  species  having  flowers  like  the  degraded 
or  monstrous  flowers.  Harvey  does  not  see  that  if  only 
a  few"'  (as  he  supposes)  of  the  seedlings  inherited  being 
monstrosities,  Natural  Selection  would  be  necessary  to  select 
and  preserve  them.  You  had  better  return  the  Gardeners 
Chronicle,  etc.,  to  my  brother's.  The  case  of  Begonia 2  in  itself 
is  very  curious  ;  I  am  tempted  to  answer  the  notice,  but  I  will 
refrain,  for  there  would  be  no  end  to  answers. 

With  respect  to  your  objection  of  a  multitude  of  still 
living  simple  forms,  I  have  not  discussed  it  anywhere  in  the 
Origin,  though  I  have  often  thought  it  over.  What  you  say 
about  progress  being  only  occasional  and  retrogression  not 
uncommon,  I  agree  to;  only  that  in  the  animal  kingdom  I 
greatly  doubt  about  retrogression  being  common.  I  have 
always  put  it  to  myself — What  advantage  can  we  see  in  an 
infusory  animal,  or  an  intestinal  worm,  or  coral  polypus,  or 
earthworm  being  highly  developed  ?  If  no  advantage,  they 
would  not  become  highly  developed  :  not  but  what  all  these 
animals  have  very  complex  structures  (except  infusoria),  and 
they  may  well  be  higher  than  the  animals  which  occupied 
similar  places  in  the  economy  of  nature  before  the  Silurian 
epoch.  There  is  a  blind  snake  with  the  appearances  and,  in 
some  respects,  habits  of  earthworms  ;  but  this  blind  snake 
does  not  tend,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  to  replace  and  drive  out 
worms.  I  think  I  must  in  a  future  edition  discuss  a  few  more 
such  points,  and  will  introduce  this  and  H.  C.  Watson's 
objection    about    the    infinite    number   of    species    and    the 

1  Aspicarpa,  an  American  genus  of  Malpighiacere,  is  quoted  in  the 
Origin  (Ed.  VI.,  p.  367)  as  an  illustration  of  Linna-us'  aphorism  that 
the  characters  do  not  give  the  genus,  but  the  genus  gives  the  characters. 
During  several  years'  cultivation  in  France  Aspicarpa  produced  only 
degraded  flowers,  which  differed  in  many  of  the  most  important  points 
of  structure  from  the  proper  type  of  the  order  ;  but  it  was  recognised  by 
M.  Richard  that  the  genus  should  be  retained  among  the  Malpighiacere. 
"This  case,"  adds  Darwin,  "well  illustrates  the  spirit  of  our  classifi- 
cation." 

''  Harvey's  criticism  was  answered  by  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  in  the 
following  number  of  the  Gardeners'1  C/ironrc/e  (Feb.  25th,  i860,  p.  170). 


1859—1863]  FRESH-WATER    FORMS  143 

general  rise  in  organisation.  But  there  is  a  directly  opposite  Letter  95 
objection  to  yours  which  is  very  difficult  to  answer — viz. 
how  at  the  first  start  of  life,  when  there  were  only  the 
simplest  organisms,  how  did  any  complication  of  organisation 
profit  them  ?  I  can  only  answer  that  we  have  not  facts 
enough  to  guide  any  speculation  on  the  subject. 

With  respect  to  Lepidosiren,  Ganoid  fishes,  perhaps 
OrnitliorJiyncIius,  I  suspect,  as  stated  in  the  Origin}  that 
they  have  been  preserved,  from  inhabiting  fresh-water  and 
isolated  parts  of  the  world,  in  which  there  has  been  less 
competition  and  less  rapid  progress  in  Natural  Selection, 
owing  to  the  fewness  of  individuals  which  can  inhabit  small 
areas  ;  and  where  there  are  few  individuals  variation  at  most 
must  be  slower.  There  are  several  allusions  to  this  notion  in 
the  Origin,  as  under  Amblyopsis,  the  blind  cave-fish,2  and 
under  Heer3  about  Madeira  plants  resembling  the  fossil  and 
extinct  plants  of  Europe. 

To  James  Lamont.4  Letter  96 

Down,  March  5th  [i860?]. 

I  am  much  obliged  for  your  long  and  interesting  letter. 
You  have  indeed  good  right  to  speak  confidently  about  the 
habits  of  wild  birds  and  animals  ;  for  I  should  think  no  one 
beside  yourself  has  ever  sported  in  Spitzbergen  and  Southern 
Africa.  It  is  very  curious  and  interesting  that  you  should 
have  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  so-called  "  Natural  Selec- 
tion "  had  been  efficient  in  giving  their  peculiar  colours  to  our 
grouse.  I  shall  probably  use  your  authority  on  the  similar 
habits  of  our  grouse  and  the  Norwegian  species. 

I  am  particularly  obliged  for  your  very  curious  fact  of  the 
effect  produced  by  the  introduction  of  the  lowland  grouse  on 
the  wildness  of  the  grouse  in  your  neighbourhood.  It  is  a 
very  striking  instance  of  what  crossing  will  do  in  affecting  the 
character  of  a  breed.     Have  you  ever  seen  it  stated  in  any 

1  Origin  of  Species  (Ed.  VI.),  p.  83. 

2  Origin,  p.  1 12. 

3  Origin,  p.  83. 

4  James  Lamont,  F.G.S.,  F.R.G.S.,  author  of  Seasons  with  the  Sea- 
horses, etc. j  Yachting  i?i  the  Arctic  Seas, or  Notes  of  Five  /  'ovag;  f  of  Sf>ort 
and  Discovery  in  the  Neighbourhood  of  Spitsbergen  and  Novaya  Zenilya, 
London,  1876  ;  and  geological  papers  on  Spitzbergen. 


144  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter 96  sporting  work  that  game  has  become  wilder  in  this  country? 
I  wish  I  could  get  any  sort  of  proof  of  the  fact,  for  your 
explanation  seems  to  me  equally  ingenious  and  probable. 
I  have  myself  witnessed  in  South  America  a  nearly  parallel 
[case]  with  that  which  you  mention  in  regard  to  the  reindeer 
in  Spitsbergen,  with  the  Ccrvus  campestris  of  La  Plata.  It 
feared  neither  man  nor  the  sound  of  shot  of  a  rifle,  but 
was  terrified  at  the  sight  of  a  man  on  horseback  ;  everyone  in 
that  country  always  riding.  As  you  arc  so  great  a  sportsman, 
perhaps  you  will  kindly  look  to  one  very  trifling  point  for  me, 
as  my  neighbours  here  think  it  too  absurd  to  notice — namely, 
whether  the  feet  of  birds  are  dirty,  whether  a  few  grains 
of  dirt  do  not  adhere  occasionally  to  their  feet.  I  especially 
want  to  know  how  this  is  in  the  case  of  birds  like  herons  and 
waders,  which  stalk  in  the  mud.  You  will  guess  that  this 
relates  to  dispersal  of  seeds,  which  is  one  of  my  greatest 
difficulties.  My  health  is  very  indifferent,  and  I  am  seldom 
able  to  attend  the  scientific  meetings,  but  I  sincerely  hope  that 
I  may  some  time  have  the  pleasure  of  meeting  you. 

Pray  accept  my  cordial  thanks  for  your  very  kind  letter. 

Letter  97,  To  G.  H.  K.  Thwaites. 

Down,  March  21st  [i860]. 

I  thank  you  very  sincerely  for  your  letter,  and  am  much 
pleased  that  you  go  a  little  way  with  me.  You  will  think  it 
presumptuous,  but  I  am  well  convinced  from  my  own  mental 
experience  that  if  you  keep  the  subject  at  all  before  your 
mind  you  will  ultimately  go  further.  The  present  volume  is 
a  mere  abstract,  and  there  are  great  omissions.  One  main 
one,  which  I  have  rectified  in  the  foreign  editions,  is  an 
explanation  (which  has  satisfied  Lyell,  who  made  the  same 
objection  with  you)  why  many  forms  do  not  progress  or 
advance  (and  I  quite  agree  about  some  retrograding).  I 
have  also  a  MS.  discussion  on  beauty  ;  but  do  you  really 
suppose  that  for  instance  Diatomacese1  were  created  beautiful 
that  man,  after  millions  of  generations,  should  admire  them 
through  the  microscope  ?      I    should   attribute  most  of  such 

1  Thwaites  (181 1-82)  published  several  papers  on  the  Diatomaceas 
("  On  Conjugation  in  the  Diatomaceae,"  Ann.  and  Mag.  Nat.  Hist., 
Vol.  XX.,  1847,  pp.  9-11,343-4;  "  Further  Observations  on  the  Diato- 
macete,"  loc.  at.,  1848,  p.  161).     See  Life  and  Letters   II.,  p.  292. 


i859— 1863]  G.    II.    K.    TIIWAITES  145 

structures  to  quite  unknown  laws  of  growth;  and  mere  Letter  97 
repetition  of  parts  is  to  our  eyes  one  main  element  of  beauty. 
When  any  structure  is  of  use  (and  I  can  show  what  curiously 
minute  particulars  are  often  of  highest  use),  I  can  see  with  my 
prejudiced  eyes  no  limit  to  the  perfection  of  the  coadaptations 
which  could  be  effected  by  Natural  Selection.  I  rather  doubt 
whether  you  see  how  far,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the  argument  for 
homology  and  embryology  may  be  carried.  I  do  not  look  at 
this  as  mere  analogy.  I  would  as  soon  believe  that  fossil  shells 
were  mere  mockeries  of  real  shells  as  that  the  same  bones  in 
the  foot  of  a  dog  and  wing  of  a  bat,  or  the  similar  embryo  of 
mammal  and  bird,  had  not  a  direct  signification,  and  that  the 
signification  can  be  unity  of  descent  or  nothing.  Rut  I  venture 
to  repeat  how  much  pleased  I  am  that  you  go  some  little  way 
with  me.  I  find  a  number  of  naturalists  do  the  same,  and  as 
their  halting-places  are  various,  and  I  must  think  arbitrary, 
I  believe  they  will  all  go  further.  As  for  changing  at  once 
one's  opinion,  I  would  not  value  the  opinion  of  a  man  who 
could  do  so  ;  it  must  be  a  slow  process.1  Thank  you  for 
telling  me  about  the  Lantana2  and  I  should  at  any  time  be  most 
grateful  for  any  information  which  you  think  would  be  of  use 
to  me.  I  hope  that  you  will  publish  a  list  of  all  naturalised 
plants  in  Ceylon,  as  far  as  known,  carefully  distinguishing 
those  confined  to  cultivated  soils  alone.  I  feel  sure  that 
this  most  important  subject  has  been  greatly  undervalued. 

To    T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  9s 

The    reference    here    is   to   the   review  on   the    Origin    of  Species 

generally  believed  to  be  by  the  late  Sir  R.  Owen,  and  published  in  the 

April  number  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,   i860.      Owen's  biographer  is 

silent  on  the  subject,  and  prints,  without  comment,  the  following  passage 

1  Darwin  wrote  to  Woodward  in  regard  to  the  Origin  :  "It  may  be  a 
vain  and  silly  thing  to  say,  but  I  believe  my  book  must  be  read  twice 
carefully  to  be  fully  understood.  You  will  perhaps  think  it  by  no  means 
worth  the  labour." 

2  An  exotic  species  of  Lantana  (Verbenacea:)  grows  vigorously  in 
Ceylon,  and  is  described  as  frequently  making  its  appearance  after  the 
firing  of  the  low-country  forests  (see  H.  H.  W.  Pearson,  "The  Botany 
of  the  Ceylon  Patanas,"  Journ.  Linn.  Soc,  Vol.  XXXIV.,  p.  317,  1899). 
No  doubt  Thwaites'  letter  to  Darwin  referred  to  the  spreading  of  the 
introduced  Lantana,  comparable  to  that  of  the  cardoon  in  La  Plata  and 
of  other  plants  mentioned  by  Darwin  in  the  Origin  of  Species  (Ed.  VI., 
p.  51). 

10 


146  i:\OLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

in  an  undated  letter  from  Sedgwick  to  Owen  :  "  Do  you  know  who  was 
the  author  of  the  article  in  the  Edinburgh  on  the  subject  of  Darwin's 
theory?  On  the  whole,  I  think  it  very  good.  I  once  suspected  that  you 
must  have  had  a  hand  in  it,  and  I  then  abandoned  that  thought.  I  have 
not  read  it  with  any  care  "  (Owen's  Life,  Vol.  II.,  p.  96). 
Letter  98  APri'  9&  [i860]. 

I  never  saw  such  an  amount  of  misrepresentation.  At 
p.  530  '  he  says  we  arc  called  on  to  accept  the  hypothesis  on 
the  plea  of  ignorance,  whereas  I  think  I  could  not  have  made 
it  clearer  that  I  admit  the  imperfection  of  the  Geological 
Record  as  a  great  difficulty. 

The  quotation2  on  p.  512  of  the  Review  about  "  young 
and  rising  naturalists  with  plastic  minds,"  attributed  to 
"  nature  of  limbs,"  is  a  false  quotation,  as  I  do  not  use  the 
words  "  plastic  minds." 

At  p.  501  3  the  quotation  is  garbled,  for  I  only  ask 
whether  naturalists  believe  about  elemental  atoms  flashing, 
etc.,  and  he  changes  it  into  that  I  state  that  they  do  believe. 

At    p.    500  '    it    is   very    false    to    say   that  I    imply    by 

1  "  Lasting  and  fruitful  conclusions  have,  indeed,  hitherto  been  based 
only  on  the  possession  of  knowledge  ;  now  we  are  called  upon  to  accept 
an  hypothesis  on  the  plea  of  want  of  knowledge.  The  geological  record, 
it  is  averred,  is  so  imperfect  !  "—Edinbu?gh  Review,  CXI.,  i860,  p.  530. 

3  "  We  are  appealed  to,  or  at  least  'the  young  and  rising  naturalists 
with  plastic  minds,*  [On  the  Nature  of  the  Limbs,  p.  482]  are  adjured." 
It  will  be  seen  that  the  inverted  comma  after  "naturalists"  is  omitted  ; 
the  asterisk  referring,  in  a  footnote  (here  placed  in  square  brackets), 
to  p.  4S2  of  the  Origin,  seems  to  have  been  incorrectly  assumed  by 
Mr.  Darwin  to  show  the  close  of  the  quotation.— Ibid.,  p.  512. 

3  The  passage  {Origin,  Ed.  1.,  p.  483)  begins,  "  But  do  they  really 
believe  .  .  .  ,"  and  shows  clearly  that  the  author  considers  such  a  belief 
all  but  impossible. 

4  "  All  who  have  brought  the  transmutation  speculation  to  the  test  of 
observed  facts  and  ascertained  powers  in  organic  life,  and  have  published 
the  results,  usually  adverse  to  such  speculations,  are  set  down  by 
Mr.  Darwin  as  'curiously  illustrating  the  blindness  of  preconceived 
opinion.' "  The  passage  in  the  Origin,  p.  482,  begins  by  expressing 
surprise  at  the  point  of  view  of  some  naturalists  :  "  They  admit  that  a 
multitude  of  forms,  which  till  lately  they  themselves  thought  were  special 
creations,  .  .  .  have  been  produced  by  variation,  but  they  refuse  to 
extend  the  same  view  to  other  and  very  slightly  different  forms.  .  .  . 
They  admit  variation  as  a  vera  causa  in  one  case,  they  arbitrarily  reject 
it  in  another,  without  assigning  any  distinction  in  the  two  cases.  The 
day  will  come  when  this  will  be  given  as  a  curious  illustration  of  the 
blindness  of  preconceived  opinion." 


1S59-1863]  CROSSING  I47 

"  blindness  of  preconceived  opinion  "  the  simple  belief  of  Letter  98 
creation.  And  so  on  in  other  cases.  But  I  beg  pardon  for 
troubling  you.  I  am  heartily  sorry  that  in  your  unselfish 
endeavours  to  spread  what  you  believe  to  be  truth,  you 
should  have  incurred  so  brutal  an  attack.1  And  now  I  will 
not  think  any  more  of  this  false  and  malignant  attack. 

To  Maxwell  Masters.  Letter  99 

Down,   April   13th  [i860]. 

I  thank  you  very  sincerely  for  your  two  kind  notes.  The 
next  time  you  write  to  your  father  I  beg  you  to  give  him 
from  me  my  best  thanks,  but  I  am  sorry  that  he  should  have 
had  the  trouble  of  writing  when  ill.  I  have  been  much 
interested  by  the  facts  given  by  him.  If  you  think  he  would 
in  the  least  care  to  hear  the  result  of  an  artificial  cross  of  two 
sweet  peas,  you  can  send  the  enclosed  ;  if  it  will  only  trouble 
him,  tear  it  up.  There  seems  to  be  so  much  parallelism  in  the 
kind  of  variation  from  my  experiment,  which  was  certainly  a 
cross,  and  what  Mr.  Masters  has  observed,  that  I  cannot  help 
suspecting  that  his  peas  were  crossed  by  bees,  which  I  have 
seen  well  dusted  with  the  pollen  of  the  sweet  pea  ;  but  then 
I  wish  this,  and  how  hard  it  is  to  prevent  one's  wish  biassing 
one's  judgment  ! 

I  was  struck  with  your  remark  about  the  Composite,  etc. 
I  do  not  see  that  it  bears  much  against  me,  and  whether  it 
does  or  not  is  of  course  of  not  the  slightest  importance. 
Although  I  fully  agree  that  no  definition  can  be  drawn 
between  monstrosities  and  slight  variations  (such  as  my  theory 
requires),  yet  I  suspect  there  is  some  distinction.  Some 
facts  lead  me  to  think  that  monstrosities  supervene  generally 
at  an  early  age  ;  and  after  attending  to  the  subject  I  have 
great  doubts  whether  species  in  a  state  of  nature  ever 
become  modified  by  such  sudden  jumps  as  would  result  from 

1  The  Edinburgh  Reviewer,  referring  to  Huxley's  Royal  Institution 
Lecture  given  Feb.  10th,  i860,  "On  Species  and  Races  and  their 
Origin,"  says  (p.  521),  "  We  gazed  with  amazement  at  the  audacity  of  the 
dispenser  of  the  hour's  intellectual  amusement,  who,  availing  himself  of 
the  technical  ignorance  of  the  majority  of  his  auditors,  sought  to  blind 
them  as  to  the  frail  foundations  of  'natural  selection '  by  such  illustra- 
tions as  the  subjoined  "  :  And  then  follows  a  critique  of  the  lecturer's 
comparison  of  the  supposed  descent  of  the  horse  from  the  Palasothere 
with  that  of  various  kinds  of  domestic  pigeons  from  the  Rock-pigeon. 


148  EVOLUTION  [Chai\  III 

Letter  99  the  Natural  Selection  of  monstrosities.  You  cannot  do  me  a 
greater  service  than  by  pointing  out  errors.  I  sincerely  hope 
that  your  work  on  monstrosities  '  will  soon  appear,  for  I  am 
sure  it  will  be  highly  instructive. 

Now  for  your  notes,  for  which  let  me  again  thank  you. 

(1)  Your  conclusion  about  parts  developed2  not  being 
extra  variable  agrees  with  Hooker's.  You  will  see  that  I 
have  stated  that  the  rule  apparently  does  not  hold  with 
plants,  though  it  ought,  if  true,  to  hold  good  with  them. 

(2)  I  cannot  now  remember  in  what  work  I  saw  the 
statement  about  Peloria  affecting  the  axis,  but  I  know  it  was 
one  which  I  thought  might  be  trusted.  I  consulted  also 
Dr.  Falconer,  and  I  think  that  he  agreed  to  the  truth  of  it ; 
but  I  cannot  now  tell  where  to  look  for  my  notes.  I  had 
been  much  struck  with  finding  a  Laburnum  tree  with  the 
terminal  flowers  alone  in  each  raceme  peloric,  though  not 
perfectly  regular.  The  Pelargonium  case 3  in  the  Origin 
seems  to  point  in  the  same  direction. 

(3)  Thanks  for  the  correction  about  furze  :  I  found  the 
seedlings  just  sprouting,  and  was  so  much  surprised  at  their 
appearance  that  I  sent  them  to  Hooker  ;  but  I  never  plainly 
asked  myself  whether  they  were  cotyledons  or  first  leaves.4 

(4)  That  is  a  curious  fact  about  the  seeds  of  the  furze,  the 
more  curious  as  I  found  with  Leguminosa^  that  immersion  in 
plain  cold  water  for  a  very  few  days  killed  some  kinds. 

If  at  any  time  anything  should  occur  to  you  illustrating 
or  opposing  my  notions,  and  you  have  leisure  to  inform  me, 
I  should  be  truly  grateful,  for  I  can  plainly  see  that  you  have 
wealth  of  knowledge. 

With  respect  to  advancement  or  retrogression  in  organisa- 
tion in  monstrosities  of  the  Compositae,  etc.,  do  you  not  find 
it  very  difficult  to  define  which  is  which  ? 

Anyhow,  most  botanists  seem  to  differ  as  widely  as 
possible  on  this  head. 

1  Vegetable  Teratology,  London,  1869  (Ray  Soc). 

2  See  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  1.,  p.  153,  on  the  variability  of  parts 
"  developed  in  an  extraordinary  manner  in  any  one  species,  compared 
with  the  other  species  of  the  same  genus."  See  Life  and  Letters,  II., 
pp.  97,  98,  also  Letters  33,  p.  74. 

3  Origin  of  Species,  Edit.  I.,  p.  145. 

4  The  trifoliate  leaves  of  furze  seedlings  are  not  cotyledons,  but  early 
leaves  :  see  Lubbock's  Seedlings,  I.,  p.  410, 


1859-1863]  EDINBURGH    REVIEW  149 

To  J.  S.  Henslow.  Letter  IOO 

Down,  May  8th  [1860J. 

Very  many  thanks  about  the  Elodea,  which  case  interests 
me  much.  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Marshall '  at  Ely,  and  in  due  time 
he  says  he  will  send  me  whatever  information  he  can 
procure. 

Owen 2  is  indeed  very  spiteful.  He  misrepresents  and 
alters  what  I  say  very  unfairly.  But  I  think  his  conduct 
towards  Hooker  most  ungenerous  :  viz.,  to  allude  to  his  essay 
(Australian  Flora),  and  not  to  notice  the  magnificent  results 
on  geographical  distribution.  The  Londoners  say  he  is  mad 
with  envy  because  my  book  has  been  talked  about ;  what 
a  strange  man  to  be  envious  of  a  naturalist  like  myself, 
immeasurably  his  inferior !  From  one  conversation  with 
him  I  really  suspect  he  goes  at  the  bottom  of  his  hidden 
soul  as  far  as  I  do. 

I  wonder  whether  Sedgwick  noticed  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  about  the  "  Sacerdotal  revilers," — so  the  revilcrs  arc- 
tearing  each  other  to  pieces.  I  suppose  Sedgwick  will  be  very 
fierce  against  me  at  the  Philosophical  Society.3  Judging  from 
his  notice  in  the  Spectator*  he  will  misrepresent  me,  but  it  will 
certainly  be  unintentionally  done.  In  a  letter  to  me,  and  in 
the  above  notice,  he  talks  much  about  my  departing  from 
the  spirit  of  inductive  philosophy.      I   wish,  if  you   ever  talk 

1  W.  Marshall  was  the  author  of  Anacharis  atsinastrum,  a  new 
water-weed :  four  letters  to  the  Cambridge  Independent  Press,  reprinted 
as  a  pamphlet,  1852. 

2  Owen  was  believed  to  be  the  author  of  the  article  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  April,  i860.     See  Letter  98. 

3  The  meeting  of  the  Cambridge  Phil.  Soc.  was  held  on  May  7th, 
i860,  and  fully  reported  in  the  Cambridge  Chronicle,  May  19th.  Sedgwick 
is  reported  to  have  said  that  "  Darwin's  theory  is  not  inductive  — is  not 
based  on  a  series  of  acknowledged  facts,  leading  to  a  general  conclusion 
evolved,  logically,  out  of  the  facts.  .  .  .  The  only  facts  he  pretends  to 
adduce,  as  true  elements  of  proof,  are  the  varieties  produced  by  domesti- 
cation and  the  artifices  of  crossbreeding."  Sedgwick  went  on  to  speak 
of  the  vexatious  multiplication  of  supposed  species,  and  adds,  "  In  this 
respect  Darwin's  theory  may  help  to  simplify  our  classifications,  and 
thereby  do  good  service  to  modern  science.  But  he  has  not  undermined 
any  grand  truth  in  the  constancy  of  natural  laws,  and  the  continuity  of 
true  species." 

4  March  24th,  i860  ;  see  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  297. 


'SO  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  ioo  on  the  subject  to  him,  you  would  ask  him  whether  it  was 
not  allowable  (and  a  great  step)  to  invent  the  undulatory 
theory  of  light,  i.e.  hypothetical  undulations,  in  a  hypothetical 
substance,  the  ether.  And  if  this  be  so,  why  may  1  not 
invent  the  hypothesis  of  Natural  Selection  (which  from  the 
analogy  of  domestic  productions,  and  from  what  we  know 
of  the  struggle  for  existence  and  of  the  variability  of  organic 
beings,  is,  in  some  very  slight  degree,  in  itself  probable)  and 
try  whether  this  hypothesis  of  Natural  Selection  does  not 
explain  (as  I  think  it  does)  a  large  number  of  facts  in 
geographical  distribution— geological  succession,  classification, 
morphology,  embryology,  etc.  I  should  really  much  like  to 
know  why  such  an  hypothesis  as  the  undulation  of  the  ether 
may  be  invented,  and  why  I  may  not  invent  (not  that  I  did 
invent  it,  for  I  was  led  to  it  by  studying  domestic  varieties) 
any  hypothesis,  such  as  Natural  Selection. 

Pray  forgive  me  and  my  pen  for  running  away  with  me, 
and  scribbling  on  at  such  length. 

I  can  perfectly  understand  Sedgwick  l  or  any  one  saying 
that  Natural  Selection  does  not  explain  large  classes  of  facts ; 
but  that  is  very  different  from  saying  that  I  depart  from 
right  principles  of  scientific  investigation. 

Letter  101  To   J.    S.    Henslow. 

Down,  May  14th  [rS6o]. 
I  have  been  greatly  interested  by  your  letter  to  Hooker, 
and  I  must  thank  you  from  my  heart  for  so  generously 
defending  me,  as  far  as  you  could,  against  my  powerful 
attackers.  Nothing  which  persons  say  hurts  me  for  long,  for 
I  have  an  entire  conviction  that  I  have  not  been  influenced 
by  bad  feelings  in  the  conclusions  at  which  I  have  arrived. 
Nor  have  I  published  my  conclusions  without  long  delibera- 
tion, and  they  were  arrived  at  after  far  more  study  than  the 
public  will  ever  know  of,  or  believe  in.  I  am  certain  to  have 
erred  in  many  points,  but  I  do  not  believe  so  much  as 
Sedgwick  and  Co.  think. 

Is  there  any  Abstract  or  Proceedings  of  the  Cambridge 

1  See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  247;  the  letter  is  there  dated 
December  24th,  but  must,  we  think,  have  been  written  in  November  at 
latest. 


1859—1863]  COAL    PLANTS  15t 

Philosophical  Society  published  ?'      If  so,  and  you  could  get  Letter  101 
me  a  copy,  I  should  like  to  have  one. 

Believe  me,  my  dear  Henslow,  I  feel  grateful  to  you  on 
this  occasion,  and  for  the  multitude  of  kindnesses  you  have 
done  me  from  my  earliest  days  at  Cambridge. 

To   C.    Lycll.  Letter  102 

Down,  May  22nd  [1S60]. 

Hooker  has  sent  me  a  letter  of  Thwaites,2  of  Ceylon,  who 
makes  exactly  the  same  objections  which  you  did  at  first 
about  the  necessity  of  all  forms  advancing,  and  therefore  the 
difficulty  of  simple  forms  still  existing.  There  was  no 
worse  omission  than  this  in  my  book,  and  I  had  the  dis- 
cussion all  ready. 

I  am  extremely  glad  to  hear  that  you  intend  adding  new 
arguments  about  the  imperfection  of  the  Geological  Record. 
I  always  feel  this  acutely,  and  am  surprised  that  such  men 
as  Ramsay  and  Jukes  do  not  feel  it  more. 

I  quite  agree  on  insufficient  evidence  about  mummy 
wheat.3 

When  you  can  spare  it,  I  should  like  (but  out  of  mere 
curiosity)  to  see  Binney4  on  Coal  marine  marshes. 

I  once  made  Hooker5  very  savage  by  saying  that  1 
believed  the  Coal  plants  grew  in  the  sea,  like  mangroves. 

1  Henslow's  remarks  are  not  given  in  the  above-mentioned  report  in 
the  Cambridge  Chronicle. 

2  See  Letter  97. 

3  See  notes  appended  to  a  letter  to  Lyell,  Sept.  1843  (Botany). 

4  Edward  William  Binney,  F.R.S.  (1812-81)  contributed  numerous 
papers  to  the  Royal,  Pateontographical,  Geological  and  other  Societies, 
on  Upper  Carboniferous  and  Permian  Rocks  ;  his  most  important  work 
deals  with  the  internal  structure  of  Coal-Measure  plants.  In  a  paper 
"  On  the  Origin  of  Coal,"  published  in  the  Memoirs  of  ihe  Manchester 
Literary  and  Philosophical  Society,  Vol.  VIII.,  p.  148,  in  1848,  Binney 
expressed  the  view  that  the  sediments  of  the  Coal  Period  were  marine 
rather  than  estuarine,  and  were  deposited  on  the  floor  of  an  ocean, 
which  was  characterised  by  a  "uniformity  and  shallowness  unknown" 
in  any  oceanic  area  of  the  present  day. 

5  See  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  356. 


1 52  KVOLUTtON  [Crap.  It! 

Letter  103  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

This  letter  is  of  interest  as  containing  a  strong  expression  upon  the 
overwhelming  importance  of  selection. 

Down  [i860]. 

Many  thanks  for  Harvey's  letter,1  which  I  will  keep  a 
little  longer  and  then  return.  I  will  write  to  him  and  try  to 
make  clear  from  analogy  of  domestic  productions  the  part 
which  I  believe  selection  has  played.  I  have  been  reworking 
my  pigeons  and  other  domestic  animals,  and  I  am  sure  that 
any  one  is  right  in  saying  that  selection  is  the  efficient 
cause,  though,  as  you  truly  say,  variation  is  the  base  of  all. 
Why  I  do  not  believe  so  much  as  you  do  in  physical  agencies 
is  that  I  see  in  almost  every  organism  (though  far  more 
clearly  in  animals  than  in  plants)  adaptation,  and  this 
except  in  rare  instances,  must,  I  should  think,  be  due  to 
selection. 

Do  not  forget  the  Pyrola-  when  in  flower:  My  blessed 
little  Sccevola  has  come  into  flower,  and  I  will  try  artificial 
fertilisation  on  it. 

1  have  looked  over  Harvey's  letter,  and  have  assumed  (I 
hope  rightly)  that  he  could  not  object  to  knowing  that  you 
had  forwarded  it  to  me. 

Letter  104  To  Asa  Gray. 

Down,  June  Sth  [i860]. 

I  have  to  thank  you  for  two  notes,  one  through  Hooker, 
and  one  with  some  letters  to  be  posted,  which  was  done. 
1  anticipated  your  request  by  making  a  few  remarks  on 
Owen's  review.3  Hooker  is  so  weary  of  reviews  that  I  do  not 
think  you  will  get  any  hints  from  him.  I  have  lately  had 
many  more  "  kicks  than   halfpence."     A   review  in  the  last 

1  W.  H.  Harvey  had  been  corresponding  with  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  on 
the  Origin  of  Species.  A  biographical  note  on  Harvey  is  given  as  a 
note  to  Letter  95. 

s  In  a  letter  to  Hooker,  May  22nd,  i860,  Darwin  wrote  :  "  Have  you 
Pyrola  at  Kew  ?  if  so,  for  heaven's  sake  observe  the  curvature  of  the 
pistil  towards  the  gangway  to  the  nectary."  The  fact  of  the  stigma  in 
insect-visited  flowers  being  so  placed  that  the  visitor  must  touch  it  on 
its  way  to  the  nectar,  was  a  point  which  early  attracted  Darwin's  attention 
and  strongly  impressed  him. 

3  The  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  i860. 


1859—  1 863]  KEVIEW|S  1 53 

Dublin  Nat.  Hist.  Review  is  the  most  unfair  thing  which  has  Letter  104 
appeared, — one  mass  of  misrepresentation.  It  is  evidently 
by  Haughton,1  the  geologist,  chemist  and  mathematician.  It 
shows  immeasurable  conceit  and  contempt  of  all  who  are  not 
mathematicians.  He  discusses  bees'  cells,  and  puts  a  series 
which  I  have  never  alluded  to,  and  wholly  ignores  the  inter- 
mediate comb  of  Melipona,  which  alone  led  me  to  my  notions. 
The  article  is  a  curiosity  of  unfairness  and  arrogance  ;  but, 
as  he  sneers  at  Malthus,  I  am  content,  for  it  is  clear  he  cannot 
reason.  He  is  a  friend  of  Harvey,  with  whom  I  have  had 
some  correspondence.  Your  article  has  clearly,  as  he  admits, 
influenced  him.  He  admits  to  a  certain  extent  Natural  Selec- 
tion, yet  I  am  sure  does  not  understand  me.  It  is  strange 
that  very  few  do,  and  I  am  become  quite  convinced  that 
I  must  be  an  extremely  bad  explainer.  To  recur  for  a 
moment  to  Owen  :  he  grossly  misrepresents  and  is  very 
unfair  to  Huxley.  You  say  that  you  think  the  article  must 
be  by  a  pupil  of  Owen  ;  but  no  one  fact  tells  so  strongly 
against  Owen,  considering  his  former  position  at  the  College 
of  Surgeons,  as  that  he  has  never  reared  one  pupil  or  follower. 
In  the  number  just  out  of  FraseSs  Magazine*  there  is  an 
article  or  review  on  Lamarck  and  me  by  W.  Hopkins,  the 
mathematician,  who,  like  Haughton,  despises  the  reasoning 
power  of  all  naturalists.  Personally  he  is  extremely  kind 
towards  me  ;  but  he  evidently  in  the  following  number  means 
to  blow  me  into  atoms.  He  does  not  in  the  least  appreciate 
the  difference  in  my  views  and  Lamarck's,  as  explaining 
adaptation,  the  principle  of  divergence,  the  increase  of 
dominant  groups,  and  the  almost  necessary  extinction  of  the 
less  dominant  and  smaller  groups,  etc. 

1  Samuel  Haughton  (1821-97),  author  of  Animal  Mechanics,  a  Manna/ 
of  Geology,  and  numerous  papers  on  Physics,  Mathematics,  Geology,  etc. 
In  November  1862  Darwin  wrote  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker:  "Do  you  know 
whether  there  are  two  Rev.  Prof.  Haughtons  at  Dublin  ?  One  of 
this  name  has  made  a  splendid  medical  discovery  of  nicotine  counter- 
acting strychnine  and  tetanus?  Can  it  be  my  dear  friend  ?  If  so,  he  is 
at  full  liberty  for  the  future  to  sneer  [at]  and  abuse  me  to  his  heart's 
content."  Unfortunately,  Prof.  Haughton's  discovery  has  not  proved 
of  more  permanent  value  than  his  criticism  on  the  Origin  0/ Species. 

'  See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  314. 


15-1  EVOLUTION  (Chap.  Ill 

Letter  105  To    C.    Lj'cll. 

Down,  June  17th  [1S60]. 

One  word  more  upon  the  Deification  l  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion :  attributing  so  much  weight  to  it  docs  not  exclude  still 
more  general  laws,  i.c.  the  ordering  of  the  whole  universe. 
I  have  said  that  Natural  Selection  is  to  the  structure  of 
organised  beings  what  the  human  architect  is  to  a  building. 
The  very  existence  of  the  human  architect  shows  the 
existence  of  more  general  laws  ;  but  no  one,  in  giving  credit 
for  a  building  to  the  human  architect,  thinks  it  necessary  to 
refer  to  the  laws  by  which  man  has  appeared. 

No  astronomer,  in  showing  how  the  movements  of  planets 
are  due  to  gravity,  thinks  it  necessary  to  say  that  the  law  of 
gravity  was  designed  that  the  planets  should  pursue  the  courses 
which  they  pursue.  I  cannot  believe  that  there  is  a  bit  more 
interference  by  the  Creator  in  the  construction  of  each  species 
than  in  the  course  of  the  planets.  It  is  only  owing  to  Paley 
and  Co.,  I  believe,  that  this  more  special  interference  is 
thought  necessary  with  living  bodies.  But  we  shall  never 
agree,  so  do  not  trouble  yourself  to  answer. 

I  should  think  your  remarks  were  very  just  about 
mathematicians  not  being  better  enabled  to  judge  of 
probabilities  than  other  men  of  common-sense. 

I  have  just  got  more  returns  about  the  gestation  of  hounds. 
The  period  differs  at  least  from  sixty-one  to  seventy-four 
days,  just  as   I   expected. 

I  was  thinking  of  sending  the  Gardeners'  Clironicle  to  you, 
on  account  of  a  paper  by  me  on  the  fertilisation  of  orchids  by 
insects,-  as  it  involves  a  curious  point,  and  as  you  cared  about 
my  paper  on  kidney  beans  ;  but  as  you  are  so  busy,  I  will  not. 

1  "  If  we  confound  '  Variation '  or  '  Natural  Selection :  with  such  crea- 
tional  laws,  we  deify  secondary  causes  or  immeasurably  exaggerate  their 
influence  "  (Lyell,  The  Geological  Evidences  of  the  Antiquity  of  Man, 
with  Remarks  on  Theories  on  the  Origin  of  Species  by  Variation,  p.  469, 
London,  1863).     See  letter  131. 

2  "  Fertilisation  of  British  Orchids  by  Insect  Agency."  This  article  in 
the  Gardeners'  Clironicle  of  June  9th,  1 860,  p.  528,  begins  with  a  request 
that  observations  should  be  made  on  the  manner  of  fertilisation  in  the 
bee-  and  in  the  fly-orchis. 


,859 — 1863]  ARCTIC    PLANTS  155 

To   C.    Lyell.  Letter  106 

Down  [June?J  20th  [1S60]. 

I  send  Blyth  l  ;  it  is  a  dreadful  handwriting  ;  the  passage 
is  on  page  4.  In  a  former  note  he  told  me  he  feared  there  was 
hardly  a  chance  of  getting  money  for  the  Chinese  expedition, 
and  spoke  of  your  kindness. 

Many  thanks  for  your  long  and  interesting  letter.  I 
wonder  at,  admire,  and  thank  you  for  your  patience  in  writing 
so  much.  I  rather  demur  to  Dci)iosaun<s  not  having  "  free 
will,"  as  surely  we  have.  I  demur  also  to  your  putting 
Huxley's  "  force  and  matter "  in  the  same  category  with 
Natural  Selection.  The  latter  may,  of  course,  be  quite  a 
false  view ;  but  surely  it  is  not  getting  beyond  our  depth 
to  first  causes. 

It  is  truly  very  remarkable  that  the  gestation  of  hounds2 
should  vary  so  much,  while  that  of  man  does  not.  It  may 
be  from  multiple  origin.  The  eggs  from  the  Musk  and  the 
common  duck  take  an  intermediate  period  in  hatching  ;  but 
I  should  rather  look  at  it  as  one  of  the  ten  thousand  cases 
which  we  cannot  explain — namely,  when  one  part  or  function 
varies  in  one  species  and  not  in  another. 

Hooker  has  told  me  nothing  about  his  explanation  of  few 
Arctic  forms  ;  I  knew  the  fact  before.  I  had  speculated  on 
what  I  presume,  from  what  you  say,  is  his  explanation  3 ;  but 

1  See  Letter  27. 

2  In  a  letter  written  to  Lyell  on  June  25th,  i860,  the  following- 
paragraph  occurs  :  "  You  need  not  believe  one  word  of  what  I  said  about 
gestation  of  dogs.  Since  writing  to  you  I  have  had  more  correspondence 
with  the  master  of  hounds,  and  I  see  his  [record?]  is  worth  nothing.  It 
may,  of  course,  be  correct,  but  cannot  be  trusted.  I  find  also  different 
statements  about  the  wolf:  in  fact,   I  am  all  abroad." 

3  "  Outlines  of  the  Distribution  of  Arctic  Plants,"  J.  D.  Hooker,  Trans. 
Linn.  Soc,  Vol.  XXIII.,  p.  251,  1862.  [Read  June  21st,  i860.]  In  this 
paper  Hooker  draws  attention  to  the  exceptional  character  of  the  Green- 
land flora  ;  but  as  regards  the  paucity  of  its  species  and  in  its  much 
greater  resemblance  to  the  floras  of  Arctic  Europe  than  to  those  of 
Arctic  America,  he  considers  it  difficult  to  account  for  these  facts, 
"unless  we  admit  Mr.  Darwin's  hypotheses"  (see  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  1872, 
Chap.  XII.,  p.  330)  of  asouthern  migration  due  to  the  cold  of  the  glacial 
period  and  the  subsequent  return  of  the  northern  types  during  the  suc- 
ceeding warmer  period.  Many  of  the  Greenland  species,  being  confined 
to  the  peninsula,  "  would,  as  it  were,  be  driven  into  the  sea — that  is 
exterminated"  (Hooker,  o/>.  at.,  pp.  253-4). 


156  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  106  there  must  have  been  at  all  times  an  Arctic  region.  I  found 
the  speculation  got  too  complex,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  to  be 
worth   following  out. 

I  have  been  doing  some  more  interesting  work  with 
orchids.  Talk  of  adaptation  in  woodpeckers,1  some  of  the 
orchids  beat  it. 

I  showed  the  case  to  Elizabeth  Wedgwood,  and  her 
remark  was,  "  Now  you  have  upset  your  own  book,  for  you 
won't  persuade  me  that  this  could  be  effected  by  Natural 
Selection." 

Letter  107  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

July  20th  [i860]. 

Many  thanks  for  your  pleasant  letter.  I  agree  to  every 
word  you  say  about  Fraser  and  the  Quarterly?  I  have  had 
some  really  admirable  letters  from  Hopkins.  I  do  not 
suppose  he  has  ever  troubled  his  head  about  geographical 
distribution,  classification,  morphologies,  etc.,  and  it  is  only 
those  who  have  that  will  feel  any  relief  in  having  some  sort 
of  rational  explanation  of  such  facts.  Is  it  not  grand  the 
way  in  which  the  Bishop  asserts  that  all  such  facts  are  ex- 
plained by  ideas  in  God's  mind  ?  The  Quarterly  is  un- 
commonly clever  ;  and  I  chuckled  much  at  the  way  my 
grandfather  and  self  are  quizzed.  I  could  here  and  there  see 
Owen's  hand.  By  the  way,  how  comes  it  that  you  were  not 
attacked  ?  Does  Owen  begin  to  find  it  more  prudent  to  leave 
you  alone?  I  would  give  five  shillings  to  know  what 
tremendous  blunder  the  Bishop  made  ;  for  I  see  that  a  page 
has  been  cancelled  and  a  new  page  gummed  in. 

I  am  indeed  most  thoroughly  contented  with  the  progress 
of  opinion.  From  all  that  I  hear  from  several  quarters,  it 
seems   that  Oxford3  did   the  subject    great  good.     It   is  of 

1  "  Can  a  more  striking  instance  of  adaptation  be  given  than  that  of 
a  woodpecker  for  climbing  trees  and  seizing  insects  in  the  chinks  of  the 
bark?"  {Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  141). 

2  Bishop  Wilberforce's  review  of  the  Origin  in  the  Quarterly  Review, 
July,  i860,  was  republished  in  his  Collected  Essays,  1874.  See  Life  and 
Letters,  II.,  p.  182,  and  II.,  p.  324,  where  some  quotations  from  the 
review  are  given.  For  Hopkins'  review  in  Eraser's  Magazine,  June, 
i860,  see  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  314. 

3  An  account  of  the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  at  Oxford  in 
i860  is  given  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  320,  and  a  fuller  account 


1859—1863]  NATURAL    HISTORY    REVIEW  1 57 

enormous  importance  the  showing  the  world  that  a  few  first-  Letter  107 
rate  men  are  not  afraid  of  expressing  their  opinion.  I  see 
daily  more  and  more  plainly  that  my  unaided  book  would 
have  done  absolutely  nothing.  Asa  Gray  is  fighting  admirably 
in  the  United  States.  He  is  thorough  master  of  the  subject, 
which  cannot  be  said  by  any  means  of  such  men  as  even 
Hopkins. 

I  have  been  thinking  over  what  you  allude  to  about  a 
natural  history  review.1  I  suppose  you  mean  really  a  revieiv 
and  not  journal  for  original  communications  in  Natural 
History.  Of  the  latter  there  is  now  superabundance.  With 
respect  to  a  good  review,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  its  value 
and  utility ;  nevertheless,  if  not  too  late,  I  hope  you  will 
consider  deliberately  before  you  decide.  Remember  what  a 
deal  of  work  you  have  on  your  shoulders,  and  though  you 
can  do  much,  yet  there  is  a  limit  to  even  the  hardest  worker's 
power  of  working.  I  should  deeply  regret  to  see  you  sacri- 
ficing much  time  which  could  be  given  to  original  research. 
I  fear,  to  one  who  can  review  as  well  as  you  do,  there  would 
be  the  same  temptation  to  waste  time,  as  there  notoriously 
is  for  those  who  can  speak  well. 

A  review  is  only  temporary ;  your  work  should  be 
perennial.  I  know  well  that  you  may  say  that  unless  good 
men  will  review  there  will  be  no  good  reviews.  And  this  is 
true.  Would  you  not  do  more  good  by  an  occasional  review 
in  some  well-established  review,  than  by  giving  up  much 
time  to  the  editing,  or  largely  aiding,  if  not  editing,  a  review 
which  from  being  confined  to  one  subject  would  not  have  a 
very  large  circulation  ?  But  I  must  return  to  the  chief  idea 
which  strikes  me — viz.,  that  it  would  lessen  the  amount  of 
original  and  perennial  work  which  you  could  do.     Reflect  how 

in  the  one-volume  Life  of  Charles  Darwin,  1892,  p.  236.  See  also  the 
Life  and  Letters  of  T.  H.  Huxley,  Vol.  I.,  p.  179,  and  the  amusing  account 
of  the  meeting  in  Mr.  Tuckwell's  Reminiscences  of  Oxford,  London, 
1900,  p.  50. 

1  In  the  Life  and  Letters  of  T.  H.  Huxley,  Vol.  I.,  p.  209,  some 
account  of  the  founding  of  the  Natural  History  Review  is  given  in  a 
letter  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  of  July  17th,  i860.  On  Aug.  2nd  Mr.  Huxley 
added  :  "  Darwin  wrote  me  a  very  kind  expostulation  about  it,  telling 
me  I  ought  not  to  waste  myself  on  other  than  original  work.  In  reply, 
however,  I  assured  him  that  I  must  waste  myself  willy-nilly,  and  that 
the  Review  was  only  a  save-all." 


158  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  107  few  men  there  are  in  England  who  can  do  original  work  in 
the  several  lines  in  which  you  arc  excellently  fitted.  Lyell, 
1  remember,  on  analogous  grounds  many  years  ago  resolved 
he  would  write  no  more  reviews.  I  am  an  old  slowcoach,  and 
your  scheme  makes  me  tremble.  God  knows  in  one  sense  I 
am  about  the  last  man  in  England  who  ought  to  throw  cold 
water  on  any  review  in  which  you  would  be  concerned,  as  I 
have  so  immensely  profited  by  your  labours  in  this  line. 

With  respect  to  reviewing  myself,  I  never  tried  :  any 
work  of  that  kind  stops  me  doing  anything  else,  as  I  cannot 
possibly  work  at  odds  and  ends  of  time.  I  have,  moreover, 
an  insane  hatred  of  stopping  my  regular  current  of  work.  I 
have  now  materials  for  a  little  paper  or  two,  but  I  know  1 
shall  never  work  them  up.  So  I  will  not  promise  to  help  ; 
though  not  to  help,  if  I  could,  would  make  me  feel  very 
ungrateful  to  you.  You  have  no  idea  during  how  short  a 
time  daily  I  am  able  to  work.  If  1  had  any  regular  duties, 
like  you  and  Hooker,  I  should  do  absolutely  nothing  in 
science. 

I  am  heartily  glad  to  hear  that  you  are  better  ;  but  how 
such  labour  as  volunteer-soldiering  (all  honour  to  you)  does 
not  kill  you,  I  cannot  understand. 

For  God's  sake  remember  that  your  field  of  labour  is 
original  research  in  the  highest  and  most  difficult  branches 
of  Natural  History.  Not  that  I  wish  to  underrate  the  im- 
portance of  clever  and  solid  reviews. 

Letter  108  To   T.    H.    Huxley, 

Sudbrook  Park,  Richmond,  Thursday  [July,   i860]. 

I  must  send  you  a  line  to  say  what  a  good  fellow  you 
are  to  send  me  so  long  an  account  of  the  Oxford  doings.  I 
have  read  it  twice,  and  sent  it  to  my  wife,  and  when  I  get 
home  shall  read  it  again  :  it  has  so  much  interested  me.  But 
how  durst  you  attack  a  live  bishop  in  that  fashion  ?  I  am 
quite  ashamed  of  you  !  Have  you  no  reverence  for  fine 
lawn  sleeves?  By  Jove,  you  seem  to  have  done  it  well.  If 
any  one  were  to  ridicule  any  belief  of  the  bishop's,  would 
he  not  blandly  shrug  his  shoulders  and  be  inexpressibly 
shocked  ?  I  am  very,  very  sorry  to  hear  that  you  are  not 
well  ;  but  am  not  surprised  after  all  your  self-imposed  labour. 


1859— 1863]  J.    D.    DANA  1 59 

I   hope  you  will  soon   have  an  outing,  and   that  will  do  you  Letter  108 
real  good. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  about  J.  Lubbock,  whom  I  hope  to  see 
soon,  and  shall  tell  him  what  you  have  said.  Have  you  read 
Hopkins  in  the  last  Fraser? — well  put,  in  good  spirit,  except 
soul  discussion  bad,  as  I  have  told  him  ;  nothing  actually 
new,  takes  the  weak  points  alone,  and  leaves  out  all  other 
considerations. 

I  heard  from  Asa  Gray  yesterday  ;  he  goes  on  fighting 
like  a  Trojan. 

God  bless  you  ! — get  well,  be  idle,  and  always  reverence 
a  bishop. 

To  J.  D.  Dana.1  Letter  109 

Down,  July  301I1  [1S60]. 
I  received  several  weeks  ago  your  note  telling  me  that 
you  could  not  visit  England,  which  I  sincerely  regretted,  as  I 
should  most  heartily  have  liked  to  have  made  your  personal 
acquaintance.  You  gave  me  an  improved,  but  not  very  good, 
account  of  your  health.  I  should  at  some  time  be  grateful 
for  a  line  to  tell  me  how  you  are.  We  have  had  a  miserable 
summer,  owing  to  a  terribly  long  and  severe  illness  of  my 
eldest  girl,  who  improves  slightly  but  is  still  in  a  precarious 
condition.  I  have  been  able  to  do  nothing  in  science  of  late. 
My  kind  friend  Asa  Gray  often  writes  to  me  and  tells  me  of 
the  warm  discussions  on  the  Origin  of  Species  in  the  United 
States.  Whenever  you  are  strong  enough  to  read  it,  I  know 
you  will  be  dead  against  me,  but  I  know  equally  well  that 
your  opposition  will  be  liberal  and  philosophical.  And  this 
is  a  good  deal  more  than  I  can  say  of  all  my  opponents  in 
this  country.  I  have  not  yet  seen  Agassiz's  attack,2  but  I 
hope  to  find  it  at  home  when  I  return  in  a  few  days,  for 
I  have  been  for  several  weeks  away  from  home  on  my 
daughter's  account.  Prof.  Silliman  sent  me  an  extremely 
kind  message  by  Asa  Gray  that  your  Journal  would  be  open 
to  a  reply  by  me.  I  cannot  decide  till  I  see  it,  but  on 
principle  I  have  resolved  to  avoid  answering  anything,  as  it 
consumes  much  time,  often  temper,  and   I   have  said   my  say 

1  See  note  1,  Letter  162. 

2  Silliman's  Journal,  July,   i860.      A  passage  from  Agassiz's  review 
is  given  by  Mr.  Huxley  in  Darwin's  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  184. 


160  EVOLUTION  [CHAr.  m 

Letter  109  in  the  Origin.  No  one  person  understands  my  views  and 
has  defended  them  so  well  as  A.  Gray,  though  he  does  not 
by  any  means  go  all  the  way  with  me.  There  was  much 
discussion  on  the  subject  at  the  British  Association  at 
Oxford,  and  I  had  many  defenders,  and  my  side  seems  (for 
I  was  not  there)  almost  to  have  got  the  best  of  the  battle. 
Your  correspondent  and  my  neighbour,  J.  Lubbock,  goes  on 
working  at  such  spare  time  as  he  has.  This  is  an  egotistical 
note,  but  I  have  not  seen  a  naturalist  for  months.  Most 
sincerely  and  deeply  do  I  hope  that  this  note  may  find  you 
almost  recovered. 

Letter  no  To  W.   H.  Harvey.1 

[August,  i860] 

I  have  read  your  long  letter  with  much  interest,  and  I 
thank  you  sincerely  for  your  great  liberality  in  sending  it  me. 
But,  on  reflection,  I  do  not  wish  to  attempt  answering  any 
part,  except  to  you  privately.  Anything  said  by  myself  in 
defence  would  have  no  weight  ;  it  is  best  to  be  defended  by 
others,  or  not  at  all.  Parts  of  your  letter  seem  to  me,  if  I 
may  be  permitted  to  say  so,  very  acute  and  original,  and 
I  feel  it  a  great  compliment  your  giving  up  so  much  time  to 
my  book.  But,  on  the  whole,  I  am  disappointed  ;  not  from 
your  not  concurring  with  me,  for  I  never  expected  that,  and, 
indeed,  in  your  remarks  on  Chs.  XII.  and  XIII.,  you  go  much 
further  with  me  (though  a  little  way)  than  I  ever  anticipated, 
and  am  much  pleased  at  the  result.  But  on  the  whole  I  am 
disappointed,  because  it  seems  to  me  that  you  do  not  under- 
stand what  I  mean  by  Natural  Selection,  as  shown  at  p.  1 1  2 
of  your  letter  and  by  several  of  your  remarks.  As  my  book 
has  failed  to  explain  my  meaning,  it  would  be  hopeless  to 
attempt  it  in  a  letter.  You  speak  in  the  early  part  of  your 
letter,  and  at  p.  9,  as  if  I  had  said  that  Natural  Selection  was 

1  See  Letter  95,  note  3,  p.  141.  This  letter  was  written  in  reply  to  a  long 
one  from  W.  H.  Harvey,  dated  Aug.  24th,  i860.  Harvey  had  already  pub- 
lished a  serio-comic  squib  and  a  review,  to  which  references  are  given  in 
the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  pp.  314  and  375  ;  but  apparently  he  had  not 
before  this  time  completed  the  reading  of  the  Origin. 

7  Harvey  speaks  of  the  perpetuation  or  selection  of  the  useful,  pre- 
supposing "  a  vigilant  and  intelligent  agent,"  which  is  very  much  like 
saying  that  an  intelligent  agent  is  needed  to  see  that  the  small  stones 
pass  through  the  meshes   of  a  sieve  and  the  big  ones  remain  behind. 


1859 — 1S63]  harvey's  criticisms  161 

the  sole  agency  of  modification,  whereas  I  have  over  and  Letter  no 
over  again,  ad  nauseam,  directly  said,  and  by  order  of  pre- 
cedence implied  (what  seems  to  me  obvious)  that  selection 
can  do  nothing  without  previous  variability  (see  pp.  80,  108, 
127,  468,  469,  etc.),  "  nothing  can  be  effected  unless  favourable 
variations  occur."  I  consider  Natural  Selection  as  of  such 
hi«ii  importance,  because  it  accumulates  successive  variations 
in  any  profitable  direction,  and  thus  adapts  each  new  being 
to  its  complex  conditions  of  life.  The  term  "  selection,"  I  see, 
deceives  many  persons,  though  I  see  no  more  reason  why 
it  should  than  elective  affinity,  as  used  by  the  old  chemists. 
If  I  had  to  rewrite  my  book,  I  would  use  "natural  preserva- 
tion" or  "naturally  preserved."  I  should  think  you  would 
as  soon  take  an  emetic  as  re-read  any  part  of  my  book  ;  but 
if  you  did,  and  were  to  erase  selection  and  selected,  and  insert 
preservation  and  preserved,  possibly  the  subject  would  be 
clearer.  As  you  are  not  singular  in  misunderstanding  my 
book,  I  should  long  before  this  have  concluded  that  my 
brains  were  in  a  haze  had  I  not  found  by  published  reviews, 
and  especially  by  correspondence,  that  Lyell,  Hooker,  Asa 
Gray,  H.  C.  Watson,  Huxley,  and  Carpenter,  and  many 
others,  perfectly  comprehend  what  I  mean.  The  upshot  of 
your  remarks  at  p.  1 1  is  that  my  explanation,  etc.,  and  the 
whole  doctrine  of  Natural  Selection,  are  mere  empty  words, 
signifying  the  "  order  of  nature."  As  the  above-named  clear- 
headed men,  who  do  comprehend  my  views,  all  go  a  certain 
length  with  me,  and  certainly  do  not  think  it  all  moonshine, 
I  should  venture  to  suggest  a  little  further  reflection  on  your 
part.  I  do  not  mean  by  this  to  imply  that  the  opinion  of 
these  men  is  worth  much  as  showing  that  I  am  right,  but 
merely  as  some  evidence  that  I  have  clearer  ideas  than  you 
think,  otherwise  these  same  men  must  be  even  more  muddle- 
headed  than  I  am  ;  for  they  have  no  temptation  to  deceive 
themselves.  In  the  forthcoming  September1  number  of  the 
American  Journal  of Science  there  is  an  interesting  and  short 
theological  article  (by  Asa  Gray),  which  gives  incidentally 
with  admirable  clearness  the  theory  of  Natural  Selection,  and 
therefore  might  be  worth  your  reading.  I  think  that  the 
theological  part  would  interest  you. 

1  American  Journal  of  Science  and  Arts,  September,  i860,  "Design 
versus  Necessity,"  reprinted  in  Asa  ("•ray's  Darwiniana,  1876,  p.  62. 

IT 


162  EVOLUTION  [Chap,  ill 

Letter  no  Vou  object  to  all  my  illustrations.  They  are  all  neces- 
sarily conjectural,  and  may  be  all  false  ;  but  they  were  the 
best  I  could  give.  The  bear  case '  has  been  well  laughed  at, 
and  disingenuously  distorted  by  some  into  my  saying  that 
a  bear  could  be  converted  into  a  whale.  As  it  offended 
persons,  I  struck  it  out  in  the  second  edition  ;  but  I  still 
maintain  that  there  is  no  especial  difficulty  in  a  bear's  mouth 
being  enlarged  to  any  degree  useful  to  its  changing  habits, — 
no  more  difficulty  than  man  has  found  in  increasing  the  crop 
of  the  pigeon,  by  continued  selection,  until  it  is  literally  as 
big  as  the  whole  rest  of  the  body.  If  this  had  not  been 
known,  how  absurd  it  would  have  appeared  to  say  that  the 
crop  of  a  bird  might  be  increased  till  it  became  like  a 
balloon  ! 

With  respect  to  the  ostrich,  I  believe  that  the  wings  have 
been  reduced,  and  are  not  in  course  of  development,  because 
the  whole  structure  of  a  bird  is  essentially  formed  for  flight  ; 
and  the  ostrich  is  essentially  a  bird.  You  will  see  at  p.  182 
of  the  Origin  a  somewhat  analogous  discussion.  At  p.  450 
of  the  second  edition  I  have  pointed  out  the  essential  dis- 
tinction between  a  nascent  and  rudimentary  organ.  If  you 
prefer  the  more  complex  view  that  the  progenitor  of  the 
ostrich  lost  its  wings,  and  that  the  present  ostrich  is  regaining 
them,  I  have  nothing  to  say  in  opposition. 

With  respect  to  trees  on  islands,  I  collected  some  cases, 
but  took  the  main  facts  from  Alph.  De  Candolle,  and  thought 
they  might  be  trusted.  My  explanation  may  be  grossly 
wrong  ;  but  I  am  not  convinced  it  is  so,  and  I  do  not  see 
the  full  force  of  your  argument  of  certain  herbaceous  orders 
having  been  developed  into  trees  in  certain  rare  cases  on 
continents.  The  case  seems  to  me  to  turn  altogether  on  the 
question  whether  generally  herbaceous  orders  more  frequently 
afford  trees  and  bushes  on  islands  than  on  continents, 
relatively  to  their  areas.2 

1  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  I.,  p.  184.     See  Letter  120. 

2  In  the  Origin,  Ed.  I.,  p.  392,  the  author  points  out  that  in  the 
presence  of  competing  trees  an  herbaceous  plant  would  have  little  chance 
of  becoming  arborescent ;  but  on  an  island,  with  only  other  herbaceous 
plants  as  competitors,  it  might  gain  an  advantage  by  overtopping  its 
fellows,  and  become  tree-like.  Harvey  writes  :  "  What  you  say  (p.  392) 
of  insular   trees   belonging    to    orders    which   elsewhere    include    only 


1859-1863]  HARVEY'S    CRITICISMS  163 

In  p.  4  of  your  letter  you  say  you  give  up  many  book-  Letter  no 
species  as  separate  creations  :  I  give  up  all,  and  you  infer 
that  our  difference  is  only  in  degree  and  not  in  kind.  I 
dissent  from  this  ;  for  I  give  a  distinct  reason  how  far  I  go  in 
giving  up  species.  I  look  at  all  forms,  which  resemble  each 
other  homologically  or  embryologically,  as  certainly  descended 
from  the  same  species. 

You  hit  me  hard  and  fairly  '  about  my  question  (p.  483, 
Origin)  about  creation  of  eggs  or  young,  etc.  (but  not  about 
mammals  with  the  mark  of  the  umbilical  cord),  yet  1  still 
have  an  illogical  sort  of  feeling  that  there  is  less  difficulty  in 
imagining  the  creation  of  an  asexual  cell,  increasing  by  simple 
division. 

herbaceous  species  seems  to  me  to  be  unsupported  by  sufficient  evidence. 
You  cite  no  particular  trees,  and  I  may  therefore  be  wrong  in  guessing 
that  the  orders  you  allude  to  are  Scrophularineao  and  Composite  ;  and 
the  insular  trees  the  Antarctic  Veronicas  and  the  arborescent  Composite- 
of  St.  Helena,  Tasmania,  etc.  But  in  South  Africa  Halleria  (Scrophu- 
larineie)  is  often  as  large  and  woody  as  an  apple  tree  ;  and  there  are 
several  South  African  arborescent  Composite  (Senerio  and  Ohlenburgia). 
Besides,  in  Tasmania  at  least,  the  arborescent  Composites  are  not  found 
competing  with  herbaceous  plants  alone,  and  growing  taller  and  taller 
by  overtopping  them  .  .  .  ;  for  the  most  arborescent  of  them  all 
[Eurybta  argophylla,  the  Musk  tree)  grows  ...  in  Eucalyptus  forests. 
And  so  of  the  South  African  Halleria,  which  is  a  tree  among  trees. 
What  the  conditions  of  the  arborescent  Gerania  of  the  Sandwich  Islands 
may  be  I  am  unable  to  say.  ...  I  cannot  remember  any  other  instances, 
nor  can  I  accept  your  explanation  in  any  of  the  cases  I  have  cited." 

1  Harvey  writes  :  "  You  ask — were  all  the  infinitely  numerous  kinds 
of  animals  and  plants  created  as  eggs  or  seed,  or  as  full  grown  ?  To 
this  it  is  sufficient  to  reply,  was  your  primordial  organism,  or  were  your 
four  or  five  progenitors  created  as  egg,  seed,  or  full  grown  ?  Neither 
theory  attempts  to  solve  this  riddle,  nor  yet  the  riddle  of  the  Omphalos." 
The  latter  point,  which  Mr.  Darwin  refuses  to  give  up,  is  at  p.  483  of  the 
Origin,  "and,  in  the  case  of  mammals,  were  they  created  bearing  the 
false  marks  of  nourishment  from  the  mother's  womb?"  In  the  third 
edition  of  the  Origin,  1861,  p.  517,  the  author  adds,  after  the  last-cited 
passage  :  "  Undoubtedly  these  same  questions  cannot  be  answered  by 
those  who,  under  the  present  state  of  science,  believe  in  the  creation  of 
a  few  aboriginal  forms,  or  of  some  one  form  of  life.  In  the  sixth  edition, 
probably  with  a  view  to  the  umbilicus,  he  writes  (p.  423) :  "  Undoubtedly 
some  of  these  same  questions,"  etc.,  etc.  From  notes  in  Mr.  Darwin's 
copy  of  the  second  edition  it  is  clear  that  the  change  in  the  third  edition 
was  chiefly  due  to  Harvey's  letter.     See  Letter  115. 


164  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  no  Page  5  of  your  letter  :  I  agree  to  every  word  about  the 
antiquity  of  the  world,  and  never  saw  the  case  put  by  any  one 
more  strongly  or  more  ably.  It  makes,  however,  no  more 
impression  on  me  as  an  objection  than  does  the  astronomer 
when  he  puts  on  a  few  hundred  million  miles  to  the  distance 
of  the  fixed  stars.  To  compare  very  small  things  with  great, 
Lingula,  etc.,  remaining  nearly  unaltered  from  the  Silurian 
epoch  to  the  present  day,  is  like  the  dovecote  pigeons  still 
being  identical  with  wild  Rock-pigeons,  whereas  its  "  fancy  " 
offspring  have  been  immensely  modified,  and  are  still  being 
modified,  by  means  of  artificial  selection. 

You  put  the  difficulty  of  the  first  modification  of  the  first 
protozoon  admirably.  I  assure  you  that  immediately  after 
the  first  edition  was  published  this  occurred  to  me,  and  I 
thought  of  inserting  it  in  the  second  edition.  I  did  not, 
because  we  know  not  in  the  least  what  the  first  germ  of  life 
was,  nor  have  we  any  fact  at  all  to  guide  us  in  our  specula- 
tions on  the  kind  of  change  which  its  offspring  underwent. 
I  dissent  quite  from  what  you  say  of  the  myriads  of  years  it 
would  take  to  people  the  world  with  s  uch  imagined  protozoon. 
In  how  very  short  a  time  Ehrenberg  calculated  that  a  single 
infusorium  might  make  a  cube  of  rock  !  A  single  cube  on 
geometrical  progression  would  make  the  solid  globe  in  (I 
suppose)  under  a  century.  From  what  little  I  know,  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  you  underrate  the  effects  of  the  physical 
conditions  of  life  on  these  low  organisms.  But  I  fully  admit 
than  I  can  give  no  sort  of  answer  to  your  objections  ;  yet 
I  must  add  that  it  would  be  marvellous  if  any  man  ever 
could,  assuming  for  the  moment  that  my  theory  is  true.  You 
beg  the  question,  I  think,  in  saying  that  Protococcus  would  be 
doomed  to  eternal  similarity.  Nor  can  you  know  that  the 
first  germ  resembled  a  Protococcus  or  any  other  now  living 
form. 

Page  12  of  your  letter:  There  is  nothing  in  my  theory 
necessitating  in  each  case  progression  of  organisation,  though 
Natural  Selection  tends  in  this  line,  and  has  generally  thus 
acted.  An  animal,  if  it  become  fitted  by  selection  to  live  the 
life,  for  instance,  of  a  parasite,  will  generally  become  degraded. 
I  have  much  regretted  that  I  did  not  make  this  part  of  the 
subject  clearer.  I  left  out  this  and  many  other  subjects, 
which   I    now    see   ought   to  have  been  introduced.     I  have 


1859-1863]  HARVEY'S    CRITICISMS  165 

inserted  a  discussion  on  this  subject  in  the  foreign  editions.1     In  Letter  1 10 
no  case  will  any  organic  being  tend  to  retrograde,  unless  such 
retrogradation  be  an  advantage  to  its  varying  offspring ;  and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  going  back  to  the  structure  of  the  unknown 
supposed  original  protozoon  could  ever  be  an  advantage. 

Page  13  of  your  letter:  I  have  been  more  glad  to  read 
your  discussion  on  "dominant  "  -  forms  than  any  part  of  your 
letter.  I  can  now  see  that  I  have  not  been  cautious  enough 
in  confining  my  definition  and  meaning.  I  cannot  say  that 
you  have  altered  my  views.  If  Botrytris \Phytophthord\  had 
exterminated  the  wild  potato,  a  low  form  would  have  con- 
quered a  high  ;  but  I  cannot  remember  that  I  have  ever  said 
(I  am  sure  I  never  thought)  that  a  low  form  would  never 
conquer  a  high.  I  have  expressly  alluded  to  parasites  half 
exterminating  game-animals,  and  to  the  struggle  for  life 
being  sometimes  between  forms  as  different  as  possible  :  for 
instance,  between  grasshoppers  and  herbivorous  quadrupeds. 
Under  the  many  conditions  of  life  which  this  world  affords, 
any  group  which  is  numerous  in  individuals  and  species  and 
is  widely  distributed,  may  properly  be  called  dominant.  I 
never  dreamed  of  considering  that  any  one  group,  under  all 
conditions  and  throughout  the  world,  would  be  predominant. 
How  could  vertebrata  be  predominant  under  the  conditions 
of  life  in  which  parasitic  worms  live?  What  good  would 
their  perfected  senses  and  their  intellect  serve  under  such 
conditions  ?  When  I  have  spoken  of  dominant  forms,  it  has 
been  in  relation  to  the  multiplication  of  new  specific  forms, 
and  the  dominance  of  any  one  species  has  been  relative 
generally  to  other  members  of  the  same  group,  or  at  least 
to  beings  exposed  to  similar  conditions  and  coming  into 
competition.  But  I  daresay  that  I  have  not  in  the  Origin 
made  myself  clear,  and  space  has  rendered  it  impossible. 
But  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  your  valuable  remarks, 
though   I  do  not  agree  with  them. 

1  In  the  third  edition  a  discussion  on  this  point  is  added  in 
Chapter  IV. 

2  Harvey  writes  :  "  Viewing  organic  nature  in  its  widest  aspect,  I 
think  it  is  unquestionable  that  the  truly  dominant  races  are  not  those  of 
high,  but  those  of  low  organisation  "  ;  and  goes  on  to  quote  the  potato 
disease,  etc.  In  the  third  edition  of  the  Origin,  p.  56,  a  discussion  is 
introduced  denning  the  author's  use  of  the  term  "dominant." 


166  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  no  About  sudden  jumps  :  I  have  no  objection  to  them — they 
would  aid  me  in  some  cases.  All  I  can  say  is,  that  I  went 
into  the  subject,  and  found  no  evidence  to  make  me  believe 
in  jumps;  and  a  good  deal  pointing  in  the  other  direction. 
You  will  find  it  difficult  (p.  14  of  your  letter)  to  make  a 
marked  liqe  of  separation  between  fertile  and  infertile  crosses. 
I  do  not  see  how  the  apparently  sudden  change  (for  the 
suddenness  of  change  in  a  chrysalis  is  of  course  largely  only 
apparent)  in  larva;  during  their  development  throws  any  light 
on  the  subject. 

I  wish  I  could  have  made  this  letter  better  worth  sending 
to  you.  I  have  had  it  copied  to  save  you  at  least  the  intoler- 
able trouble  of  reading  my  bad  handwriting.  Again  I  thank 
you  for  your  great  liberality  and  kindness  in  sending  me 
your  criticisms,  and  I  heartily  wish  we  were  a  little  nearer  in 
accord  ;  but  we  must  remain  content  to  be  as  wide  asunder 
as  the  poles,  but  without,  thank  God,  any  malice  or  other 
ill-feeling. 

Letter  m  To  T.   H.  Huxley. 

Dr.  Asa  Gray's  articles  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  July,  August,  and 
October,  i860,  were  published  in  England  as  a  pamphlet,  and  form 
Chapter  III.  in  his  Darwiniana  (1876).  See  Life  and  Letters,  II., 
p.  338.  The  article  referred  to  in  the  present  letter  is  that  in  the 
August  number. 

Down,  Sept.  loth  [i860]. 

I  send  by  this  post  a  review  by  Asa  Gray,  so  good  that 
I  should  like  you  to  see  it  ;  I  must  beg  for  its  return.  I 
want  to  ask,  also,  your  opinion  about  getting  it  reprinted  in 
England.  I  thought  of  sending  it  to  the  Editor  of  the 
Annals  and  Mag.  of  Nat.  Hist.,  in  which  two  hostile  reviews 
have  appeared  (although  I  suppose  the  Annals  have  a  very 
poor  circulation),  and  asking  them  in  the  spirit  of  fair  play 
to  print  this,  with  Asa  Gray's  name,  which  I  will  take  the 
responsibility  of  adding.  Also,  as  it  is  long,  I  would  offer  to 
pay  expenses. 

It  is  very  good,  in  addition,  as  bringing  in  Pictct '  so 
largely.     Tell   me  briefly  what  you  think. 

What  an  astonishing  expedition  this  is  of  Hooker's  to 
Syria!     God  knows  whether  it  is  wise. 


1  Pictet   (1809-72)   wrote  a   "perfectly  fair"  review   opposed  to  the 
Origin.     See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  297.- 


1859-1863]  LYELL  167 

How  are  you  and  all  yours  ?  I  hope  you  are  not  working  Letter  m 
too  hard.  For  Heaven's  sake,  think  that  you  may  become 
such  a  beast  as  I  am.  How  goes  on  the  Nat.  Hist.  Review} 
Talking  of  reviews,  I  damned  with  a  good  grace  the  review 
in  the  Athenaeum  l  on  Tyndall  with  a  mean,  scurvy  allusion  to 
you.  It  is  disgraceful  about  Tyndall, — in  fact,  doubting  his 
veracity. 

I  am  very  tired,  and  hate  nearly  the  whole  world.  So 
good-night,  and  take  care  of  your  digestion,  which  means 
brain. 

To  C.   Lyell.  Letter  112 

15,  Marine  Parade,  Eastbourne,  26th  [Sept.,   i860]. 

It  has  just  occurred  to  me  that  I  took  no  notice  of  your 
questions  on  extinction  in  St.  Helena.  I  am  nearly  sure  that 
Hooker  has  information  on  the  extinction  of  plants,2  but  I 
cannot  remember  where  I  have  seen  it.  One  may  confidently 
assume  that  many  insects  were  exterminated. 

By  the  way,  I  heard  lately  from  Wollaston,  who  told  me 
that  he  had  just  received  eminently  Madeira  and  Canary 
Island  insect  forms  from  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  to  which 
trifling  distance,  if  he  is  logical,  he  will  have  to  extend  his 
Atlantis  !  I  have  just  received  your  letter,  and  am  very 
much  pleased  that  you  approve.  But  I  am  utterly  disgusted 
and  ashamed  about  the  dingo.  I  cannot  think  how  I  could 
have  misunderstood  the  paper  so  grossly.  I  hope  I  have  not 
blundered  likewise  in  its  co-existence  with  extinct  species  : 
what  horrid  blundering  !  I  am  grieved  to  hear  that  you  think 
I  must  work  in  the  notes  in  the  text ;  but  you  are  so  much 
better  a  judge  that  I  will  obey.  I  am  sorry  that  you  had  the 
trouble  of  returning  the  Dog  MS.,  which  I  suppose  I  shall 
receive  to-morrow. 

I  mean  to  give  good  woodcuts  of  all  the  chief  races  of 
pigeons.3 

Except  the  C.  cenas*  (which  is  partly,  indeed  almost 
entirely,  a  wood  pigeon),  there  is  no  other  rock  pigeon  with 

1  Review  of  The  Glaciers  of  the  Alps  (Athenaum,  Sept.  1,  i860,  p.  280). 

'  Principles  of  Geology,  Vol.  II.  (Ed.  X.,  1868),  p.  453.  Facts  are 
quoted  from  Hooker  illustrating  the  extermination  of  plants  in  St.  Helena. 

3  The  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication,  1868. 

*  The  Columba  anas  of  Europe  roosts  on  trees  and  builds  its  nest  in 
holes,  either  in  trees  or  the  ground  (Var.  of  Animals,  Vol.  I.,  p.  183). 


[68  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  112  which  our  domestic  pigeon  would  cross — that  is,  if  several 
excessively  close  geographical  races  of  C.  livia,  which  hardly 
anv  ornithologist  looks  at  as  true  species,  be  all  grouped  under 
C.  livia} 

I  am  writing  higgledy-piggledy,  as  I  re-read  your  letter. 
I  thought  vthat  my  letter  had  been  much  wilder  than  yours. 
1  quite  feel  the  comfort  of  writing  when  one  may  "  alter  one's 
speculations  the  day  after."  It  is  beyond  my  knowledge  to 
weigh  ranks  of  birds  and  monotremes  ;  in  the  respiratory  and 
circulatory  system  and  muscular  energy  I  believe  birds  are 
ahead  of  all  mammals. 

I  knew  that  you  must  have  known  about  New  Guinea  ; 
but  in  writing  to  you   I  never  make  myself  civil ! 

After  treating  some  half-dozen  or  dozen  domestic  animals 
in  the  same  manner  as  1  treat  dogs,  I  intended  to  have  a 
chapter  of  conclusions.  But  Heaven  knows  when  I  shall 
finish  :  I  get  on  very  slowly.  You  would  be  surprised  how 
long  it  took  me  to  pick  out  what  seemed  useful  about  dogs 
out  of  multitudes  of  details. 

I  see  the  force  of  your  remark  about  more  isolated  races 
of  man  in  old  times,  and  therefore  more  in  number.  It  seems 
to  me  difficult  to  weigh  probabilities.  Perhaps  so,  if  you 
refer  to  very  slight  differences  in  the  races  :  to  make  great 
differences  much  time  would  be  required,  and  then,  even  at 
the  earliest  period  I  should  have  expected  one  race  to  have 
spread,  conquered,  and  exterminated  the  others. 

With  respect  to  Falconer's  series  of  Elephants,2  I  think 
the  case  could  be  answered  better  than  I  have  done  in  the 
Origin,  p.  334-3    All  these  new  discoveries  show  how  imperfect 

1  Cohunba  livia,  the  Rock-pigeon.  "We  may  conclude  with  con- 
fidence that  all  the  domestic  races,  notwithstanding  their  great  amount 
of  difference,  are  descended  from  the  Columba  livia,  including  under  this 
name  certain  wild  races''  (pp.  tit.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  223). 

3  In  1837  Dr.  Falconer  and  Sir  Proby  Cautley  collected  a  large 
number  of  fossil  remains  from  the  Siwalik  Hills.  Falconer  and  Cautley, 
Fauna  Antigua  Sivalensts,  1845-49. 

3  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  I.,  p.  334.  "  It  is  no  real  objection  to  the 
truth  of  the  statement  that  the  fauna  of  each  period  as  a  whole  is  nearly 
intermediate  in  character  between  the  preceding  and  succeeding  faunas, 
that  certain  genera  offer  exceptions  to  the  rule.  For  instance,  mastodons 
and  elephants,  when  arranged  by  Dr.  Falconer  in  two  series,  first  accord- 
ing  to   their  mutual  affinities  and  then    according   to   their   periods  of 


1859— 1863]  REVIEWS  169 

the  discovered   series  is,  which   Falconer  thought  years   ago  Letter  112 
was  nearly  perfect. 

I  will  send  to-day  or  to-morrow  two  articles  by  Asa  Gray. 
The  longer  one  (now  not  finally  corrected)  will  come  out  in 
the  October  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  they  can  be  got  at 
Trubner's.     Hearty  thanks  for  all  your  kindness. 

Do  not  hurry  over  Asa  Gray.  He  strikes  me  as  one  of 
the  best  reasoners  and  writers  I  ever  read.  He  knows  my 
book  as  well  as   I  do  myself. 

To  C.  Lyell. 

15,   Marine  Parade,   Eastbourne,  Oct.  3rd  [i860]. 

Your  last  letter  has  interested  me  much  in  many  ways. 

I  enclose  a  letter  of  Wyman's  x  which  touches  on  brains. 
Wyman  is  mistaken  in  supposing  that  1  did  not  know  that 
the  Cave-rat  was  an  American  form  ;  I  made  special  en- 
quiries. He  does  not  know  that  the  eye  of  the  Tucutuco 
was  carefully  dissected. 

With  respect  to  reviews  by  A.  Gray.  I  thought  of 
sending  the  Dialogue 2  to  the  Saturday  Review  in  a  week's 

existence,  do  not  accord  in  arrangement.  The  species  extreme  in 
character  are  not  the  oldest,  or  the  most  recent  ;  nor  are  those  which 
are  intermediate  in  character  intermediate  in  age.  But  supposing  for  an 
instant,  in  this  and  other  such  cases,  that  the  record  of  the  first  appear- 
ance and  disappearance  of  the  species  was  perfect,  we  have  no  reason  to 
believe  that  forms  successively  produced  necessarily  endure  for  corre- 
sponding lengths  of  time.  A  very  ancient  form  might  occasionally  last 
much  longer  than  a  form  elsewhere  subsequently  produced,  especially 
in  the  case  of  terrestrial  productions  inhabiting  separated  districts" 
(pp.  334-5).  The  same  words  occur  in  the  later  edition  of  the  Origin 
(Ed.  vi.,  p.  306). 

1  Jeffries  Wyman  (1814-74)  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1833,  and  after- 
wards entered  the  Medical  College  at  Boston,  receiving  the  M.D.  degree 
in  1837.  In  1847  Wyman  was  appointed  Hervey  Professor  of  Anatomy 
at  Harvard,  which  position  he  held  up  to  the  time  of  his  death.  His  con- 
tributions to  zoological  science  numbered  over  a  hundred  papers.  (See 
Proc.  Amer.  Acad.  Arts  and  Sciences,  Vol.  II.,  1874-75,  pp.  496 — 505.) 

*  "  Discussion  between  two  Readers  of  Darwin's  Treatise  on  the 
Origin  of  Species,  upon  its  Natural  Theology "  (Amer.  Journ.  Set., 
Vol.  XXX.,  p.  226,  i860).  Reprinted  in  Darwiniana,  1876,  p.  62. 
The  article  begins  with  the  following  question  :  "  First  Reader — Is 
Darwin's  theory  atheistic  or  pantheistic  ?  Or  does  it  tend  to  atheism 
or  pantheism  ? "     The  discussion  is  closed  by  the  Second  Reader,  who 


170  I   VOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  113  time  or  so,  as  they  have  lately  discussed  Design.  I  have  sent 
the  second,  or  August,  Atlantic  article  to  the  Annals  and 
Mag.  of  Nat.  History}  The  copy  which  you  have  I  want 
to  send  to  Pictct,  as  I  told  A.  Gray  I  would,  thinking  from 
what  he  said  he  would  like  this  to  be  done.  I  doubt  whether 
it  would  be  possible  to  get  the  October  number  reprinted  in 
this  country  ;  so  that  I  am  in  no  hurry  at  all  for  this. 

I  had  a  letter  a  few  weeks  ago  from  Symonds  -  on  the 
imperfection  of  the  Geological  Record,  less  clear  and  forcible 
than  I  expected.  I  answered  him  at  length  and  very  civilly, 
though  I  could  hardly  make  out  what  he  was  driving  at.  He 
spoke  about  you  in  a  way  which  it  did  me  good  to  read. 

I  am  extremely  glad  that  you  like  A.  Gray's  reviews. 
I  low  generous  and  unselfish  he  has  been  in  all  his  labour! 
Are  you  not  struck  by  his  metaphors  and  similes?  I  have 
told  him  he  is  a  poet  and  not  a  lawyer. 

I  should  altogether  doubt  on  turtles  being  converted  into 
land  tortoises  on  any  one  island.  Remember  how  closely 
similar  tortoises  are  on  all  continents,  as  well  as  islands  ;  they 
must  have  all  descended  from  one  ancient  progenitor,  in- 
cluding the  gigantic  tortoise  of  the  Himalaya. 

I  think  you  must  be  cautious  in  not  running  the  con- 
venient doctrine  that  only  one  species  out  of  very  many  ever 
varies.  Reflect  on  such  cases  as  the  fauna  and  flora  of 
Europe,  North  America,  and  Japan,  which  are  so  similar, 
and  yet  which  have  a  great  majority  of  their  species  either 

thus  sums  up  his  views  :  "  Wherefore  we  may  insist  that,  for  all  that  yet 
appears,  the  argument  for  design,  as  presented  by  the  natural  theologians, 
is  just  as  good  now,  if  we  accept  Darwin's  theory,  as  it  was  before  the 
theory  was  promulgated  ;  and  that  the  sceptical  juryman,  who  was  about 
to  join  the  other  eleven  in  an  unanimous  verdict  in  favour  of  design,  finds 
no  good  excuse  for  keeping  the  Court  longer  waiting." 

1  Annals  and  Mag.  Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  VI.,  pp.  373-86,  1S60.  (From 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  August,  i860.) 

'  William  Samuel  Symonds  (1818-87),  a  member  of  an  old  West- 
country  family,  was  an  undergraduate  of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  in  1845  became  Rector  of  Pendock,  Worcestershire.  He  published 
in  1858  a  book  entitled  Stones  of  the  Valley  ;  in  1859  Old  Bones,  or  Notes 
for  Young  Naturalists  ;  and  in  1872  his  best-known  work,  Records  of  the 
Rocks.  Mr.  Symonds  passed  the  later  years  of  his  life  at  Sunningdale, 
the  house  of  his  son-in-law,  Sir  Joseph  Hooker.  (See  Quart.  Journ.  Geol. 
Sac,  Vol.  XLIV.,  p.  xliii.) 


1859-1863]  VARIATION  171 

specifically  distinct,  or  forming  well-marked  races.  We  must  Letter  113 
in  such  cases  incline  to  the  belief  that  a  multitude  of  species 
were  once  identically  the  same  in  all  the  three  countries  when 
under  a  warmer  climate  and  more  in  connection  ;  and  have 
varied  in  all  the  three  countries.  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  almost  every  species  (as  we  see  with  nearly  all  our 
domestic  productions)  varies  sufficiently  for  Natural  Selection 
to  pick  out  and  accumulate  new  specific  differences,  under 
new  organic  and  inorganic  conditions  of  life,  whenever  a  place 
is  open  in  the  polity  of  nature.  But  looking  to  a  long  lapse 
of  time  and  to  the  whole  world,  or  to  large  parts  of  the 
world,  I  believe  only  one  or  a  few  species  of  each  large  genus 
ultimately  becomes  victorious,  and  leaves  modified  descend- 
ants. To  give  an  imaginary  instance  :  the  jay  has  become 
modified  in  the  three  countries  into  (I  believe)  three  or  four 
species  ;  but  the  jay  genus  is  not,  apparently,  so  dominant  a 
group  as  the  crows  ;  and  in  the  long  run  probably  all  the 
jays  will  be  exterminated  and  be  replaced  perhaps  by  some 
modified  crows. 

I  merely  give  this  illustration  to  show  what  seems  to  me 
probable. 

But  oh  !  what  work  there  is  before  we  shall  understand 
the  genealogy  of  organic  beings  ! 

With  respect  to  the  Apteryx,  I  know  not  enough  of 
anatomy  ;  but  ask  Dr.  F.  whether  the  clavicle,  etc.,  do  not 
give  attachment  to  some  of  the  muscles  of  respiration.  If  my 
views  are  at  all  correct,  the  wing  of  the  Apteryx1  cannot  be 
(p.  452  of  the  Origin)  a  nascent  organ,  as  these  wings  are 
useless.  I  dare  not  trust  to  memory,  but  I  know  I  found  the 
whole  sternum  always  reduced  in  size  in  all  the  fancy  and 
confined  pigeons  relatively  to  the  same  bones  in  the  wild  Rock- 
pigeon  :  the  keel  was  generally  still  further  reduced  relatively 
to  the  reduced  length  of  the  sternum  ;  but  in  some  breeds  it 
was  in  a  most  anomalous  manner  more  prominent.  I  have 
got  a  lot  of  facts  on  the  reduction  of  the  organs  of  flight  in 
the  pigeon,  which  took  me  weeks  to  work  out,  and  which 
Huxley  thought  curious. 

I  am  utterly  ashamed,  and  groan  over  my  handwriting. 
It  was  "  Natural  Preservation."     Natural   persecution  is  what 

1  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  VI.,  p.   140. 


172  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  113  the  author  ought  to  suffer.  It  rejoices  me  that  you  do  not 
object  to  the  term.  Hooker  made  the  same  remark  that  it 
ought  to  have  been  "  Variation  and  Natural  Selection."  Yet 
with  domestic  productions,  when  selection  is  spoken  of, 
variation  is  always  implied.  But  I  entirely  agree  with  your 
and  Hooker's  remark. 

Have  you  begun  regularly  to  write  your  book  on  the 
antiquity  of  man  ?  J 

1  do  not  agree  with  your  remark  that  I  make  Natural 
Selection  do  too  much  work.  You  will  perhaps  reply  that 
every  man  rides  his  hobby-horse  to  death  ;  and  that  I  am  in 
the  galloping  state. 

L«"er  114  To  C.  Lyell. 

15,   Marine  Parade,  Eastbourne,  Friday  5th  [Oct.,   1S60]. 

I  have  two  notes  to  thank  you  for,  and  I  return 
Wollaston.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  rather  strange  that 
Forbes,  Wollaston  and  Co.  should  argue,  from  the  presence 
of  allied,  and  not  identical  species  in  islands,  for  the  former 
continuity  of  land. 

They  argue,  I  suppose,  from  the  species  being  allied  in 
different  regions  of  the  same  continent,  though  specifically 
distinct.  But  I  think  one  might  on  the  creative  doctrine 
argue  with  ecpjal  force  in  a  directly  reverse  manner,  and  say 
that,  as  species  are  so  often  markedly  distinct,  yet  allied,  on 
islands,  all  our  continents  existed  as  islands  first,  and  their 
inhabitants  were  first  created  on  these  islands,  and  since 
became  mingled  together,  so  as  not  to  be  so  distinct  as  they 
now  generally  are  on  islands. 

loiter  115  To  H.  G.  Bronn. 

Down,  Oct.  5th  [i860]. 
I  ought  to  apologise  for  troubling  you,  but  I  have  at  last 
carefully  read  your  excellent  criticisms  on  my  book.2  I 
agree  with  much  of  them,  and  wholly  with  your  final 
sentence.  The  objections  and  difficulties  which  may  be 
urged  against  my  view  are  indeed  heavy  enough  almost  to 
break  my  back,  but  it  is  not  yet  broken  !     You  put  very  well 

1  Published  in   1863. 

'  Bronn  added  critical    remarks   to  his   German    translation   of  the 
Origin:  see  Life  and  Lc  Iters,  II.,  p.  279. 


1859— 1863]  GERMAN     TRANSLATION  1 73 

and  very  fairly  that  I  can  in  no  one  instance  explain  the  Letter  US 
course  of  modification  in  any  particular  instance.  I  could 
make  some  sort  of  answer  to  your  case  of  the  two  rats  ;  and 
might  I  not  turn  round  and  ask  him  who  believes  in  the 
separate  creation  of  each  species,  why  one  rat  has  a  longer 
tail  or  shorter  ears  than  another  ?  I  presume  that  most 
people  would  say  that  these  characters  were  of  some  use,  or 
stood  in  some  connection  with  other  parts  ;  and  if  so,  Natural 
Selection  would  act  on  them.  But  as  you  put  the  case,  it 
tells  well  against  me.  You  argue  most  justly  against  my 
question,  whether  the  many  species  were  created  as  eggs  l  or 
as  mature,  etc.  I  certainly  had  no  right  to  ask  that  question. 
I  fully  agree  that  there  might  have  been  as  well  a  hundred 
thousand  creations  as  eight  or  ten,  or  only  one.  But  then,  on 
the  view  of  eight  or  ten  creations  {i.e.  as  many  as  there  are 
distinct  types  of  structure)  we  can  on  my  view  understand 
the  homological  and  embryological  resemblance  of  all  the 
organisms  of  each  type,  and  on  this  ground  almost  alone  I 
disbelieve  in  the  innumerable  acts  of  creation.  There  are 
only  two  points  on  which  I  think  you  have  misunderstood 
me.  I  refer  only  to  one  Glacial  period  as  affecting  the 
distribution  of  organic  beings  ;  I  did  not  wish  even  to  allude 
to  the  doubtful  evidence  of  glacial  action  in  the  Permian  and 
Carboniferous  periods.  Secondly,  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
process  of  development  has  always  been  carried  on  at  the 
same  rate  in  all  different  parts  -of  the  world.  Australia  is 
opposed  to  such  belief.  The  nearly  contemporaneous  equal 
development  in  past  periods  I  attribute  to  the  slow  migration 
of  the  higher  and  more  dominant  forms  over  the  whole 
world,  and  not  to  independent  acts  of  development  in  different 
parts.  Lastly,  permit  me  to  add  that  I  cannot  see  the  force 
of  your  objection,  that  nothing  is  effected  until  the  origin  of 
life  is  explained  :  surely  it  is  worth  while  to  attempt  to 
follow  out  the  action  of  electricity,  though  we  know  not 
what  electricity  is. 

If  you  should  at  any  time  do  me  the  favour  of  writing  to 
me,  I  should  be  very  much  obliged  if  you  would  inform  me 
whether  you  have  yourself  examined  Brehm's  subspecies  of 
birds  ;   for  I   have   looked   through  some  of  his  writings,  but 

1  See  Letter  110,  p.  163. 


174  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  115  have  never  met  an  ornithologist  who  believed  in  his  [illegible]. 
Are  these  subspecies  really  characteristic  of  certain  different 
regions  of  Germany? 

Should  you  write,  I  should   much   like  to  know  how  the 
German  edition  sells. 

Letter   1.6  To    J.    S.    Neiislow. 

Oct.  26th  [i860]. 

Many  thanks  for  your  note  and   for  all  the  trouble  about 

the  seeds,  which  will  be  most  useful  to  me  next  spring.     On 

my  return  home  I  will  send  the  shillings.1     I  concluded  that 

Dr.  Bree  had   blundered  about  the  Celts.     I  care  not  for  his 

dull,  unvarying  abuse  of  me,  and  singular  misrepresentation. 

But  at  p.   244    he  in  fact  doubts  my  deliberate  word,   and 

that  is  the  act  of  a  man  who  has  not  the  soul  of  a  gentleman 

in    him.     Kingsley  is    "the  celebrated    author  and  divine"2 

whose  striking  sentence  I    give  in  the  second  edition   with 

his  permission.     I  did  not  choose  to  ask  him  to  let  me  use 

his    name,   and   as    he  did    not    volunteer,   I    had   of  course 

no  choice.3 


1  Shillings  for  the  little  girls  in  Henslow's  parish  who  collected  seeds 
for  Darwin. 

1  Species  not  Transmutable,  by  C.  R.  Bree.  After  quoting  from  the 
Origin,  Ed.  II.,  p.  481,  the  words  in  which  a  celebrated  author  and  divine 
confesses  that  "  he  has  gradually  learnt  to  see  that  it  is  just  as  noble  a 
conception  of  the  Deity  to  believe  that  He  created  a  few  original  forms, 
etc.,"  Dr.  Bree  goes  on  :  "I  think  we  ought  to  have  had  the  name  of 
this  divine  given  with  this  remarkable  statement.  I  confess  that  I  have 
not  yet  fully  made  up  my  mind  that  any  divine  could  have  ever  penned 
lines  so  fatal  to  the  truths  he  is  called  upon  to  teach." 

3  We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  G.  W.  Prothero  for  calling  our  attention  to 
the  following  striking  passage  from  the  works  of  a  divine  of  this  period  : — 
"Just  a  similar  scepticism  has  been  evinced  by  nearly  all  the  first 
physiologists  of  the  day,  who  have  joined  in  rejecting  the  development 
theories  of  Lamarck  and  the  Vestiges.  .  .  .  Yet  it  is  now  acknowledged 
under  the  high  sanction  of  the  name  of  Owen  that '  creation'  is  only  another 
name  for  our  ignorance  of  the  mode  of  production  .  .  .  while  a  work  has 
now  appeared  by  a  naturalist  of  the  most  acknowledged  authority, 
Mr.  Darwin's  masterly  volume  on  the  Origin  of  Species,  by  the  law 
of  'natural  selection,'  which  now  substantiates  on  undeniable  grounds 
the  very  principle  so  long  denounced  by  the  first  naturalists— the  origina- 
tion of  new  species  by  natural  causes  :  a  work  which  must  soon  bring 
about  an  entire  revolution  of  opinion  in  favour  of  the  grand  principle  of 


1859-1863]  AN  ST  ED  I75 

Dr.  Freke  has  sent  me  his  paper,  which  is  far  beyond  my  Letter  116 
scope — something  like  the  capital  quiz  in  the  Anti-Jacobin  on 
my  grandfather,  which  was  quoted  in  the  Quarterly  Review. 

To  D.  T.  Ansted.1  Letter  117 

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,  Oct.  27th  [1S60]. 

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  re- 
viewers, 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. 

the  self-evolving  powers  of  nature."— Prof.  Baden  Powell's  "Study  of 
the  Evidences  of  Christianity,"  Essays  and  Reviews,  7th  edit.,  1861 
(PP-  138,  139). 

1  David  Thomas  Ansted,  F.R.S.  (1814-80),  Fellow  of  Jesus  College, 
Cambridge,  Professor  of  Geology  at  King's  College,  London,  author  of 
several  papers  and  books  on  geological  subjects  (see  Quart.  Journ.  Geo/. 
Soc,  Vol.  XXXVII.,  p.  43). 


176  EVOLUTION  [Chap.III 

Letter  118  To  H.  W.  Bates.1 

Down,  Nov.  22nd  [i860]. 
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,2  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 — VVestwood,  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 

1  Henry  Walter  Bates  (1825-92)  was  born  at  Leicester,  and  after  an 
apprenticeship  in  a  hosiery  business  he  became  a  clerk  in  Allsopp's 
brewery.  He  did  not  remain  long  in  this  uncongenial  position,  for  in 
1848  he  embarked  for  Par£  with  Mr.  Wallace,  whose  acquaintance  he 
had  made  at  Leicester  some  years  previously.  Mr.  Wallace  left  Brazil 
after  four  years'  sojourn,  and  Bates  remained  for  seven  more  years.  He 
suffered  much  ill-health  and  privation,  but  in  spite  of  adverse  circum- 
stances he  worked  unceasingly  :  witness  the  fact  that  his  collection  of 
insects  numbered  14,000  specimens.  He  became  Assistant  Secretary  to 
the  Royal  Geographical  Society  in  1864,  a  post  which  he  filled  up  to  the 
time  of  his  death  in  1892.  In  Mr.  Clodd's  interesting  memoir  prefixed 
to  his  edition  of  the  Naturalist  on  the  Amazons,  1892,  the  editor  pays  a 
warm  and  well-weighed  tribute  to  Mr.  Bates's  honourable  and  lovable 
personal  character.     See  also  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  3S0. 

*  For  an  opposite  opinion,  see  Letter  13,  p.  39. 


1859—1863]  NATURAL     HISTORY    REVIEW  177 

between  the  different  kinds  of  varieties,  representative  species,  Letter  118 
etc.  Perhaps  I  shall  find  some  facts  in  your  paper  on  inter- 
mediate 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  ; l  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? 
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,  p.  241  (please  look  at  the 
passage). 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  119 

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 
i860.     The  new  series  came  to  an  end  in  1865. 

Down,  Jan.  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.3      What    a 

1  Probably  a  paper  by  Bates  entitled  "  Contributions  to  an  Insect 
Fauna  of  the  Amazon  Valley"  {Trans.  Entomol.  Soc,  Vol.  V.,  p.  335, 
1858-61). 

2  Third  Edition,   March,   1861. 

3  The  "Brain  article"  of  Huxley  bore  the  title  "On  the  Zoological 
Relations  of  Man  with  the  Lower  Animals,"  and  appeared  in  No.  1,  Jan. 

12 


17S  I-.VOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  1 19  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.1  M'Donnell,  of  course,  pleases  me  greatly.  Rut  I 
am  very  s  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  reasoncr  "  !  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  (p.  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  Aptcryx  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  ! 2 

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. 


1861,  p.  67.  It  was  Mr.  Huxley's  vindication  of  the  unqualified  contra- 
diction ,iven  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, 
Vol.  II.,  1857,  p.  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  Maris  Place  in  Nature,  p.  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." 

1  Sir  John  Lubbock's  paper  was  a  review  of  Leydig  on  the  Daphniidas. 
M'Donnell's  was  "On  the  Homologies  of  the  Electric  Organ  of  the 
Torpedo,"  afterwards  used  in  the  Origin  (see  Ed.  VI.,  p.  150). 

3  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,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  xvii. 


1S59-1863]  POLAR    BEAR  179 

To  James  Lamont.  Letter  120 

Down,  Feb.  25th  [1861]. 

I  am  extremely  much  obliged  for  your  very  kind  present 
of  your  beautiful  work,  Seasons  with  the  Sea-Horses ;" IJ  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  I  shall  find  much  interesting  from  so 
careful  and  acute  an   observer  as  yourself. 

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.2  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. 

1  Seasons  with  the  Sea- Horses ;  or,  Sporting  Adventures  in  the 
Nor/hern  Seas.  London,  186 1.  Mr.  Lamont  {Joe.  eit.,  p.  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.,  p.  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  cheer- 
fully 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." 

a  "  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,  Ed.  vi.,  p.  141.     See  Letter  no,  p.  162. 


180  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  121  To  W.  B.  Tcgctmeier. 

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.,  pp.  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  [1S61]. 

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  convey- 
ance 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 


i8s9-i86j]  HATES  l8l 

from  you.  There  will  be  little  new,  except  that  perhaps  I  Letter  121 
have  consulted  some  out-of-the-way  books,  and  have  corre- 
sponded 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,  p.  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. 

To  H.  W.  Bates.  Letter  122 

Down,  March  26th  [1861]. 
I  have  read  your  papers  l  with  extreme  interest,  and  I 
have  carefully  read  every  word  of  them.  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  2  case  seems  in  some  degree 

1  "  Contributions  to  an  Insect  Fauna  of  the  Amazon  Valley."  (Read 
March  5th  and  Nov.  24th,  1S60).  Entomological  Soc.  Trans.  V., 
pp.  223  and  335. 

8  Mr.  Bates  (p.  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." 


lS2  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letts  122  analogous,  as  far  as  plants  arc  concerned,  with  the  modern 
plains  of  La  Plata,  which  seem  to  have  been  colonised  from 
the  north,  but  the  species  have  been  hardly  modified. 

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  inter- 
mediate 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. 

Letter  123  To  H.  W.  Bates. 

Down,  Avvil  4th  [1861]. 

I  have  been  unwell,  so  have  delayed  thanking  you  for 
your  admirable  letter.  I  hope  you  will  not  think  me  pre- 
sumptuous 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 
sec  their  bearing  on  variation  under  domestication. 

Hardly  anything  in  your  letter  has  pleased  me  more  than 


1859—1863]  button's   review  183 

about  sexual  selection.  In  my  larger  MS.  (and  indeed  in  the  Letter  123 
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.  Sprengel1  — 
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. 

To  F.  W.   Hutton.2  Letter  124 

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?  and  at  the  same 
time  to  express  my  opinion  that  you  have  done  the  sub- 
ject   a    real    service    by    the    highly    original,    striking,    and 

1  Christian  Konrad  Sprengel  (1750-1816)  was  for  a  time  Rector  of 
Spandau,  near  Berlin  ;  but  his  enthusiasm  for  Botany  led  to  neglect 
of  parochial  duties,  and  to  dismissal  from  his  living.  His  well-known 
work,  Das  Entdeckte  Geheimniss  der  Natur,  was  published  in  1793.  An 
account  of  Sprengel  was  published  in  Flora,  1819,  by  one  of  his  old 
pupils.  See  also  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  p.  90,  and  an  article  in  Natural 
Science,  Vol.  II.,  1893,  by  J.  C.  Willis. 

2  Frederick  Wollaston  Hutton,  F.R.S.,  formerly  Curator  of  the  Can- 
terbury Museum,  Christchurch,  New  Zealand,  author  of  Darwinism  and 
Lamarckism,  Old  and  New,  London,  1899. 

3  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.,  p.  362).  The  review  appeared  in  The  Geologist 
(afterwards  known  as  The  Geological  Magazine}  for  1861,  pp.  132-6 
and  183-8.  A  letter  on  "  Difficulties  of  Darwinism"  is  published  in  the 
same  volume  of  The  Geologist,  p.  286. 


J84  KVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  124  condensed  manner  with  which  yon  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  1  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  sec  this.  I  generally  throw  in  their  teeth  the  univer- 
sally 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 
1  am  deeply  interested  in  the  subject  (and  I  hope  not  exclu- 
sively 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. 

Letter  125  To  J.   D.  Hooker.1 

Down,  [Ap.]  23rd,  [1S61]. 
I  have  been  much  interested  by  Bentham's  paper2  in 
the  Natural  History  Review,  but  it  would  not,  of  course, 
from  familiarity,  strike  you  as  it  did  me.  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  al  the  Linnean 
Society,  and  had  some  talk  with  him  and  Lubbock  and 
Edgeworth,  Wallich,  and  several   others.      I   asked   Bentham 

1  Parts  of  this  letter  are  published  in  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  362. 

2  This  refers  to  Bentham's  paper "  On  the  Species  and  Genera  of 
Hants,  etc.,"  Nat.  Hist.  Review,  April,  1861,  p.  133,  which  is  founded  on, 
or  extracted  from,  a  paper  read  before  the  Linn.  Soc,  Nov.  15th,  1858.  It 
had  been  originally  set  down  to  be  read  on  July  isl,  1858,  but  gave  way  to 
the  papers  of  Darwin  and  Wallace.  Mr.  Bentham  has  described  {Life  and 
Letters,  II.,  p.  294)  how  he  reluctantly  cancelled  the  parts  urging  "original 
fixity"  of  specific  type,  and  the  remainder  seems  not  to  have  been  pub- 
lished except  in  the  above-quoted  paper  in  the  Nat.  Hist.  Review. 


i859—  1 863]  EDINBURGH    REVIEW  1 85 

to  give  us  his  ideas  of  species  ;  whether  partially  with  us  or  Letter  125 

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."1      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,2  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)3  on   his  work  in    France  :   he  seems  to  have  done 

1  See  Nat.  Hist.  Review,  1S61,  p.  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,  p.  117)  as  part  of  the  crushing  refutation  of  Owen's  position. 
Mr.  Huxley's  letter  referred  to  above  is  no  doubt  that  in  the  Athenaum, 
April  13th,  1861,  p.  498  ;  it  is  certainly  severe,  but  to  those  who  know  Mr. 
Huxley's  "  Succinct  History  of  the  Controversy,"  etc.  (Maris  Place  in 
Nature,  p.  113),  it  will  not  seem  too  severe. 

2  This  is  the  only  instance,  with  which  we  are  acquainted,  of  Owen's 
acknowledging  the  authorship  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  article. 

3  Mr.  Darwin  often  spoke  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  tendency  to  take 
curious  attitudes  when  excited. 


l86  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Lettei  125  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  Atkenceum.  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  Atkenceum  and  Gardeners' 
C/ironie/e,  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'  Clironicle. 

Letter  126  To  J.  L.  A.  de  Quatrefages.1 

Down,  April  25  [1861]. 

I  received  this  morning  your  Unite  de  FEspece  Humaine 
[published  in  1861],  and  most  sincerely  do  I  thank  you  for 
this  your  very  kind  present.  I  had  heard  of  and  been  recom- 
mended 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  men- 

1  Jean  Louis  Armancl  de  Quatrefages  de  Breau  (1810-92)  was  a  scion 
of  an  ancient  family  originally  settled  at  Breau,  in  the  Cevennes.  His 
work  was  largely  anthropological,  and  in  his  writings  and  lectures 
he  always  combated  evolutionary  ideas.  Nevertheless  he  had  a  strong 
personal  respect  for  Darwin,  and  was  active  in  obtaining  his  election  at 
the  Institut.  For  details  of  his  life  and  work  see  A  la  Mhnoire  de 
/.  L.  A.  de  Ouatrefages  de  Brian,  4",  Paris  (privately  printed);  also 
L Anthropologic,  III.,  1892,  p.  2. 


1859-1863]  CHILLINGHAM     CATTLE  1 87 

tinned  my  work  several  limes.  My  views  spread  slowly  in  Letter  126 
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  argu- 
ments 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,1  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 
writer2  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. 

To  L.  Hindmarsh.  Letter  127 

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.,  Vol.  II., 

p.  274,  1839. 

Down,   May   12th  [1861]. 

I  thank  you  sincerely  for  your  prompt  and  great  kind- 
ness, and  return   the   letter,  which    1    have  been  very  glad   to 

1  Naudin's  paper  {Revue  Horticole,  1852)  is  mentioned  in  the  "  Historical 
Sketch"  prefixed  to  the  later  editions  of  the  Origin  (Ed.  VI.,  p.  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., 
p.  246,  Darwin,  speaking  of  Naudin's  work,  says  :  "  Decaisne  seems  to 
think  he  gives  my  whole  theory." 

'  The  obscure  writer  is  Patrick  Matthew  (see  the  "  Historical  Sketch1' 
in  the  Origin). 


1 88  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  127  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  agriculturalist. 

Letter  128  /  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

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

Down,   May  24th  [1S61]. 

Thanks  for  your  two  notes.  I  am  glad  that  the  burial 
is  over,  and  sincerely  sympathise  and  can  most  fully  under- 
stand 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,  1  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  duly  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, 


Professor  IIensi.i 


1859-1863]  J.    S.    MILL  189 

I  should  think,  would  make  it  very  difficult  for  any  one  to  Letter  128 
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,1  who 
is  often  associated  with  my  recollection  of  those  old  happy 
days. 

Henry  Fawcett2  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  129 

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  1  began  to  think  that  perhaps  I  did  not  understand 
at  all  how  to  reason  scientifically "  {Life  of  Henry  Fawcett,  by  Leslie 
Stephen,  1SS5,  p.  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  Macniillans  Alagazine. 

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 

1  The  Rev.  Leonard  Jenyns  (afterwards  Blomefield)  undertook  the 
Life  of  Henslow,  to  which  Darwin  contributed  a  characteristic  and 
delightful  sketch.     See  Letter  17. 

3  Henry  Fawcett  (1833-84),  Professor  of  Political  Economy  at 
Cambridge,  1863,  Postmaster-General  18S0-84.  See  Leslie  Stephen's 
well-known  Life. 


icp  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  129  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. 

Letter  130  To  C.   Lyell. 

2,  1  k'sketh  Terrace,  Torquay  (Aug.  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  arc  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  lowncss  of  organisation 
in  which  sexuality  occurs — viz.,  in  Hydra,  and  still  lower  in 
some  of  the  one-celled  free  conferva;  which  "conjugate," 
which  good  judges  (Thwaitcs)  believe  is  the  simplest  form  of 
true  sexual  generation?1     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?   has    a    sentence   with 

1  See  Letter  97. 

3  Physical  Geography  of  the  Globe,  by  Sir  John  F.  W.  Herschel,  Edin- 
burgh, 1861.  On  p.  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 


1S59 — 1S63]  HERSCIIEL  191 

respect  to  the  Origin,  something  to  the  effect  that  the  Letter  130 
higher  l;iw  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  arc  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 

m 

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  entrance)  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  diver- 
gence, 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  -43. 


192  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  130  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  1  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 
Ilerschel  would  say  that  you  ought  always  to  give  tin- 
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. 

Letter  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,"  '  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, 

1  See  Letter  105,  note  I. 


1859-1863]  mutton's   review  193 

exactly  where   that  stone  or   leaf  should   lie.      In  this   sense  Letter  131 
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. 

To  C.  Lyell.  Letter  132 

The  first  paragraph  probably  refers  to  the  proof-sheets  of  Lyell's 
A)itiquity  of  Man,  but  the  passage  referred  to  seems  not  to  occur  in  the 
book. 

Torquay,  Aug.  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.1  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  ;  1  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  im- 
provement ;  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  precon- 
ceived 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 

1  "Some  Remarks  on  Mr.  Darwin's  Theory,"  by  F.  W.  Hutton. 
Geologist,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  132  (1861).     See  Letter  124. 

13 


194  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  132  by  an  intelligent  cause  ?  "  l     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. 

Letter  133  To  Henry  Fawcett. 

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. 

Sept.  18th  [1861]. 

I  wondered  who  had  so  kindly  sent  me  the  newspaper,2 
which  I  was  very  glad  to  see  ;  and  now  I  have  to  thank  you 

1  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.,  p.  60). 

''  The  newspaper  sent  was  the  Manchester  Examiner  for  September 
9th,   1861,    containing  a  report  of  Mr.  Fawcett's  address  given  before 


1859—  '863]  FAWCETTS    ADDRESS  195 

sincerely  for  allowing  me  to  see  your  MS.  It  seems  to  me  Letter  133 
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 

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.  Lankcster'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 
scientific  one. 


196  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  133  me,  observing  is  much  better  sport  than  writing.     1  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  !  Rut 
I  must  not  run  on. 

Letter  134  To  H.  W.  Bates. 

Down,  Sept.  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  Rcvien>}  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  Volucella2  of  which  I  had  never 
heard.  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 

1  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  i860,  p.  525. 

'  Volucella  is  a  fly — one  of  the  Syrphider — 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,  p.  500]:  "  It  was  formerly  assumed  that  the  Volucella  larvae  lived 
on  the  larvre  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  /  'olucella  in  the  nests  is  advantageous  to  both  fly  and  bee." 


1859-1863]  BATES  197 

been  taken  about  slave-ants  in  the  Origin  than  of  any  other  Letter  134 
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  resem- 
blances !  You  will  make  quite  a  new  subject  of  it.  I  had 
thought  of  such  cases  as  a  difficulty;  and  once,  when  corre- 
sponding with  Dr.  Collingwood,  I  thought  of  your  explanation!; 
but  I  drove  it  from  my  mind,  for  I  felt  that  I  had  not  know- 
ledge 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. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  135 

Down,    Match   1 8th  [1862]. 

Your  letter  discusses  lots  of  interesting  subjects,  and  I  am 
very  glad  you  have  sent  for  your  letter  to  Bates.1  What  do 
you  mean  by  "individual  plants"?2  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  have3  got  cases 
of  slight   change   in   alpine  plants    transplanted.      All    these 

1  Published  in  Mr.  Clodd's  memoir  of  Bates  in  the  Naturalist  on  the 
Amazons,  1892,  p.  1. 

2  In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Darwin  dated  March  17th,  1862,  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker 
had  discussed  a  supposed  difference  between  animals  and  plants,  "  inas- 
much 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." 

3  See  note  1,  Letter  16. 


198  EVOLUTION  [Chat-.  Ill 

Letter  135  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  indepen- 
dent of  physical  conditions  "  !  This  is  a  very  simple  way  of 
putting  the  case  (as  Dr.  Prosper  Lucas1  also  puts  it);  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.2 

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,"*  I  did  not  write  without 
going  pretty  carefully  into  all  the  cases  of  normal  structure 
in  animals  resembling  monstrosities  which  appear  per  saltus. 

1  Prosper  Lucas,  the  author  of  Traite  philosophique  et  physiologique 
de  Vhertditi  naturelle  dans  les  c'tats  de  sante  et  de  maladic  du  systems 
nerveux:  2  vols.,  Paris,  1S47-50. 

2  This  statement  probably  occurs  in  a  letter,  and  not  in  Darwin's 
published  works. 

3  Sir  Joseph  had  written,  March  1 7th,  1 862 :  "  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.,  p.  275,  also  letter  no,  p.  166. 


i859— 1863]  VARIATION  199 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  136 

26th  [March,  1S62]. 

Thanks  also  for  your  own1  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." 2  I  suppose  you  do  not  agree  with  or  do  not 
remember  my  doctrine  of  the  good  of  diversification  3 ;  this 
seems  to  me  amply  to  account  for  variation  being  centrifugal 
— if  you  forget  it,  look  at  this  discussion  (p.  117  of  3rd  £dit.), 
it  was  the  best  point  which,  according  to  my  notions,  I  made 
out,  and  it  has  always  pleased  me.  It  is  really  curiously  satis- 
factory 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.1     By  the   way,  I   always  boast  to  you,  and  so  I 

1  See  note  1  in  Letter  135. 

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,  p.  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  {Joe.  cit.,  p.  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. 

3  Darwin  usually  used  the  word  "divergence"  in  this  connection. 

1  This  refers  to  a  very  interesting  passage  in  Hooker's  letter  to  Bates 
{Joe.  cit.,  p.  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 


2CO  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  136  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  ignca  ; 
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. 

Letter  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 
1  limalayan  (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  igno- 
rance whether  insects  change  quickly  in  time ;  you  could 
judge  of  this  by  knowing   how  far  closely  allied   coleoptera 

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." 


1859—1863]  FRENCH     TRANSLATION  201 

generally  have  much  restricted  ranges,  for  this  almost  implies  Letter  137 
rapid  change.  What  a  curious  case  is  offered  by  land-shells, 
which  become  modified  in  every  sub-district,  and  have  yet  re- 
tained 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. 

To  J.  L.  A.  de  Quatrefages.  Letter  ,3g 

Down,  July   nth  [1S62]. 

I  thank  you  cordially  for  so  kindly  and  promptly  answer- 
ing 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 


202  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  138  differ  to  a  considerable  degree.  I  have  been  atrociously 
abused  by  my  religious  countrymen  ;  but  as  I  live  an  inde- 
pendent 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 1  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. 

Letter  139  To  Asa  Gray. 

Down,  July  23rd  [1S62]. 

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  arc  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 

1  Mdlle.  Royer,  who  translated  the  first  French  edition  of  the  Origin. 


1859—1863]  OWEN  203 

about  Bentham   and  the  orchids   and  species.     But  I  must  Letter  139 
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  evenine. 
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 ! 

To  C.   Lyell.  Letter  140 

1,  Carlton  Terrace,  Southampton,  Aug.  22nd  [1S62]. 
You  say  that  the  Bishop  and  Owen  will  be  down  on  you  1 : 
the  latter  hardly  can,  for  1  was  assured  that  Owen,  in  his 
lectures  this  spring,  advanced  as  a  new  idea  that  wingless 
birds  had  lost  their  wings  by  disuse.2  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  ! 

1  This  refers  to  the  Antiquity  of  Man,  which  was  published  in  1863. 
•  The  first  paragraph  of  this  letter  was  published  in  Life  ami  Letters, 
U-,  PP-387,  388. 


204  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter   141 

To  John  Lubbock  (Lord  Avebury). 

Cliff  Cottage,  Bournemouth,  Sept.  5th  [1862]. 

Many  thanks  for  your  pleasant  note  in  return  for  all 
my  stupid  trouble.  I  did  not  fully  appreciate  your  insect- 
diving  case  '  before  your  last  note,  nor  had  I  any  idea  that 
the  fact  was  new,  though  new  to  me.  It  is  really  very  inter- 
esting. Of  course  you  will  publish  an  account  of  it.  You 
will  then  say  whether  the  insect  can  fly  well  through  the  air.2 
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.3 

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 

1  "  On  two  Aquatic  Hymenoptcra,  one  of  which  uses  its  Wings  in 
Swimming."  By  John  Lubbock.  Trans.  Linn.  Soc,  Vol.  XXIV.,  1864, 
pp.  135-42.  [Read  May  7th,  1863.]  In  this  paper  Lubbock  describes  a 
new  species  of  Polynema — P.  //«/<?//.?— 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  Prestivichia,  lives  under  water,  holds 
its  wings  motionless  and  uses  its  legs  as  oars. 

J  In  describing  the  habits  of  Polynema,  Lubbock  writes,  "  I  was 
unfortunately   unable    to   ascertain    whether    they   could    fly"   (loc.    cit., 

P-  137)- 

3  Man's  Place  in  Nature.     London,  1863. 


1S59 — 1863]  GLACIAL    PERIOD  205 

that  ;  but  the  timid  adders  which  run  away  would  be  saved,  Letter  141 
and  in  time  they  would  never  sting  at  all."     Natural  selection 
of  cowards ! 

H.  Falconer  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  142 

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,  p.  43. 
The  section  dealing  with  the  bearing  of  his  facts  on  Darwin's  views  is 
at  p.  77.  He  insists  strongly  (p.  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  (p.  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., 

Sept.  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  objec- 
tion 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. 


206  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  142  I  met  your  brother  yesterday,  who  tells  me  you  are  coming 
to  town.  1  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  e'claircissemcnt  about  the  Eocene 
monkeys  of  England.  By  a  touch  of  the  conjuring  wand  they 
have  been  metamorphosed — a  la  Darwin — into  Hyracotherian 
pigs.1  Would  you  believe  it  ?  This  even  is  a  gross  blunder. 
They  are  not  pigs. 

Letter  143  To  Hugh  Falconer. 

Down,  Oct.  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  dumb- 
founded, 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,2  which  I  never,  of  course,  could  have  guessed 

1  "  On  the  Hyracotherian  Character  of  the  Lower  Molars  of  the  sup- 
posed Macacus  from  the  Eocene  Sand  of  Kyson,  Suffolk."  Ann.  Mag. 
Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  X.,  1862,  p.  240.  In  this  note  Owen  stated  that  the  teeth 
which  he  had  named  Macacus  {Ann.  Mag.,  1840,  p.  191)  most  probably 
belonged  to  Hyracothcrium  cuniculus.  See  A  Catalogue  of  Britisli 
Fossil  Vertebrata,  A.  S.  Woodward  and  C.  D.  Sherborn,  1890,  under 
Hyracothcrium,  p.  356 ;  also  Zittel's  Handbuch  dcr  PaLcontologie 
Abth.   I.,  Bd.  IV.,  Leipzig,  1891-93,  p.  703. 

2  This  perhaps  refers  to  a  passage  {N.  H.  Review,  1863,  p.  79)  in 


1859—1863]  falconer's  elephants  207 

at  ;  and  imagine  my  still  greater  satisfaction  at  your  ex-  Letter  143 
pressing  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  being  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 
p.  [80]  is  not  applicable  to  my  views,1  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 


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  p.  78  ;  the  bog-elephant  is  mentioned  on  p.  79. 

1  See  Falconer  at  the  bottom  of  p.  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  p.  60,  a  slip  of  the  pen  for 
p.  80. 


2o8  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  143  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  J  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,  1  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  could  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 

1  Falconer,  p.  80  :  "  The  law  of  Phyllotaxis  ...  is  nearly  as  constant 
in  its  manifestation  as  any  of  the  physical  laws  connected  with  the 
material   world." 


1859-1863]  DAWSON  209 

preserved.  Now,  I  can  fancy  you  holding  up  your  hands  Letter  143 
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.1 

I  had  hoped  to  have  called  on  you  on  Monday  evening, 
but  was  quite  knocked  up.  I  saw  Lyell  yesterday  morning, 
lie  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. 

J.  D.   Hooker  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  144 

Royal  Gardens,  Kew,  Nov.  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,2  he  will  not  like  the  letter 
1  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  1  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  sub- 
merged at  once,  and  glacial  action  being  subaerial  and   not 


1  Falconer,  p.  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.  .  .  ." 

3  Sir  J.  William  Dawson,  C.M.G.,  F.R.S.  (1820-99),  was  born  at  Pictou, 
Nova    Scotia,   and    studied    at  Edinburgh    University  in    1841-42.     He 

was  appointed  Principal  of  the  McGill  University,  Montreal,  in  1855, 

a  post  which  he  held  thirty-eight  years.  See  Fifty  Years  of  Work  in 
Canada,  Scientific  ami  Educational,  by  Sir  William  Dawson,   1901. 

14 


2IO  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  144  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. 

[On  the  subject  of  the  above  letter,  see  one  of  earlier  date  by  Sir 
J.  D.  Hooker  (Nov.  2nd,  1S62)  given  in  the  present  work  (Letter  354)  with 
Darwin's 'reply  (Letter  355).] 

Letter  145  To  Hugh  Falconer. 

Down,   Nov.   14th  [1862]. 

I  have  read  your  paper l  with  extreme  interest,  and  1 
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  sentence2  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  th  it  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*  (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 

1  "  On  the  disputed  Affinity  of  the  Mammalian  Genus  Plagiaulax, 
from  the  Purbeck  beds."—  Quart.  Journ.  Gcol.  Soc,  Vol.  XVIII., 
p.  348,  1862. 

8  "  One  of  the  most  accurate  observers  and  original  thinkers  of  our 
time  has  discoursed  with  emphatic  eloquence  on  the  Imperfection  of  the 
Geological  Record." 

3  "  If  Plagiaulax  be  regarded  through  the  medium  of  the  view  advo- 
cated 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  ! " 


1859—1863]  FALCONER  211 

and    tarsal   bones.1      Descent    from    an    intermediate    form,  Utter  145 
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.  1  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,2 
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,  Vol.  VI. 
Botany  (No.  22),  p.  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. 


To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  146 

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. 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  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.1' 

2  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,  p.  101,  in 
Falconer's  paper  "  On  the  American  Fossil  Elephant,"  Nat.  Hist 
Review,  1863.) 


2^12  EVOLUTION  fCnAr.  Ill 

Down,  Nov.  20th  [1862]. 
Letter  146  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.  1  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, 
.-.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  tvhole  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  1 0,000  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 


1859-1S63]  DIRECT  ACTION  213 

every  single  difference  which  we  see  might  have  occurred  Letter  146 
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  agriculturists  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  1  ever  get. 

I  see  plainly  that  WelwitscJria  1  will  be  a  case  of  Barnacles. 

1  Sir  Joseph's  great  paper  on  Welwitschia  mirabilis  was  published  in 
the  Linn.  Soc.  Trans.,  1863. 


214  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  146  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  Kevv,  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. 

Letter  147  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,   24th  [Nov.,   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  varie- 
ties 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.1 

Letter  148  To  H.  W.  Bates. 

Down,  Nov.  25th  [1S62?]. 

I  should    think    it  was    not    necessary  to   get    a    written 

agreement.2     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 

1  This  paragraph  was  published  in  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  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. 

2  Mr.    Bates'  book,  A  Naturalist  on  the  Amazons,   was   published 
in   1863. 


1859-1863]  BATES'    TRAVELS  21$ 

Sir  C.  Lyell  told  mc  he  had  not  any  formal  agreements.  I  Letter  148 
am  heartily  glad  to  hear  that  your  book  is  progressing.  Could 
you  find  mc  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.1  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. 

To   T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  149 

Down,  Dec.  7U1  [1S62]. 
I  was  on  the  point  of  adding  to  an  order  to  Williams 
&  Norgate  for  your  Lectures  2  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.     1  suppose  every  book  nowadays 

1  Mr.  Bates'  paper  on  mimetic  butterflies  was  read  before  the  Linnean 
Society,  Nov.  21st,  1861,  and  published  in  the  Linn.  Soc.  Trans.,  XXIII., 
1862,  p.  495,  under  the  title  of  "Contributions  to  an  Insect  Fauna  of 
the  Amazon  Valley." 

2  A  Course  of  Six  Lectures  to  Working  Men,  published  in  six 
pamphlets  by  Hardvvicke,  and  later  as  a  book.      See  Letter  156. 


2l6  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  149  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  sec  in  the  ConiJiill  Magazine  a  notice  of  a  work 
by  Cohn,  which  apparently  is  important,  on  the  contractile 
tissue  of  plants.1  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.,  p.  151,  line  7  from  top— wetting  feel2  or 
bodies?     (Miss  Henrietta  Darwin's  criticism.) 

1  "Ueber  contractile  Gewebe  im  Pflanzenreiche."  Abhand.  tier 
Schlesischcn  Gesellschaft  fur  vaterldndische  Cultur,  Heft  I.,  1861. 

2  Lecture  VI.,  p.  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." 

The  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  Dec.  7th,   1862. 


1859—1863]  JOHN    SCOTT  217 

Lecture  IV.,  p.  89 — Atavism.  Letter  149 

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. 


To    John    Scott.  Letter   150 

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. 

Short  obituary  notices  of  Scott  appeared  in  the  Journal  of  Botany, 
1880,  p.  224,  and  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Bot.  Soc.  of  Edinburgh, 
Vol.  XIV.,  Nov.  nth,  1880,  p.  160;  but  the  materials  for  a  biographical 
sketch  are  unfortunately  scanty.  John  Scott  (1838-80)  was  the  son 
of  a  farmer,  and  was  born  at  Denholm,'  in  Roxburghshire.  At  four 
years  of  age  he  was  left  an  orphan,  and  was  brought  up  in  his  aunt's 
household. 

He  early  showed  a  love  of  plants,  and  this  was  encouraged  by  his 
cousin,  the  Rev.  James  Duncan.  Scott  told  Darwin  that  he  chose  a 
gardening  life  as  the  best  way  of  following  science  ;  and  this  is  the  more 
remarkable  inasmuch  as  he  was  apprenticed  at  fourteen  years  of  age. 
He  afterwards  (apparently  in  1859)  entered  the  Royal  Botanic  Garden 
at  Edinburgh,  and  became  head  of  the  propagating  department  under 
Mr.  McNab.  His  earliest  publication,  as  far  as  we  are  aware,  is  a  paper 
on  Fern-spores,  read  before  the  Bot.  Soc,  Edinburgh,  on  June  12th,  1862. 
In  the  same  year  he  was  at  work  on  orchids,  and  this  led  to  his  con- 
nection with  Darwin,  to  whom  he  wrote  in  November  1862.  In  1864 
he  got  an  appointment  at  the  Calcutta  .Botanic  Garden,  a  position  he 
owed  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker,  who  was  doubtless  influenced  by  Darwin's 
high  opinion  of  Scott.  It  was  on  his  way  to  India  that  Scott  had, 
we  believe,  his  only  personal  interview  with  Darwin. 

We  are  indebted  to  Sir  George  King  for  the  interesting  notes  given 
below,  which  enable  us  to  form  an  estimate  of  Scott's  personality.  He 
was  evidently  of  a  proud  and  sensitive  nature,  and  that  his  manner  was 
pleasing  and  dignified  appears  from  Darwin's  brief  mention  of  the 
interview.  He  must  have  been  almost  morbidly  modest,  for  Darwin 
wrote  to  Hooker  (Jan.  24th,  1864):  "Remember  my  urgent  wish  to  be 
able  to  send  the  poor  fellow  a  word  of  praise  from  any  one.     I  have  had 


1  The  birthplace  of  the  poet  Leiden,  to  whom  a  monument  has  been 
erected  in  the  public  square  of  the  village. 


218  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

letter  150  hard  work  to  get  him  to  allow  me  to  send  the  \PrimuId\  paper  to  the 
Linn.  Soc,  even  after  it  was  written  out!"  And  this  was  after  the 
obviously  genuine  appreciation  of  the  paper  given  in  Darwin's  letters. 
Sir  George  King  writes : — 

"„He  had  taught  himself  a  little  Latin  and  a  good  deal  of  French, 
and  he  had  read  a  good  deal  of  English  literature.  He  was  certainly 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  self-taught  men  I  ever  met,  and  I  often 
regret  that  I  did  not  see  more  of  him  .  .  .  Scott's  manner  was  shy  and 
modest  almost  to  being  apologetic  ;  and  the  condition  of  nervous  tension 
in  which  he  seemed  to  live  was  indicated  by  frequent  nervous  gestures 
with  his  hands  and  by  the  restless  twisting  of  his  long  beard  in  which 
he  continuously  indulged.  He  was  grave  and  reserved  ;  but  when  he 
became  interested  in  any  matter  he  talked  freely,  although  always 
deliberately,  and  he  was  always  ready  to  defend  his  opinions  with  much 
spirit.  He  had,  moreover,  a  considerable  sense  of  humour.  What 
struck  me  most  about  Scott' was  the  great  acuteness  of  his  powers  of 
observing  natural  phenomena,  and  especially  of  such  as  had  any  bearing 
on  variation,  natural  selection  or  hybridity.  While  most  attentive  to 
the  ordinary  duties  of  the  chief  of  a  large  garden,  Scott  always  con- 
tinued to  find  leisure  for  private  study,  and  especially  for  the  conduct 
of  experiments  in  hybridization.  For  the  latter  his  position  in  the 
Calcutta  garden  afforded  him  many  facilities.  At  the  time  of  his  death 
many  experiments  were  in  hand,  but  his  records  of  these  were  too 
imperfect  to  admit  of  their  being  taken  up  and  continued  after  his 
death.  In  temper  Scott  was  most  gentle  and  loveable,  and  to  his 
friends  he  was  loyal  almost  to  a  fault.  He  was  quite  without  ambition 
to  '  get  on '  in  the  world  ;  he  had  no  low  or  mean  motives  ;  and  than 
John  Scott,  Natural  Science  probably  had  no  more  earnest  and  single- 
minded  devotee."  ri862?l 

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  Kcw 
and  a  very  good  observer,  is  going  at  my  suggestion  to  work 
varieties  of  hollyhock.1  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 

1  Althcca  sp.     These  experiments  seem  not  to  have  been  carried  out. 


1859—1863]  BOTANICAL    EXPERIMENTS  2  19 

some  [plants].  On  the  same  principle  it  would  be  well  to  test  Letter  150 
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*  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).-  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  3  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  \Aquikgia\  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  com- 
paratively 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.  1  believe  hardly  any  primulas  have  ever  been  crossed.  If 
we  knew  and  could  get  the  parent  of  the  carnation,4  it  would 
be  very  good  for  this  end.  Any  member  of  the  Lythracea? 
raised  from  seed  ought  to  be  well  looked  after  for  dimorphism. 
I  have  wonderful  facts,  the  result  of  experiment,  on  Lytlirum 
salicaria. 

To   John    Scott.  Letter   151 

Down,  Dec.    nth  [1S62]. 

I  have  read  your  paper5  with  much  interest.     You  ask  for 
remarks  on  the  matter,  which  is  alone  really  important.    Shall 

1  See  Variation  of  Animals  ami  Plants,  Ed.  I.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  70. 

2  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  238. 

3  The  species  on  which  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  wrote   in  the  Gardeners' 
Chronicle,  Feb.  25th,  i860.     See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  275. 

4  Dianthus  caryophyllus,  garden  variety. 

"On  the  Nature  and   Peculiarities  of  the  Fern-spore."    Bot.  So,. 
Edin.     Read  June  12th,  1862. 


220  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  151  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  import- 
ance 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  con- 
densed 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 

1  Scott  {op.  cit.,  p.  214)  :  "The  reproductive  organs  of  phcenogams, 
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,  i860,  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 
(Dec.  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,  p.  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  pro- 
pagated proceeds  from  two  organisms  of  different  sexes  and  different 
makes  and  temperaments,  and,  as  the  offspring  is  to  be  either  of  one  sex 


1859— 1863]  BOTANICAL    EXPERIMENTS  221 

to  me.  But  I  cannot  avoid  thinking  that  there  is  something  Letter  151 
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?1  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  Linuiu  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  race- 
horse. 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 

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." 

1  It  seems  probable  that  Darwin  here  means  vegetative  reproduction. 


222  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  151  Verbascum  or  on  maize  (see  the  Origin),  such  experiments 
would  be  pre-eminently  important.  I  could  never  get  varia- 
tions of  Verbascum.  I  could  suggest  an  experiment  on  potatoes 
analogous  with  the  case  of  Passiflora  ;  even  the  case  of  Passi- 
flora,  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. 

Letter  152  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  1 2th  [Dec,   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  1  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  cor- 
relative, 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  pigeons1 
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   Lythnim  you  will    see  how  pollen   can   be 


1  See  Letter  146. 


1S59-1S6.il  TEGETMEIEU  223 

modified  merely  to  favour  crossing;  with  equal   readiness  it  Letter  152 
could  be  modified  to  prevent  crossing. 

It  is  this  which  makes  me  so  much  interested  with 
dimorphism,  etc.1 

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  Linn  can  Society. 

To  W.  B.  Tegetmeier.  Letter  153 

The  following  letter  also  bears  on  the  question  of  the  artificial 
production  of  sterility. 

Down,  27th  [Dec,  1S62]. 

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  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 

1  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.,  p.  296.  His  point  of  view  that  sterility  is  a  selected  quality  is 
again  given  in  a  letter  to  Huxley  {Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  384),  but 
was  not  upheld  in  his  later  writings  (see  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  245). 
The  idea  of  sterility  being  a  selected  quality  is  interesting  in  connection 
with  Romanes'  theory  of  physiological  selection.     (See  Letters  209-214.) 


224  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  153  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,  c)  to  the  offspring 
of  B  (viz.,/",  g,  h,  i,  f),  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 


1859—1863]  STERILITY    AND    HYBRIDISM  22$ 

(if  both  had  married  again  and  both  had  children)  would  be  Letter  153 
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. 

To    T.    H.    Hlixley.  Letter   154 

Down,  Dec.  28th  [1862]. 

I  return  enclosed:  if  you  write,  thank  Mr.  Kingsley1  for 
thinking  of  letting  me  see  the  sound  sense  of  an  Eastern 
potentate.  All  that  I  said  about  the  little  book2  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  under- 
stand 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 

1  Kingsley's  letter  to  Huxley,  dated  Dec.  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." 

3  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 


22b  EVOLUTION  [Cum.  Ill 

Letter  154  tried  with  the  faintest  hope  of  success — namely,  to  get,  if 
possible,  a  case  of  two  birds  which  when  paired  were  unpro- 
ductive, 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  tar  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  arc  now  in 
any  slight  degree  sterile ;  which  has  already  been  largely 
tested  :  not  that  I  dispute  the  good  of  re-testing. 

Letter  155  To  Hugh  Falconer. 

The  original  letter  is  dated  "  Dec.  10th,"  but  this  must,  we  think, 
be  a  slip  of  the  pen  for  Jan.  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  Dec.  15th,  and  there- 
fore could  not  have  been  seen  by  Mr.  Darwin  on  Dec.  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.,  p.  389),  but  the  reference 
lie  re  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,  Vol.  II., 
p.  92)  been  driven  to  adopt  the  severe  indictment  contained  in  the  Origin 
of  Species,  Ed.  vi.,  p.  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  (Jan.,  1863)  would  be  amusing  if  the  matter 
were  less  serious.  In  1857  Falconer  described  {Quart,  fourn.  Geol.  Soc, 
XIII.)  a  new  species  of  fossil  elephant  from  America,  to  which  he  gave  the 


1859—1863]  falconer's  elephants  227 

name  Elephas  Columbi,  a  designation  which  was  recognised  and  adopted 
by  Continental  writers.  In  1S58  (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  Paleontology, 
2nd  edit.,  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  edit.  According  to  Falconer 
(p.  46)  no  second  edition  of  Bollaert  had  appeared  at  the  time  of  writing 
(August,  1862),  and  in  the  first  edition  (i860)  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,  Jan.  5th  [1S63]. 
I  finished  your  Elephant  paper1  last  night,  and  you  Lettei .  155 
must  let  me  express  my  admiration  at  it.  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  ; 2  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.3    I  have 

1  "  On  the  American  Fossil  Elephant  of  the  Regions  bordering  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  (E.  Columbi,  Falc),  etc."  Nat.  Hist.  Rev.  1863,  p.  81. 
(Cf.  Letter  to  Lyell.  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  389;  also  Origin,  Ed.  vi., 
p.  306.)     See  Letter  143. 

2  Falconer,  p.  62.     This  passage  is  marked  in  Darwin's  copy. 

3  In  speaking  of  the  characters  of  Mastodon  Andium,  Falconer  refers 
to  a  former  paper  by  himself  (Quart,  fourn.  Geol.  Soc,  Vol.  XIII.  1857, 
p.  313),  in  which  he  called  attention  "to  the  exceptional  character  of 
certain  specimens  of  M.  Andium,  as  if  hesitating  between  [the  groups] 
Tetralophodon  and  Triloplwdon"  (ibid.,  p.  too). 


228  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  155  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.1  It  is 
indeed  a  grand  paper.  I  will  say  nothing  more  about  your 
allflsions  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.  Coin vibi-  made  me.  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  green- 
house L.  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  Linunt  to  the  Linnean 
Society,4  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 

1  In  the  paper  in  the  Nat.  Hist.  Review  (loc.  at.)  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  Afastodon"  (p.  101). 

8  See  Letter  157. 

3  Linum  trigynum. 

4  "  On  the  Existence  of  the  Forms,  and  on  their  reciprocal  Sexual 
Relation,  in  several  species  of  the  genus  Linum. — Journ.  Linn.  Soc, 
Vol.  VII.,  p.  69,   1864. 


1859- 1863]  DIMORPHISM  229 

has  delighted  me,  because  no  group  is  so  isolated  as  Birds.  I  Letter  155 
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  1  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  Melastomacea;.3  I  must  tell 
you  one  fact.  I  counted  9,000  seeds,  one  by  one,  frorr*  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  ? 

To   T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  156 

Down,  Dec.   18th  [1862]. 
I  have  read  Nos.  IV.  and  V.3     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, 

1  Probably  Johann  Andreas  Wagner,  author  of  "  Zur  Feststellung  des 
Artbegriffes,  mit  besonderer  Bezugnahme  auf  die  Ansichten  von  Nathusius, 
Darwin,  Is.  Geoffroy  and  Agassiz,"  Miinchen  Sitzungsb.  (1861),  p.  301, 
and  of  numerous  papers  on  zoological  and  pakeozoological  subjects. 

2  Several  letters  on  the  Melastomacea?  occur  in  our  Botanical  section. 

3  On  our  Knowledge  of  the  Causes  of  the  Phenomena  of  Organie 
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  Nov.  10th,  1S62,  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. 


230  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  '56  «  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  p.    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  !  P.  1111  seems  a  little  too  strong — viz.,  ninety-nine 
out  of  a  hundred,  unless  you  except  plants. 

P.  1 18  :  You  say  the  answer  to  varieties  when  crossed  being 
at  all  sterile  is  "  absolutely  a  negative."  2  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  Kolrcuter  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  state- 
ment ;  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  under- 
lying beds  by  oblique  lines  of  stratification.  A  nice  idea  of 
the  difficulty  of  Geology  your  section  would  give  to  a  working 

1  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.,  p.  3S4. 

3  Huxley,  p.  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." 


1859— 1863]  HUXLEY'S    LECTURES  231 

man  !     Do  show  your  section  to  Ramsay,  and  tell  him  what  Letter  156 
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. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  157 

Down.  [Jan.]  loth  [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.,1  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  1  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  disagree- 
ment, 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? 

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." 

1  See  Letter  156. 


232  EVOLUTION  [CHAr.  Ill 

Letter  157  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  con- 
ditions, 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.  P.  143  : 
ought  not  "  Sanscrit  "  to  be  "  Aryan  "  ?  What  a  capital 
number  the  last  Natural  History  Reviezv  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}  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. 

Letter  158  To  John  Lubbock  [Lord  Avebury]. 

Down,  Jan.  23rd  [1863]. 

I  have  no  criticism,  except  one  sentence  not  perfectly 
smooth.  I  think  your  introductory  remarks  very  striking, 
interesting,  and  novel.2  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 
Meloez  seem  very  good.  You  have  put  the  whole  case  of 
metamorphosis  in  a  new  light ;   I  dare  say  what  you  remark 

1  The  unsigned  review  of  Mr.  Bates'  work  on  mimetic  butterflies 
appeared  in  the  Nat.  Hist.  Review  (1863),  p.  219. 

2  "  On  the  Development  of  Chloeon  (Ephemera)  dimidiatum,  Part  I. 
By  John  Lubbock.  Trans.  Linn.  Soc,  Vol.  XXIV.,  pp.  61-78,  1864  [Read 
Jan.  15th,  1863]. 

3  Sitaris  and  Meloe,  two  genera  of  coleopterous  insects,  are  referred  to 
by  Lubbock  (op.  cit.,  pp.  63-64)  as  "  perhaps  .  .  the  most  remarkable  cases 
.  .  among  the  Coleoptera"  of  curious  and  complicated  metamorphoses. 


1859-1863]  METAMORPHOSIS  233 

about  poverty  of  fresh-water  is  very  true.1  I  think  you  might  Letter  158 
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. 

Letter  159 

To  J.  D.   Hooker. 

Down,  Jan.    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. 

Letter  160 

To  A.  De  Candollc.2 

Down,  Jan.    14th  [1863]. 

I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  sending  me  your  Memoir.3 
I  have  read  it  with  the  liveliest  interest,  as  is  natural  for  me  ; 

1  "  We  cannot  but  be  struck  by  the  poverty  of  the  fresh-water  fauna 
when  compared  with  that  of  the  ocean  "  (op.  at.,  p.  64). 

2  Alphonse  Louis  Pierre  Pyramus  De  Candolle  (1806-93)  was  tne 
son  of  Augustin  Pyramus,  and  succeeded  his  father  as  Professor  of 
Botany  at  Geneva  in  1835.  He  resigned  his  Chair  in  1850,  and  devoted 
himself  to  research  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  At  the  time  of  his  father's 
death,  in  1841,  seven  volumes  of  the  Prodromus  had  appeared  :  Alphonse 
completed  the  seventeenth  volume  in  1873.  In  1855  appeared  his  Gco- 
grapliie  botatrique  raisonm'e,  "  which  was  the  most  important  work  of  his 
life,"  and  if  not  a  precursor,  "  yet  one  of  the  inevitable  foundation-stones  " 
of  modern  evolutionary  principles.  He  also  wrote  Histoirc  des  Savants, 
1873,  and  Phytographie,  1880.  He  was  lavish  of  assistance  to  workers  in 
Botany,  and  was  distinguished  by  a  dignified  and  charming  personality. 
(See  Sir  W.  Thiselton-Dyer's  obituary  in  Nature,  July  20th,  1893,  p.  269.) 

3  Etude  sur  l'Espece  a  l'occasion  d'une  revision  dc  la  Famille  des 
Cupuliferes.   Biblioth.  Univ.  {Arch,  des  Sc.  Phys.  ct  Nat.),  Novembre  1862. 


234  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  160  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  1  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  en- 
couraging 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"2 
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  Solenhofcn  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  I  rariation  under  Domestication. 

Letter  161  To  Horace    Dobcll. 

Down,  Feb.    16th  [1S63]. 

Absence    from    home    and    consequent    idleness   are    the 
causes   that   I   have   not  sooner  thanked    you    for  your  very 

1  See  Letters  47,  48. 

2  See  De  Candolle,  loc.  at.,  p.  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  probablcment." 


i859— 1863]  REGENERATION  235 

kind  present  of  your  Lectures.1  Your  reasoning  seems  quite  Letter  161 
satisfactory  (though  the  subject  is  rather  beyond  my  limit  of 
thought  and  knowledge)  on  the  V.  M.  F.  not  being  "  a  given 
quantity."2  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  "  (p.  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  under- 
rated 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.3  You  refer  to  "White 
on  Regeneration,  etc.,  1785."  I  have  been  to  the  libraries 
of  the  Royal  and  the  Linncan  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  kind- 
ness 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. 

1  On  the  Genus  and  Vestiges  of  Disease,  (London)  1861. 

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., 
p.  41.) 

3  See  Letters  178,  270. 


236  EVOLUTION  [Chap  III 

Letter  162  To  C.   Lyell. 

[Feb.  17th,  1863.] 
The  same  post  that  brought  the  enclosed  brought 
Dana's  pamphlet '  on  the  same  subject  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? 

1   get  on  slowly  with    your   grand  work,  for   I   am  over- 
whelmed with  odds  and  ends   and  letters. 

Letter  163  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

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 

1  James  D wight  Dana  (1S13-95)  published  numerous  works  on 
Geology,  Mineralogy,  and  Zoology.  He  was  awarded  the  Copley  Medal 
by  the  Royal  Society  in  1S77,  and  elected  a  foreign  member  in  1884. 
The  pamphlet  referred  to  was  published  in  Sillimarts  Journal,  Vol.  XXV., 
1863,  pp.  65  and  71,  also  in  the  Annals  and  Magazine  of  Natural 
History,  Vol.  XL,  pp.  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 
psychical  grounds"  (p.  210).     His  description  is  as  follows  : — 

I.  Archontia  (vel  Dipoda)  Man  (alone). 

II.    MF.GASTHENA.  III.    MlCROSTHENA. 

Quadrumana.  Cheiroptera. 

Carnivora.  Insectivora. 

Herbivora.  Rodentia. 

Mutilata.  Bruta  (Edentata). 

IV.    OOTICOIDEA. 

Marsupialia. 
Monotremata. 


1859—1863]  MAN  237 

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  Letter  163 
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?1 

To    T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  164 

Down  [Feb.  ?]  26th,  1863. 
I  have  just  finished  with  very  great  interest  "  Man's 
Place."  -  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  p.  106)  :3  but  my  admiration  is 
unbounded  at  pp.  109  to  112.  I  declare  I  never  in  my  life 
read    anything    grander.       Bacon    himself    could    not    have 

1  According  to  Owen  the  sub-class  Archencephala  contains  only  the 
genus  Homo  :  the  Gyrencephala  contains  both  chimpanzee  and  horse, 
the  Lyencephala  contains  Omithorhynchus. 

2  Evidence  as  /o  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  1863  (preface  dated  January 
1863). 

:i  Huxley,  op.  ci/.,  p.  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. 


238  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

Letter  164  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  '  that  a 
second  thousand  is  called  for  of  the  little  book.  What  a 
letter  that  is  of  Owen's  in  the  Athenmim  ; 8  how  cleverly  he 
will  utterly  muddle  and  confound  the  public.  Indeed  he 
quite  muddled  me,  till  I  read  again  your  "  concise  statement  "  3 
(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!  '     I  am  intensely  curious  to  see  whether  Lyell 

1  This  refers  to  Mr.  Darwin's  daughter  (now  Mrs.  Litchfield),  whom 
Mr.  Huxley  used  to  laugh  at  for  the  severity  of  her  criticisms. 

2  A  letter  by  Owen  in  the  Athcnceum,  Feb.  21st,  1S63,  replying  to 
strictures  on  his  treatment  of  the  brain  question,  which  had  appeared  in 
Lyell's  Antiquity  of  Man. 

3  This  refers  to  a  section  (pp.  1 13-18)  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  indict- 
ment of  Owen,  and  seems  to  us  to  conclude  not  unfittingly  with  a 
citation  from  Huxley's  article  in  the  Medical  Times,  Oct.  nth,  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,  Schrceder  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 
'•r  to  the  present  controversy." 

Owen  in  the  Atliancum,  Feb.  21st,  1863,  admits  that  in  the  brain 


1859-1863]  MAN  239 

will  answer.1     Lyell  has  been,  I  fear,  rather  rash  to  enter  on  a  Letter  164 

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  2 

in  expressing  any  judgment  on  Species  or  [on  the]  origin  of 

Man. 

To   John    Scott.  Letter  165 

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  ^nfths 

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. 

To  J.  D.   Hooker.  Letter  166 

Down,  April  23rd  [1S63]. 

The  more  I  think  of  Falconer's  letter 3  the  more  grieved  I 
am  ;  he  and  Prestwich  (the  latter  at  least  must  owe  much  to 

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." 

1  Lyell's  answer  was  in  the  Athencewn,  March  7th,  1863. 

■  In  the  Antiquity  of  Man  :  see  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  8. 

3  Published  in  the  A/hena-um,  April  4th,  1S63,  p.  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.  Prestwid* 
and  himself.     (See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  19.) 


240  EVOLUTION  [Chak  III 

Letter  166  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-theriuni)  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. 

Letter   167  T°    H"    W'    BateS" 

At  Rev.  C.  Langton,   Hartfield,  Tunbridge  Wells,  April  30th  [1S63]. 

You  will  have  received  before  this  the  note  which  I 
addressed  to  Leicester,  after  finishing  Vol.  I.,  and  you  will 
have  received  copies  of  my  little  review :  of  your  paper. 
....  I  have  now  finished  Vol.  II.,  and  my  opinion 
remains  the  same — that  you  have  written  a  truly  admirable 
work,2  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  ex- 
tremely ;  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  pro- 
spects. 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 

1  Nat.  Hist.  Review,  1863,  p.  219.  A  review  of  Bates'  paper  on 
Mimetic  Butterflies. 

2  The  Naturalist  on  the  Amazons,  1863. 


1859—1863]  LYELL    AND    FALCONER  241 

retired  and  semi-rural  situation.  What  a  grand  ending  you  Letter  167 
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  de- 
scriptions. 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. 

To  J.   D.    Hooker.  Letter  168 

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."  ' 
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. 2  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 

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.,  pp.  11,  13.     See  also  Letter  164,  p.  239. 

2  Falconer  claimed  that  Lyell  had  not  "  done  justice  to  the  part  he  took 
in  resuscitating  the  cave  question."     See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  14. 

16 


242  p:\olution  [Chap,  hi 

Letter  168  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  modifica- 
tion 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,  docs  not  seem  to 
mc  well  to  harmonise  with  your  supposed  view  of  all 
having  formerly  arrived  or  rather  having  been  left  together 
on  the  island. 

Letter  169  To  Asa  Gray. 

Down,  May  31st  [1863?]. 

I  was  very  glad  to  receive  your  review '  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  sud- 
denly 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. 

Letter  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."  2  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  Athenceum  3  on  Heterogeny  !  I  saw  in  his 
Aye-Aye4  paper  (I  think)  that  he  sneers  at  the  manner  in 

1  The  review  on  De  Candolle's  work  on  the  Oaks  (A.  Gray's  Scientific 
Papers,  I.,  p.  130). 

2  Evidence  as  to  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  by  T.  H.  Huxley,  1863. 

3  Athenceum,  March  28th,  1863.     See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  17. 

4  See  Owen  in  the  Trans.  Zool.  Soc,  Vol.  V.  The  sentence  referred 
to  seems  to  be  the  following  (p.  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." 


1859—1863]  LYELL  243 

which  he  supposes  that  we  should  account  for  the  structure  Letter  170 
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.1  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. 

To  C.   Lyell.  Letter  171 

Down,  Aug.  14th  [1S63]. 

Have  you  seen  Bentham's  remarks  on  species  in  his 
address  to  the  Linnean  Society?2  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,3  I  think  it  would 
interest  you.  He  is  second  only  to  Humboldt  in  describing 
a  tropical  forest.4  Talking  of  reading,  I  have  never  got  the 
Edinburgh?  in  which,  I  suppose,  you  are  cut  up. 

1  LyelPs  Antiquity  of  Man.     See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  1 1. 

2  Presidential  address  before  the  Linnrean  Society  by  G.  Bentham 
(fourn.  Proc.  Linn.  Soc,  Vol.  VII.,  p.  xi.,  1864). 

3  Henry  Walter  Bates,  The  Naturalist  on  the  River  Amazons,  2  vols., 
London,  1863.  In  a  letter  to  Bates,  April  iSth,  1863,  Darwin  writes,  "  It 
is  the  best  work  of  natural  history  travels  ever  published  in  England" 
(Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  38 1). 

4  Quoted  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  381. 

5  The  Geological  Evidence  of  the  Antiquity  of  Man,  by  Sir  Charles 
Lyell,  and  works  by  other  authors  reviewed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review. 
Vol.  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.,  p.  294). 


244  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  Ill 

letter  172  To  H.  Falconer. 

Dec.  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,1  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. 

1  Probably  Suess'  paper  "  Ueber  die  Verschiedenheit  und  die 
Aufeinanderfolge  der  tertiaren  Land-faunen  in  der  Niederung  von 
Wien."     Sitz.-Ber.   Wien  Akad.,  XLVIL,  p.  306,  1863. 


CHAPTER     IV. 

EVOLUTION. 
1864— 1869. 

To  A.  R.  Wallace.  Letter  173 

Down,  Jan.   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  expostoi  the  Dublin 
man  on  Bees'  cells,  etc."  1  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. 

To  J.  L.   A.  de  Ouatrefages.  Letter  ,74 

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 

'  "  Remarks  on  the  Rev.  S.  Haughton's  paper  on  the  Bee's  Cell  and  on 
the  Origin  of  Species"  {Ann.  and  Mag.  Nat.  Nist.,' Xll .,  1863,  p.  303). 
Prof.  Haughton's  paper  was  read  before  the  Natural  History  Society  of 
Dublin,  Nov.  21st,  1862,  and  reprinted  in  the  Ann.  and  Mag.  Nat.  Hist.. 
XI.,  1863,  p.  415-     See  Letters  73,  74,  75- 

245 


246  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  174  end  your  admirable  work  on  metamorphosis.1  How  well  you 
arc  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  sec  you  notice  their 
works  as  you  have  done. 

Letter  1 75  Tu   T'    H'    Huxley. 

Down,   April  nth  [1864]. 

I  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  present  of  your  Covip. 
Anatomy?  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."3  If  Owen  wrote  the  article 
"  Oken  " i  and  the  French  work  on  the  Archetype  (points  you 

1  Probably  Metamorphoses  of  Man  and  the  LmOer  Animals.  Trans- 
lated by  H.  Lawson,  1864. 

■  Lectures  on  the  Elements  of 'Comparative  Anatomy,  1864. 

3  In  reference  to  Oken  (op.  cit.,  p.  282)  Huxley  says  :  "  I  must  confess 
I  never  read  his  works  without  thinking  of  the  epithet  of  '  inspired  idiot' 
applied  to  our  own  Goldsmith." 

4  The  article  on  Oken   in   the   eighth  edition  of  the   Encyclopedia 

Britannica  is  signed  "  R.  O."  :     Huxley  wrote  to    Darwin  (April   iSth, 

1864),  "There  is  not  the  smallest  question  that  Owen  wrote  both  the 

article    'Oken'    and  the    Archetype    Book"  (Huxley's  Life,    I.,  p.  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  179°- 

(2)  In  the  same  article,  p.  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 

d  priori  guesses  of  Oken."     On  this  Huxley  writes,  p.  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  criiniens  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  philoso- 

phique  de  leurs  relations  et  analogies,  etc."   (From  Principes  d: 'Osttiologie 

compart'e,  011  Recherches  sur  rArch/lype,  etc.,  p.  155,  1855).     (3)  Finally 

Huxley  says,  p.  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,  remaniS." 


1864 — 1S69J  COPLEY    MEDAL  247 

do  not  put  quite  clearly),  he  never  did  a  baser  act.  .  .  .  You  Letter  175 
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  magni- 
ficent) compliment  which  you  paid  me  at  the  end  of  your 
"  Origin  of  Species  " 1  I  have  met  with  reprinted  from  you 
two  or  three  times  lately. 

To  Erasmus  Darwin.  Letter 

175A 

Down,  June  30th,   1S64. 

The  preceding  letter  contains  a  reference  to  the  prolonged  period  of 
ill-health  from  which  Darwin  suffered  in  1S63  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. 

1  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 
(p  1 56)  :  "  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  psycho- 
logical speculation  for  the  next  three  or  four  generations." 


248  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter      It  would  save  you  trouble  to  forward  this  with  my  kindest 
'75A      remembrances  to  Falconer. 

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  nlost  thorough  entomologists  of  our  time."  The  facts  here  given 
are  chiefly  taken  from  the  American  Entomologist  (St.  Louis,  Mo.), 
Vol.  II.,  p.  65.  Benjamin  Dann  Walsh  was  born  at  Frome,  in  England, 
in  1S08,  and  died  in  America  in  1869,  from  the  result  of  a  railway 
accident.  He  entered  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  obtained  a 
fellowship  there  after  being  fifth  classic  in  1831.  He  was  therefore 
a  contemporary  of  Darwin's  at  the  University,  though  not  a  "  school- 
mate," as  the  American  Entomologist  puts  it.  He  was  the  author  of 
A  Historical  Account  of  the  University  of  Cambridge  and  its  Colleges, 
London,  2nd  edit.,  1837  ;  also  of  a  translation  of  part  of  Aristo- 
phanes, 1837  :  from  the  dedication  of  this  book  it  seems  that  he  was 
at  St.  Paul's  School,  London.  He  settled  in  America  in  1838,  but 
only  began  serious  Entomology  about  185S.  He  never  returned  to 
England. 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Darwin,  Nov.  7th,  1864,  he  gives  a  curious 
account  of  the  solitary  laborious  life  he  led  for  many  years.  "  When 
I  left  England  in  183S,"  he  writes,  "  I  was  possessed  with  an  absurd 
notion  that  I  would  live  a  perfectly  natural  life,  independent  of  the 
whole  world — in  me  ipso  lotus  teres  atque  rotundus.  So  I  bought  several 
hundred  acres  of  wild  land  in  the  wilderness,  twenty  miles  from  any 
settlement  that  you  would  call  even  a  village,  and  with  only  a  single 
neighbor.      There    I    gradually   opened   a   farm,    working    myself    like 

a  horse,  raising   great   quantities   of  hogs   and   bullocks I  did 

all  kinds  of  jobs  for  myself,  from  mending  a  pair  of  boots  to  hooping 
a  barrel."  After  nearly  dying  of  malaria,  he  sold  his  land  at  a  great 
loss,  and  found  that  after  twelve  years'  work  he  was  just  $1000 
poorer  than  when  he  began.  He  then  went  into  the  lumber  business 
at  Rock  Island,  Illinois.  After  seven  years  he  invested  most  of  his 
savings  in  building  "ten  two-storey  brick  houses  for  rent."  He  states 
that  the  repairs  of  the  houses  occupied  about  one-fourth  of  his  time, 
and  the  remainder  he  was  able  to  devote  to  entomology.  He  after- 
wards edited  the  Practical  Entomologist.  In  regard  to  this  work  he 
wrote  (Feb.  25th,  1867): — "Editing  the  Practical  Entomologist  does 
undoubtedly  take  up  a  good  deal  of  my  time,  but  I  also  pick  up  a 
good  deal  of  information  of  real  scientific  value  from  its  correspondents. 
Besides,  this  great  American  nation  has  hitherto  had  a  supreme  con- 
tempt for  Natural  History,  because  they  have  hitherto  believed  that  it 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  dollars  and  cents.  After  hammering 
away  at  them  for  a  year  or  two,  I  have  at  last  succeeded  in  touching 
the  '  pocket  nerve '  in  Uncle  Sam's  body,  and  he  is  gradually  being 
galvanised  into  the  conviction  that  science  has  the  power  to  make 
him   richer."     It    is  -difficult   to   realise   that  even  forty  years   ago   the 


i864— 1869]  WALSH  249 

position  of  science  in  Illinois  was  what  Mr.  Walsh  describes  it  to 
be :  "  You  cannot  have  the  remotest  conception  of  the  ideas  of 
even  our  best-educated  Americans  as  to  the  pursuit  of  science.  I 
never  yet  met  with  a  single  one  who  could  be  brought  to  under- 
stand how  or  why  a  man  should  pursue  science  for  its  own  pure  and 
holy  sake." 

Mr.  L.  O.  Howard  {Insect  Life,  Vol.  VII.,  1895,  p.  59)  says  that 
Harris  received  from  the  State  of  Massachusetts  only  $175  for  his 
classical  report  on  injurious  insects  which  appeared  in  1841  and  was 
reprinted  in  1S42  and  1852.  It  would  seem  that  in  these  times 
Massachusetts  was  in  much  the  same  state  of  darkness  as  Illinois.  In 
the  winter  of  1868-9  Walsh  was,  however,  appointed  State  Entomologist 
of  Illinois.  He  made  but  one  report  before  his  death.  He  was  a 
man  of  liberal  ideas,  hating  oppression  and  wrong  in  all  its  forms. 
On  one  occasion  his  life  was  threatened  for  an  attempt  to  purify 
the  town  council. 

As  an  instance  of  "hereditary  genius"  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
his  brother  was  a  well-known  writer  on  natural  history  and  sporting 
subjects,  under  the  pseudonym  "  Stonehenge." 

B.  D.  Walsh  to  C.   Darwin.  Letter  176 

Rock  Island,  Illinois,   U.S.,  April  29th,   1S64. 

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 
1   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]  1 

1    The    words    in   square  brackets  are  restorations  of    parts  torn  off 
the  original  letter. 


250  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  176  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  discovery  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. 

Letter  177  To  B.   D.  Walsh. 

Down,  Oct.  2 1  st  [1S64]. 

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  Cynips1  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.2 

My  health  has  long  been  poor,  and  I  have  lately 
suffered  from  a  long  illness  which  has  interrupted  all  work, 

1  "  On  Dimorphism  in  the  hymenopterous  genus  Cynips,"  Proc. 
Entom.  Soc.  Philadelphia,  March,  1S64.  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  spongi- 
fica  females  and  males  from  other  galls  at  a  different  time  of  year. 

2  See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  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  Me'moires  Couronni's  of  the  Brussels  Academy. 


1864-1869]  REGENERATION  2$I 

but   I   am   now  recommencing  a  volume  in   connection   with  Letter  177 
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? 

To  W.  H.  Flower.  Lettcr  178 

Down,  July  nth,  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  rudi- 
ment sent  to  you  was  from  a  full-grown  frog  ;  so  that  if  these 
bones  arc  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  trans- 
verse 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  x  in  amputated 
supernumerary  digits. 

To  J.   D.    Hooker.  Letter  179 

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 


1  In  the  first  edition  of  Variation  under  Domestication  the  view  here 
given  is  upheld,  but  in  the  second  edition  (Vol.  I.,  p.  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. 


252  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  179  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.1  I  have  now  come 
round  again  to  Ramsay's2  view,  for  the  third  or  fourth  time  ; 
but  Lyell  says  when  I  read  his  discussion  in  the  Elements,3 
I  shall  recant  for  the  fifth  time.  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. 

Letter  1S0  Hugh  Falconer  4  to  W.  Sharpey. 

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. 

1  Probably  Tyndall  "  On  the  Conformation  of  the  Alps  "  {Phil.  Mag., 
1864,  p.  255). 

-  Phil.  Mag.,  1864,  p.  293. 

3  This  refers  to  a  discussion  on  the  "  Connection  of  the  predominance 
of  Lakes  with  Glacial  Action"  (Elements,  Ed.  VI.,  pp.  168-74).  Lyell 
adheres  to  the  views  expressed  in  the  Antiquity  0/ Man  (1863)  against 
Ramsay's  theory  of  the  origin  of  lake  basins  by  ice  action. 

4  Hugh  Falconer  (1809-65)  was  a  student  at  the  Universities  of 
Aberdeen  and  Edinburgh,  and  went  out  to  India  in  1830  as  Assistant- 
Surgeon  on  the  Bengal  Establishment.  In  1832  he  succeeded  Dr.  Royle 
as  the  Superintendent  of  the   Botanic  Gardens  at  Saharunpur  ;   and  in 


From  a  photograph  by  Hill  tS>  Adamson 

Hugh  Fai  i  oner 
1844 


i864— 1869]  FALCONER  253 

Montauban,  Oct.  25th,   1864.        Letter   1S0 
Busk   and  myself  have  made  every   effort  to   be  back  in 
London  by  the  27th  inst.,  but  we  have  been  persecuted  by 

1848,  after  spending  some  years  in  England,  he  was  appointed  Super- 
intendent of  the  Calcutta  Botanical  Garden  and  Professor  of  Botany  in 
the  Medical  College.  Although  Falconer  held  an  important  botanical 
post  for  many  years,  he  is  chiefly  known  as  a  Palrcozoologist.  He  seems, 
however,  to  have  had  a  share  in  introducing  Cinchona  into  India.  His 
discovery,  in  company  with  Colonel  Sir  Proby  T.  Cautley,  of  Miocene 
Mammalia  in  the  Siwalik  Hills,  was  at  the  time  perhaps  the  greatest 
"find"  which  had  been  made.  The  fossils  of  the  Siwalik  Hills  formed 
the  subject  of  Falconer's  most  important  book,  Fauna  Antigua  Siva- 
lensis,  which,  however,  remained  unfinished  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
Falconer  also  devoted  himself  to  the  investigation  of  the  cave-fauna  of 
England,  and  contributed  important  papers  on  fossils  found  in  Sicily, 
Malta,  and  elsewhere.  Dr.  Falconer  was  a  Vice-President  of  the  Royal 
Society  and  Foreign  Secretary  of  the  Geological  Society.  "  Falconer 
did  enough  during  his  lifetime  to  render  his  name  as  a  palaeontologist 
immortal  in  science  ;  but  the  work  which  he  published  was  only  a  fraction 
of  what  he  accomplished.  .  .  .  He  was  cautious  to  a  fault  ;  he  always 
feared  to  commit  himself  to  an  opinion  until  he  was  sure  he  was  right, 
and  he  died  in  the  prime  of  his  life  and  in  the  fulness  of  his  power." 
(Biographical  sketch  contributed  by  Charles  Murchison  to  his  edition  of 
Hugh  Falconer's  Pahvontological  Memoirs  and  Notes,  London,  1868; 
Proc.  R.  Soc,  Vol.  XV.,  p.  xiv.,  1867  :  Quart.  Journ.  Geo/.  Soc,  Vol.  XXL, 
p.  xlv,  1865.)  Hugh  Falconer  was  among  those  who  did  not  fully  accept 
the  views  expressed  in  the  Origin  of  Species,  but  he  could  differ  from 
Darwin  without  any  bitterness.  Two  years  before  the  book  was  pub- 
lished, Darwin  wrote  to  Asa  Gray:  "The  last  time  I  saw  my  dear  old 
friend  Falconer  he  attacked  me  most  vigorously,  but  quite  kindly,  and 
told  me,  'You  will  do  more  harm  than  any  ten  naturalists  will  do  good. 
I  can  see  that  you  have  already  corrupted  and  half  spoiled  Hooker.'" 
(Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  121.)  The  affectionate  regard  which  Darwin 
felt  for  Falconer  was  shared  by  their  common  friend  Hooker.  The  follow- 
ing extract  of  a  letter  from  Hooker  to  Darwin  (Feb.  3rd,  1865) 
shows  clearly  the  strong  friendships  which  Falconer  inspired  :  "  Poor 
old  Falconer  !  how  my  mind  runs  back  to  those  happiest  of  all  our 
days  that  I  used  to  spend  at  Down  twenty  years  ago — when  I  left  your 
home  with  my  heart  in  my  mouth  like  a  schoolboy.  We  last  heard  he 
was  ill  on  Wednesday  or  Thursday,  and  sent  daily  to  enquire,  but  the 
report  was  so  good  on  Saturday  that  we  sent  no  more,  and  on  Monday 
night  he  died.  .  .  .  What  a  mountainous  mass  of  admirable  and  accurate 
information  dies  with  our  dear  old  friend  !  I  shall  miss  him  greatly,  not 
only  personally,  but  as  a  scientific  man  of  unflinching  and  uncompro- 
mising integrity — and  of  great  weight  in  Murchisonian  and  other  counsels 
where  ballast  is  sadly  needed." 


254  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  180  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  Bruniqucl,  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  pro- 
posal 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  1  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  consti- 
tutes an  era  in  the  investigation  of  the  subject.  As  a  mono- 
graphic labour,  it  may  be  compared  with  Dr.  Wells'  "  Essay 
upon  Dew,"  as  original,  exhaustive,  and  complete — containing 
the  closest  observation  with  large  and  important  generalisa- 
tions. 

Among  the  zoologists  his  monographs  upon  the  Balanida? 
and  Lepadidce,  Fossil  and  Recent,  in  the  Palasontographical 
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 
Ly  thrum,  are  of  the  highest  order  of  importance.  They  open 
a   new  mine  of  observation    upon  a   field   which   had  been 


1864-1S69]  COPLEY     MEDAL  255 

barely  struck  upon  before.  The  same  remark  applies  to  his  Letter  180 
researches  on  the  structure  and  various  adaptations  of  the 
orchideous  flower  to  a  definite  object  connected  with  impreg- 
nation 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.1 

1  The  following  letter  (Dec.  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.,  p.  255.  Sabine's  address  (from  the  Reader) 
is  given  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  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 


256  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  180  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. 

Letter  181  To  Hugh  Falconer. 

Down,  Nov.  4th  [  1864I. 

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 

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  inter- 
fering 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." 


1864— 1869]  COPLEY    MEDAL  257 

postscript1  about  poor  M.  Brulle  ■  and  his  young  pupils.  Letter  181 
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,3  Gegenbauer,4  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. 

To  Hugh  Falconer.  Lettei  ,S2 

Down,  Nov.  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  Sabine5  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 


1  The  following  is  the  postcript  in  a  letter  from  Falconer  to  Darwin 
Nov.  3rd  [1864]:  "I  returned  last  night  from  Spain  vid  France.  On 
Monday  I  was  at  Dijon,  where,  while  in  the  Museum,  M.  Brulle,  Pro- 
fessor 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." 

2  CTaspard-Auguste  Brulle  (1809-73)  held  a  post  in  the  Natural 
History  Museum,  Paris,  from  1833  to  1839  ;  on  leaving  Paris  he  occupied 
the  chair  of  Zoology  and  Comparative  Anatomy  at  Dijon.  ("  Note  stir  la 
Vie  et  les  Travaux  Entomologiques  d'Auguste  Brulle,"  by  E.  Desmarest. 
Ann-  Soc.  Entom.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  513.) 

3  Rudolf  Leuckart  (1822-98),   Professor  of  Zoology  at  Leipzig. 
1  Karl  Gegenbauer,  Professor  of  Anatomy  at  Heidelberg. 

5  Sir  E.  Sabine  (1 788-1883),  President  of  the  Royal  Society  1 861 -71. 
(See  Life  ami  Letters,  III.,  p.  28.) 

'7 


258  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  182  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. 

Letter  183  To  B.   D.   Walsh. 

Down,  Dec.  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  pamphlet1 
on  Geographical  Distribution,  on  Agassiz,  etc.  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.2  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  Agassi/, 
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 

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,  Sept.  1864,  p.  207. 

a  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,  p.  iv.) 


i864— 1869]  GRADATIONS  259 

inserted  in  the  Natural  History  Review  x  :  whether  the  notice  Letter  183 
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.  Miillcr,  Leuckart,  Claparede,  Alex. 
Braun,  Schleiden,  etc.  So  it  is,  I  hear,  with  the  younger 
Frenchmen. 

To    J.    D.    Hooker.  Letter  184 

Down,  Jan.    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. 

1  Nat.  Hist.  Review,  Jan.  1865,  p.  139.  A  notice  by/.  /,.  (probably 
Lord  Avebury)  on  Walsh's  paper  "On  Dimorphism  in  the  Hymeno- 
pterous  Genus  Cynips,"  in  the  Proc.  Entomolog.  Soc.  of  Philadelphia, 

March,  1S64 


260  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  184  There  was  not  much  in  last  Natural  History  Review  which 
interested  me  except  colonial  floras1  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  2 
(after  doubts,  I  did  not  think  it  worth  sending  you)  on  Coal 
Flora :  he  wrote  some  excellent  articles  in  Silliman  against 
[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  ! 

Letter  185  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,   Feb.  9H1  [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  insignifi- 
cance compared  with  the  idea  or  rather  I  presume  certainty 
of  the  sun  some  day  cooling  and  we  all  freezing.     To  think 

1  Nat.  Hist.  Review,  1865,  p.  46.  A  review  of  Grisebach's  Flora  of 
the  British  West  Indian  /stands  and  Thwaites'  Enumeratio  Plantarum 
ZeylaniiC  The  point  referred  to  is  given  at  p.  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.'1 

2  Leo  Lesquereux  (1806-89)  was  DOrn  in  Switzerland,  but  his 
most  important  works  were  published  after  he  settled  in  the  United 
States  in  1848.  Beginning  with  researches  on  Mosses  and  Peat,  he 
afterwards  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of  fossil  plants.  His  best 
known  contributions  to  Paleobotany  are  a  series  of  monographs  on 
Cretaceous  and  Tertiary  Floras  (1878-83),  and  on  the  Coal-Flora  of 
Pennsylvania  and  the  United  States  generally,  published  by  the  Second 
Geological  Survey  of  Pennsylvania  between  1880  and  1884  (see  L.  F.  Ward, 
Sketch  of  Paleobotany,  U.S.  Geol.  Sun1.,  5///  Ann.  Rep.  1883-4;  also 
Quart.  Journ.  Geol.  Soc.  Vol.  XLVL,  Proe.,  p.  53,  1890). 


1864-1869]  GALLS  261 

of  the    progress  of  millions   of  years,   with  every  continent  Letter  185 
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.  .  .  . 

To  B.  D.  Walsh.  Letter  186 

Down,  March  27th  [1865]. 

I  have  been  much  interested  by  your  letter.  I  received 
your  former  paper  on  Phytophagic  variety,1  most  of  which 
was  new  to  mc.  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."  -  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  Wichura3  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 

1  For  "  Phytophagic  Varieties  and  Phytophagic  Species "  see  Proc. 
Entomolog.  Soc.  Philadelphia,  Nov.  1864,  p.  403,  also  Dec.  1865.  The 
part  on  gradation  is  summarised  at  pp.  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." 

a  "Unity  of  coloration":  this  expression  does  not  seem  to  occur  in 
the  paper  of  Nov.  1864,  but  is  discussed  at  length  in  that  of  Dec. 
1865,  p.  209. 

:1  Max  Wichura's  Die  Bastarde  befruchtung  im  Pfiansenreich,  etc.: 
Breslau  1865.  A  translation  appeared  in  the  Bibliothique  Universelley 
xxiii.,  p.  129:  Geneva  18(15. 


262  EVOLUTION  [Chai\  IV 

Letter  i86  aboriginally  gall-makers,  and  bear  the  same  relation  to  them 
which  Apathus  '  probably  does  to  Botnbus  ?  With  respect  to 
dimorphism,  you  may  like  to  hear  that  Dr.  Hooker  tells  me 
that  a  dioecious  parasitic  plant  allied  to  Rafflcsia  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.  Lccrsia2  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  ? 
1  should  like  to  write  on  many  points  at  greater  length  to  you, 
but  I  have  no  strength  to  spare. 

Letter  187  To  A.  R.  Wallace. 

Down,  Sept.   22nd  [1865]. 

I  am  much  obliged  for  your  extract  ; 3  I   never  heard  of 
such  a  case,  though  such  a  variation   is    perhaps  the  most 

1  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  earlier  entomologists  :  "  Dr.  Sharp  in  Cambridge  Nat. 
Hist.  {Insects,  Pt.  II.),  p.  59. 

'  Leersia  orysoides  was  for  a  long  time  thought  to  produce  only 
cleistogamic  and  therefore  autogamous  flowers.  See  Variation  of 
Animals  and  Plants,  Ed.  II.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  69. 

3  Mr.  Wallace  had  sent  Darwin  a  note  about  a  tufted  cock-blackbird, 
which  transmitted  the  character  to  some  of  its  offspring. 


1 864— 1869]  WALLACE  263 

likely  of  any  to  occur  in  a  state  of  nature,  and  to  be  inherited,  Letter  187 
inasmuch  as  all  domesticated  birds  present  races  with  a  tuft 
or  with  reversed  feathers  on  their  heads.     1  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  Linncan  Transactions,  but  your  paper  1  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  ? 2 
Both  these  books  have  interested  me  much.  I  suppose"  you 
have  read  Lubbock.3  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)  1  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  arc  doing 
yourself.  The  only  news  which  I  have  about  the  Origin  is 
that  Fritz  Mullcr  published  a  few  months  ago  a  remarkable 
book1  in  its  favour,  and  secondly  that  a  second  French 
edition  is  just  coming  out. 

1  Probably  on  the  variability  and  distribution  of  the  butterflies  of  the 
Malayan  region  :  Linn.  Soc.  Trans.,  XXV.,  1866. 

2  Tylor,  Early  History  of  Mankind;  Lecky's  Rationalism. 

3  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  p.  479:  "...  the  theory  of  Natural 
Selection,  which  with  characteristic  unselfishness  he  ascribes  unreservedly 
to  Mr.  Darwin." 

4  Fiir  Darwin, 


264  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  188  To   F.    M  tiller. 

Down,  Jan.    nth  [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  com- 
pared with  the  first  edition.  I  have  some  spare  copies  which 
arc  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.1 
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  trans- 
lations of  several  of  your  papers  ;  amongst  which  I  have  been 
particularly  glad  to  read  and  see  the  drawings  of  the 
metamorphoses  of  Peneus."  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  in- 
teresting 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. 

1  "  Ueber  Darwinclla  aurca,  einen  Schwamm  mit  sternformigen 
Hornnadeln." — Archiv.  Mikrosk.  Anal.,  I.,  p.  57,  1866. 

-  "  On  the  Metamorphoses  of  the  Prawns,"  by  Dr.  Fritz  Muller.— Ann. 
Mag.  Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  XIV.,  p.  104  (with  plate),  1864.  Translated  by 
\V.  S.  Dallas  from  JVirg/nann's  Archiv,  1863  (see  also  Facts  and 
Arguments  for  Darwin,  passim,  translated  by  W.  S.  Dallas  :  London, 
1869). 


1864-1869]  POLYMORPHISM  265 

To  A.   R.   Wallace.  Letter  189 

Down,  January  22nd,  1866. 
I  thank  you  for  your  paper  on  pigeons,1  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  satis- 
faction, for  I  finished  your  paper  yesterday  in  the  Linnean 
Transactions?  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  1  have  strength.  I  have  been  particularly  struck 
with  your  remarks  on  dimorphism  ;  but  I  cannot  quite 
understand   one  point3    (p.   22),  and    should  be  grateful    for 

1  "On  the  Pigeons  of  the  Malay  Archipelago"  {The  Ibis,  October, 
1865).  Mr.  Wallace  points  out  (p.  366)  that  "the  most  striking  super- 
abundance 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." 

3  Linn.  Soc.  Trans.,  XXV.  :  a  paper  on  the  geographical  distribution 
and  variability  of  the  Malayan  Papilionida?. 

3  The  passage  referred  to  in  this  letter  as  needing  further  explanation 
is  the  following  :  "The  last  six  cases  of  mimicry  are  especially  instruc- 
tive, 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  lliglu, 
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 


266  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  189  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, 

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  (Pafillio  Memnon,  P.  P amnion,  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  con- 
spicuous ;  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.  lietween 
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  rudi- 
ments 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.,  p.  200)  will  enable  those  who 
have  this  book  at  hand  better  to  understand  the  foregoing  explanation." 


1864— 1869]  NATURAL    SELECTION  267 

as  I  understand,  both  female  forms  occur  on  the  same  island.  Letter  189 

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  docs  your  journal  get  on?  It  will  be  a  shame  if 
you  do  not  popularise  your  researches. 

A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  190 

Hurstpierpoint,  Sussex,  July  2nd,    1S66. 

I  have  been  so  repeatedly  struck  by  the  utter  inability  of 
numbers  of  intelligent  persons  to  sec  clearly,  or  at  all,  the 
self-acting  and  necessary  effects  of  Natural  Selection,  that 
I  am  led  to  conclude  that  the  term  itself,  and  your  mode  of 
illustrating  it,  however  clear  and  beautiful  to  many  of  us,  are 
yet  not  the  best  adapted  to  impress  it  on  the  general  naturalist 
public.  The  two  last  cases  of  the  misunderstanding  are  :  (1) 
the  article  on  "  Darwin  and  his  Teachings  "  in  the  last 
Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  which,  though  very  well  written 
and  on  the  whole  appreciative,  yet  concludes  with  a  charge 
of  something  like  blindness,  in  your  not  seeing  that  Natural 
Selection  requires  the  constant  watching  of  an  intelligent 
"  chooser,"  like  man's  selection  to  which  you  so  often  compare 
it  ;  and  (2)  in  Janet's  recent  work  on  the  Materialism  of  the 
Present  Day,  reviewed  in  last  Saturday's  Reader,  by  an  extract 
from  which  I  see  that  he  considers  your  weak  point  to  be  that 
you  do  not  see  that  "  thought  and  direction  are  essential  to 
the  action  of  Natural  Selection."  The  same  objection  has 
been  made  a  score  of  times  by  your  chief  opponents,  and  I 
have  heard  it  as  often  stated  myself  in  conversation.  Now, 
I  think  this  arises  almost  entirely  from  your  choice  of  the 
term  "  Natural  Selection  "  and  so  constantly  comparing  it  in 
its  effects  to  Man's  Selection,  and  also  your  so  frequently 
personifying    nature    as    "selecting,"     as     "  preferring,"     as 


268  INOLUTION  [Chai.  IV 

Letter  190  "seeking  only  the  good  of  the  species,"  etc.,  etc.  To  the  few 
this  is  as  clear  as  daylight,  and  beautifully  suggestive,  but  to 
many  it  is  evidently  a  stumbling-block.  I  wish,  therefore, 
to  suggest  to  you  the  possibility  of  entirely  avoiding  this 
source  of -misconception  in  your  great  work  (if  not  now  too 
late),  and  also  in  any  future  editions  of  the  Origin,  and  I 
think  it  may  be  done  without  difficulty  and  very  effectually 
by  adopting  Spencer's  term  (which  he  generally  uses  in  pre- 
ference to  Natural  Selection) — viz.,  "survival  of  the  fittest." 

This  term  is  the  plain  expression  of  the  fact  ;  Natural 
Selection  is  a  metaphorical  expression  of  it,  and  to  a  certain 
degree  indirect  and  incorrect,  since,  even  personifying  Nature, 
she  does  not  so  much  select  special  variations  as  exterminate 
the  most  unfavourable  ones. 

Combined  with  the  enormous  multiplying  powers  of  all 
organisms,  and  the  "  struggle  for  existence "  leading  to  the 
constant  destruction  of  by  far  the  largest  proportion— facts 
which  no  one  of  your  opponents,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  has 
denied  or  misunderstood — "  the  survival  of  the  fittest " 
rather  than  of  those  who  were  less  fit  could  not  possibly  be 
denied  or  misunderstood.  Neither  would  it  be  possible 
to  say  that  to  ensure  the  "survival  of  the  fittest"  any 
intelligent  chooser  was  necessary ;  whereas  when  you  say 
Natural  Selection  acts  so  as  to  choose  those  that  are 
fittest,  it  is  misunderstood,  and  apparently  always  will 
be.  Referring  to  your  book,  I  find  such  expressions  as 
"  Man  selects  only  for  his  own  good  ;  Nature  only  for  that 
of  the  being  which  she  tends."  This,  it  seems,  will  always  be 
misunderstood  ;  but  if  you  had  said  "  Man  selects  only  for  his 
own  good  ;  Nature,  by  the  inevitable  '  survival  of  the  fittest,' 
only  for  that  of  the  being  she  tends,"  it  would  have  been  less 
liable  to  be  so. 

I  find  you  use  the  term  "  Natural  Selection "  in  two 
senses:  (1)  for  the  simple  preservation  of  favourable  and 
rejection  of  unfavourable  variations,  in  which  case  it  is 
equivalent  to  "survival  of  the  fittest"  ;  and  (2)  for  the  effect 
or  change  produced  by  this  preservation,  as  when  you  say, 
"  To  sum  up  the  circumstances  favourable  or  unfavourable  to 
Natural  Selection,"  and  again,  "  Isolation,  also,  is  an  important 
clement  in  the  process  of  Natural  Selection."  Here  it  is  not 
merely   "  survival   of  the  fittest,"    but    change    produced    by 


1864-1869]  NATURAL    SELECTION  269 

survival  of  the  fittest,  that  is  meant.  On  looking  over  your  Letter  190 
fourth  chapter,  I  find  that  these  alterations  of  terms  can  be  in 
most  cases  easily  made,  while  in  some  cases  the  addition  of 
"  or  survival  of  the  fittest "  after  "  Natural  Selection  "  would 
be  best  ;  and  in  others,  less  likely  to  be  misunderstood,  the 
original  term  may  stand  alone. 

I  could  not  venture  to  propose  to  any  other  person  so 
great  an  alteration  of  terms,  but  you,  I  am  sure,  will  give  it 
an  impartial  consideration,  and  if  you  really  think  the  change 
will  produce  a  better  understanding  of  your  work,  will  not 
hesitate  to  adopt  it. 

It  is  evidently  also  necessary  not  to  personify  "  Nature  " 
too  much — though  I  am  very  apt  to  do  it  myself — since  people 
will  not  understand  that  all  such  phrases  are  metaphors. 
Natural  Selection  is,  when  understood,  so  necessary  and 
self-evident  a  principle,  that  it  is  a  pity  it  should  be  in  any 
way  obscured  ;  and  it  therefore  seems  to  me  that  the  free  use 
of"  survival  of  the  fittest,"  which  is  a  compact  and  accurate 
definition  of  it,  would  tend  much  to  its  being  more  widely 
accepted,  and  prevent  it  being  so  much  misrepresented  and 
misunderstood. 

There  is  another  objection  made  by  Janet  which  is  also 
a  very  common  one.  It  is  that  the  chances  are  almost  infinite 
against  the  particular  kind  of  variation  required  being 
coincident  with  each  change  of  external  conditions,  to 
enable  an  animal  to  become  modified  by  Natural  Selection  in 
harmony  with  such  changed  conditions  ;  especially  when  we 
consider  that,  to  have  produced  the  almost  infinite  modifica- 
tions of  organic  beings,  this  coincidence  must  have  taken 
place  an  almost  infinite  number  of  times. 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  you  have  yourself  led  to  this 
objection  being  made,  by  so  often  stating  the  case  too  strongly 
against  yourself.  For  example,  at  the  commencement  of 
Chapter  IV.  you  ask  if  it  is  "improbable  that  useful  varia- 
tions should  sometimes  occur  in  the  course  of  thousands  of 
generations  "  ;  and  a  little  further  on  you  say,  "  unless  profit- 
able variations  do  occur,  Natural  Selection  can  do  nothing." 
Now,  such  expressions  have  given  your  opponents  the 
advantage  of  assuming  that  favourable  variations  are  rare 
accidents,  or  may  even  for  long  periods  never  occur  at  all, 
and  thus   Janet's  argument  would   appear  to  many  to  have 


270  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  190  great  force.  I  think  it  would  be  better  to  do  away  with  all 
such  qualifying  expressions,  and  constantly  maintain  (what  1 
certainly  believe  to  be  the  fact)  that  variations  of  every  kind 
are  always  occurring  in  every  part  of  every  species,  and 
therefore  that  favourable  variations  are  always  ready  when 
wanted.  You  have,  I  am  sure,  abundant  materials  to  prove 
this  ;  and  it  is,  I  believe,  the  grand  fact  that  renders  modifi- 
cation and  adaptation  to  conditions  almost  always  possible. 
I  would  put  the  burthen  of  proof  on  my  opponents  to  show 
that  any  one  organ,  structure,  or  faculty  does  not  vary,  even 
during  one  generation,  among  all  the  individuals  of  a  species  ; 
and  also  to  show  any  mode  or  way  in  which  any  such  organ, 
etc.,  does  not  vary.  I  would  ask  them  to  give  any  reason  for 
supposing  that  any  organ,  etc.,  is  ever  absolutely  identical 
at  any  one  time  in  all  the  individuals  of  a  species,  and  if  not 
then  it  is  always  varying,  and  there  are  always  materials 
which,  from  the  simple  fact  that  "  the  fittest  survive,"  will 
tend  to  the  modification  of  the  race  into  harmony  with 
changed  conditions. 

I  hope  these  remarks  may  be  intelligible  to  you,  and  that 
you  will  be  so  kind  as  to  let  me  know  what  you  think  of 
them. 

I  have  not  heard  for  some  time  how  you  are  getting  on. 
I  hope  you  are  still  improving  in  health,  and  that  you  will 
now  be  able  to  get  on  with  your  great  work,  for  which  so 
many  thousands  are  looking  with  interest. 

Letter  191  To  A.  R.  Wallace.1 

Down,  July  5th  [1866]. 
I  have  been  much  interested  by  your  letter,  which  is  as 
clear  as  daylight.  I  fully  agree  with  all  that  you  say  on  the 
advantages  of  H.  Spencer's  excellent  expression  of  "  the 
survival  of  the  fittest."  This,  however,  had  not  occurred  to 
me  till  reading  your  letter.  It  is,  however,  a  great  objection 
to  this  term  that  it  cannot  be  used  as  a  substantive  governing 
a  verb  ;  and  that  this  is  a  real  objection  I  infer  from  H. 
Spencer  continually  using  the  words  Natural  Selection.  I 
formerly  thought,  probably  in  an  exaggerated  degree,  that  it 
was  a  great  advantage  to  bring  into  connection  natural  and 
artificial    selection  ;    this    indeed    led    me    to   use   a    term  in 

1  From  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  45. 


1864-18O9]  NATURAL    SELECTION  271 

common,  and  I  still  think  it  some  advantage.  I  wish  I  had  Letter  191 
received  your  letter  two  months  ago,  for  I  would  have  worked 
in  "  the  survival,"  etc.,  often  in  the  new  edition  of  the  Origin, 
which  is  now  almost  printed  off,  and  of  which  I  will  of  course 
send  you  a.  copy.  I  will  use  the  term  in  my  next  book  on 
domestic  animals,  etc.,  from  which,  by  the  way,  I  plainly  see 
that  you  expect  much  too  much.  The  term  Natural  Selection 
has  now  been  so  largely  used  abroad  and  at  home  that  I 
doubt  whether  it  could  be  given  up,  and  with  all  its  faults 
I  should  be  sorry  to  see  the  attempt  made.  Whether  it  will 
be  rejected  must  now  depend  "on  the  survival  of  the  fittest." 
As  in  time  the  term  must  grow  intelligible  the  objections  to 
its  use  will  grow  weaker  and  weaker.  I  doubt  whether  the 
use  of  any  term  would  have  made  the  subject  intelligible  to 
some  minds,  clear  as  it  is  to  others  ;  for  do  we  not  see  even 
to  the  present  day  Malthus  on  Population  absurdly  misunder- 
stood ?  This  reflection  about  Malthus  has  often  comforted 
me  when  I  have  been  vexed  at  this  misstatement  of  my 
views.  As  for  M.  Janet,  he  is  a  metaphysician,  and  such 
gentlemen  are  so  acute  that  I  think  they  often  misunderstand 
common  folk.  Your  criticism  on  the  double  sense  in  which  I 
have  used  Natural  Selection  is  new  to  me  and  unanswerable  ; 
but  my  blunder  has  done  no  harm,  for  I  do  not  believe  that 
any  one,  excepting  you,  has  ever  observed  it.  Again,  I  agree 
that  I  have  said  too  much  about  "favourable  variations,"  but 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  you  put  the  opposite  side  too 
strongly  :  if  every  part  of  every  being  varied,  I  do  not  think 
we  should  see  the  same  end  or  object  gained  by  such  wonder- 
fully diversified  means. 

I  hope  you  are  enjoying  the  country,  and  are  in  good 
health,  and  are  working  hard  at  your  Malay  Arcliipelago  book, 
for  I  will  always  put  this  wish  in  every  note  I  write  to  you,  as 
some  good  people  always  put  in  a  text.  My  health  keeps 
much  the  same,  or  rather  improves,  and  I  am  able  to  work 
some  hours  daily. 

To   C.    Lyell.  Letter  192 

Down,  Oct.  9th  [1866]. 
One  line   to   say  that   I  have  received  your  note  and  the 
proofs  safely,  and  will  read  them  with  the  greatest  pleasure  ; 
but  I  am  certain  I  shall  not  be  able  to  send  any  criticism  on 


272  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  192  the  astronomical  chapter,1  as  I  am  as  ignorant  as  a  pig  on  this 
head.  I  shall  require  some  clays  to  read  what  has  been  sent. 
I  have  just  read  Chapter  IX.,2  and  like  it  extremely  ;  it  all 
seems  to  me  very  clear,  cautious,  and  sagacious.  You  do  not 
allude  to  'one  very  striking  point  enough,  or  at  all — viz.,  the 
classes  having  been  formerly  less  differentiated  than  they  now 
are  ;  and  this  specialisation  of  classes  must,  we  may  conclude, 
fit  them  for  different  general  habits  of  life  as  well  as  the 
specialisation  of  particular  organs. 

P.  162.3  I  rather  demur  to  your  argument  from  Cetacea  : 
as  they  are  such  greatly  modified  mammals,  they  ought  to 
have  come  in  rather  later  in  the  series.  You  will  think  me 
rather  impudent,  but  the  discussion  at  the  end  of  Chapter  IX. 
on  man,4  who  thinks  so  much  of  his  fine  self,  seems  to  me  too 
long,  or  rather  superfluous,  and  too  orthodox,  except  for  the 
beneficed  clergy. 

Letter   193  To   V.    Cai'US. 

The  following  letter  refers  to  the  4th  edition  of  the  Origin,  1866, 
which  was  translated  by  Professor  Cams,  and  formed  the  3rd  German 
edition.  Carus  continued  to  translate  Darwin's  books,  and  a  strong 
bond  of  friendship  grew  up  between  author  and  translator  (see  Life  and 
Letters,  III.,  p.  48).  Niigeli's  pamphlet  was  first  noticed  in  the  5th 
English  edition. 

Down,   Nov.   2 1st,   1S66. 

.  .  .  With  respect  to  a  note  on  Nageli s  I  find  on  considera- 
tion it  would  be  too  long  ;  for  so  good  a  pamphlet  ought  to 

1  Principles  of  Geology,  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell ;  Ed.  X.,  London, 
1867.  Chapter  XIII.  deals  with  "Vicissitudes  in  Climate  how  far 
influenced  by  Astronomical  Causes." 

2  Chapter  IX,  "  Theory  of  the  Progressive  Development  of  Organic 
Life  at  Successive  Geological  Periods." 

3  On  p.  163  Lyell  refers  to  the  absence  of  Cetacea  in  Secondary  rocks, 
and  expresses  the  opinion  that  their  absence  "  is  a  negative  fact  of  great 
significance,  which  seems  more  than  any  other  to  render  it  highly  impro- 
bable that  we  shall  ever  find  air-breathers  of  the  highest  class  in  any  of 
the  Primary  strata,  or  in  any  of  the  older  members  of  the  Secondary 
series." 

4  Loc.  cit.,  pp.  167-73,  "  Introduction  of  Man,  to  what  extent  a  Change 
of  the  System." 

5  "  Entstehung  und  Begriff  tier  Naturhistorischen  Art,"  an  Address 
given  before  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Munich,  March  28th, 
1865.  See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  50,  for  Mr.  Darwin's  letter  to  the 
late  Prof.  Nageli.      Carl  Wilhelm  von    Nageli   (1817  91)   was   born   at 


i864— 1869]  NAGELI  273 

be  discussed  at  full  length  or  not  at  all.  Me  makes  a  mistake  Letter  193 
in  supposing  that  I  say  that  useful  characters  are  always 
constant.  His  view  about  distinct  species  converging  and 
acquiring  the  same  identical  structure  is  by  implication 
answered  in  the  discussion  which  I  have  given  on  the 
endless  diversity  of  means  for  gaining  the  same  end. 

The  most  important  point,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in  the 
pamphlet  is  that  on  the  morphological  characters  of  plants, 
and  I  find  I  could  not  answer  this  without  going  into  much 
detail. 

The  answer  would  be,  as  it  seems  to  me,  that  important 
morphological  characters,  such  as  the  position  of  the  ovules 
and  the  relative  position  of  the  stamens  to  the  ovarium 
(hypogynous,  perigynous,  etc.)  are  sometimes  variable  in  the 
same  species,  as  I  incidentally  mention  when  treating  of  the 
ray-florets  in  the  Composita;  and  Umbelliferae  ;  and  I  do 
not  see  how  Nageli  could  maintain  that  differences  in  such 
characters  prove  an  inherent  tendency  towards  perfection.  I 
see  that  I  have  forgotten  to  say  that  you  have  my  fullest 
consent  to  append  any  discussion  which  you  may  think 
fit  to  the  new  edition.  As  for  myself  I  cannot  believe  in 
spontaneous  generation,  and  though  I  expect  that  at  some 
future  time  the  principle  of  life  will  be  rendered  intelligible, 
at  present  it  seems  to  me  beyond  the  confines  of  science. 

Kilchberg,  near  Zurich.  He  graduated  at  Zurich  with  a  dissertation  on 
the  Swiss  species  of  Cirsium.  At  Jena  he  came  under  the  influence  of 
Schleiden,  who  taught  him  microscopic  work.  He  married  in  1845,  and 
on  his  wedding  journey  in  England,  collected  seaweeds  for  Die  neueren 
Algen-systeme.  He  was  called  as  Professor  to  Freiburg  im  Breisgau  in 
1852  ;  and  to  Munich  in  1857,'  where  he  remained  until  his  death  on 
May  10th,  1891.  In  the  Zeitschrift  fur  iviss.  Botanik,  1844-46,  edited 
by  Nageli  and  Schleiden,  and  of  which  only  a  single  volume  appeared. 
Nageli  insists  on  the  only  sound  basis  for  classification  being  "  develop- 
ment as  a  whole."  The  Entstehung  und  Begriff{\Zb^)  was  his  first  real 
evolutionary  paper.  He  believed  in  a  tendency  of  organisms  to  vary 
towards  perfection.  His  idea  was  that  the  causes  of  variability  are 
internal  to  the  organism  :  see  his  work,  Ueber  den  Einfluss  aiisscrer 
Verhaltnisse  auf  die  Varietatenbildung.  Among  his  other  writings  are 
the  Thcorie  der  Baslardbildung,  1866,  and  Die  Mechanisch-physiologische 
Theorie  der  Abstammungslehre,  1884.  The  chief  idea  of  the  latter  book 
is  the  existence  of  Idioplasm,  a  part  of  protoplasm  serving  for  hereditary 
transmission.  (From  Dr.  D.  H.  Scott's  article  in  Nature,  Oct.  15th, 
1891,  p.   580.) 

18 


274  EVOLUTION  [Chat\  IV 

Letter  194  To    T.    II.    I  Ilixlcy. 

Down,   Dec.   22nd  [1866?]. 

I  suppose  that  you  have  received  Hackel's  book 1  some 
time  ago,  as  I  have  done.  Whenever  you  have  had  time  to 
read  through  some  of  it,  enough  to  judge  by,  I  shall  be  very 
curious  to  hear  your  judgment.  I  have  been  able  to  read  a 
page  or  two  here  and  there,  and  have  been  interested  and 
instructed  by  parts.  But  my  vague  impression  is  that  too 
much  space  is  given  to  methodical  details,  and  I  can  find 
hardly  any  facts  or  detailed  new  views.  The  number  of 
new  words,  to  a  man  like  myself,  weak  in  his  Greek,  is 
something  dreadful.  He  seems  to  have  a  passion  for  defining, 
I  daresay  very  well,  and  for  coining  new  words.  From  my 
very  vague  notions  on  the  book,  and  from  its  immense  size,  I 
should  fear  a  translation  was  out  of  the  question.  I  see  he 
often  quotes  both  of  us  with  praise.  I  am  sure  I  should  like 
the  book  much,  if  I  could  read  it  straight  off  instead  of 
groaning  and  swearing  at  each  sentence.  I  have  not  yet  had 
time  to  read  your  Physiology  2  book,  except  one  chapter  ;  but  I 
have  just  re-read  your  book  on  Man's  Pla.ce>  etc.,  and  I  think 
I  admire  it  more  this  second  time  even  than  the  first.  I 
doubt  whether  you  will  ever  have  time,  but  if  ever  you  have, 
do  read  the  chapter  on  hybridism  in  the  new  edition  of  the 
Origin}  for  I  am  very  anxious  to  make  you  think  less 
seriously  on  that  difficulty.  I  have  improved  the  chapter  a 
good  deal,  I  think,  and  have  come  to  more  definite  views. 
Asa  Gray  and  Fritz  Muller  (the  latter  especially)  think 
that  the  new  facts  on  illegitimate  offspring  of  dimorphic 
plants,  throw  much  indirect  light  on  the  subject.  Now 
that  I  have  worked  up  domestic  animals,  I  am  convinced  of 
the  truth  of  the  Pallasian  '  view  of  loss  of  sterility  under 
domestication,  and  this  seems  to  me  to  explain  much.  But 
I  had  no  intention,  when  I  began  this  note,  of  running  on  at 
such  length  on  hybridism  ;  but  you  have  been  Objector- 
General  on  this  head. 

1  Generelle  Morphologic,  1866. 

2  Lessons  in  Elementary  Physiology,  1866. 

3  Fourth  Edit.  (1866). 
*  See  Letter  80. 


i864—  J  869]  IJUD-VARIATION  275 

To  T.  Rivers.1  Letter  195 

Down,  Dec.  23rd  [1866?]. 
I  do  not  know  whether  you  will  forgive  a  stranger  ad- 
dressing you.  My  name  may  possibly  be  known  to  you.  I 
am  now  writing  a  bouk  on  the  variation  of  animals  and  plants 
under  domestication  ;  and  there  is  one  little  piece  of  informa- 
tion which  it  is  more  likely  that  you  could  give  me  than 
any  man  in  the  world,  if  you  can  spare  half  an  hour  from 
your  professional  labours,  and  are  inclined  to  be  so  kind. 
I  am  collecting  all  accounts  of  what  some  call  "  sports,"  that 
is,  of  what  I  shall  call  "  bud-variations,"  i.e.  a  moss-rose 
suddenly  appearing  on  a  Provence  rose — a  nectarine  on  a 
peach,  etc.  Now,  what  I  want  to  know,  and  which  is  not 
likely  to  be  recorded  in  print,  is  whether  very  slight  differences, 
too  slight  to  be  worth  propagating,  thus  appear  suddenly  by 
buds.  As  every  one  knows,  in  raising  seedlings  you  may 
have  every  gradation  from  individuals  identical  with  the 
parent,  to  slight  varieties,  to  strongly  marked  varieties.  Now, 
does  this  occur  with  buds  or  do  only  rather  strongly  marked 
varieties  thus  appear  at  rare  intervals  of  time  by  buds?2  I 
should  be  most  grateful  for  information.  I  may  add  that  if 
you  have  observed  in  your  enormous  experience  any  remark- 
able "  bud-variations,"  and  could  spare  time  to  inform  me,  and 
allow  me  to  quote  them  on  your  authority,  it  would  be  the 
greatest  favour.  I  feel  sure  that  these  "  bud-variations  "  are 
most  interesting  to  any  one  endeavouring  to  make  out  what 
little  can  be  made  out  on  the  obscure  subject  of  variation. 

To  T.  Rivers.  Letter  196 

Down,  Jan.  7U1  [1867?]. 

I  thank  you  much  for  your  letter  and  the  parcel  of 
shoots.  The  case  of  the  yellow  plum  is  a  treasure,  and 
is  now  safely  recorded  on  your  authority  in  its  proper 
place,    in    contrast    with    A.    Knight's    case    of    the    yellow 

1  The  late  Mr.  Rivers,  of  Sawbridgeworth,  was  an  eminent  horticul- 
turist and  writer  on  horticulture.  For  another  letter  of  Mr.  Darwin's  to 
him  see  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  57. 

2  Mr.  Rivers  could  not  give  a  decided  answer,  but  he  did  not 
remember  to  have  seen  slight  bud-variations.  The  question  is  discussed 
in  Variation  under  Domestication,  Ed.  11.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  443. 


276  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  196  magnum  bonum  spurting  into  red.1  I  could  sec  no  difference 
in  the  shoots,  except  that  those  of  the  yellow  were  thicker, 
and  I  presume  that  this  is  merely  accidental  :  as  you  do 
not  mention  it,  I  further  presume  that  there  are  no  further 
differences-  in  leaves  or  flowers  of  the  two  plums.  I  am 
very  glad  to  hear  about  the  yellow  ash,  and  that  you 
yourself  have  seen  the  jessamine  case.  I  must  confess  that 
I  hardly  fully  believed  in  it ;  but  now  I  do,  and  very 
surprising  it  is. 

In  an  old  French  book,  published  in  Amsterdam  in 
1786  (I  think),  there  is  an  account,  apparently  authentic 
and  attested  by  the  writer  as  an  eye-witness,  of  hyacinth 
bulbs  of  two  colours  being  cut  in  two  and  grafted,  and 
they  sent  up  single  stalks  with  differently  coloured  flowers 
on  the  two  sides,  and  some  flowers  parti-coloured.  I  once 
thought  of  offering  £5  reward  in  the  Cottage  Gardener  for 
such  a  plant  ;  but  perhaps  it  would  seem  too  foolish.  No 
instructions  are  given  when  to  perform  the  operation  ;  I 
have  tried  two  or  three  times,  and  utterly  failed.  I  find 
that  I  have  a  grand  list  of  "  bud-variations,"  and  to-morrow 
shall  work  up  such  cases  as  I  have  about  rose-sports,  which 
seem  very  numerous,  and  which  I  see  you  state  to  occur 
comparatively  frequently. 

When  a  person  is  very  good-natured  he  gets  much 
pestered — a  discovery  which  I  daresay  you  have  made,  or 
anyhow  will  soon  make ;  for  I  do  want  very  much  to  know 
whether  you  have  sown  seed  of  any  moss-roses,  and  whether 
the  seedlings  were  moss-roses.2  Has  a  common  rose  produced 
by  seed  a  moss-rose  ? 

If  any  light  comes  to  you  about  very  slight  changes  in 
the  buds,  pray  have  the  kindness  to  illuminate  me.  I  have 
cases  of  seven  or  eight  varieties  of  the  peach  which  have 
produced  by  "  bud-variation  "  nectarines,  and  yet  only  one 
single  case  (in  France)  of  a  peach  producing  another  closely 
similar  peach  (but  later  in  ripening).  How  strange  it  is 
that  a  great  change  in  the  peach  should  occur  not  rarely 
and  slighter  changes  apparently  very  rarely!  How  strange 
that    no    case    seems    recorded    of   new    apples   or    pears  or 

1  See   Variation  under  Domestication,  Ed.  II.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  399. 

2  Moss-roses  can  be  raised  from  seed  (  Variation  under  Domestication, 
Ed.  11.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  405). 


1864-1869]  HACK  EL  277 

apricots  by  "  bud-variation  "  !     How  ignorant  we  are  !     But  Letter  196 
with    the    many    good    observers    now    living   our   children's 
children  will  be  less  ignorant,  and  that  is  a  comfort. 

To  T.  II.   Huxley.  Lett«  «97 

Down,  Jan.  7th  [1S67]. 
Very  many  thanks  for  your  letter,  which  has  told  me 
exactly  what  I  wanted  to  know.  I  shall  give  up  all 
thoughts  of  trying  to  get  the  book :  translated,  for  I  am 
well  convinced  that  it  would  be  hopeless  without  too  great 
an  outlay.  I  much  regret  this,  as  1  should  think  the  work 
would  be  useful,  and  I  am  sure  it  would  be  to  me,  as  I 
shall  never  be  able  to  wade  through  more  than  here  and 
there  a  page  of  the  original.  To  all  people  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  number  of  new  terms  would  be  a  great  evil. 
I  must  write  to  him.  I  suppose  you  know  his  address,  but 
in  case  you  do  not,  it  is  "to  care  of  Signor  Nicolaus 
Krohn,  Madeira."  I  have  sent  the  MS.  of  my  big  book,2 
and  horridly,  disgustingly  big  it  will  be,  to  the  printers,"  but 
I  do  not  suppose  it  will  be  published,  owing  to  Murray's 
idea  on  seasons,  till  next  November.  I  am  thinking  of  a 
chapter  on  Man,  as  there  has  lately  been  so  much  said 
on  Natural  Selection  in  relation  to  man.  I  have  not  seen 
the  Duke's3  (or  Dukelet's?  how  can  you  speak  so  of  a 
living  real  Duke?)  book,  but  must  get  it  from  Mudie,  as 
you  say  he  attacks  us. 

p.S. — Nature  never  made  species  mutually  sterile  by 
selection,  nor  will  men. 

To  E.  Hackel.  Letter  198 

Down,  Jan.  8th  [1S67]. 

I  received  some  weeks  ago  your  great  work  '  ;  I  have 
read  several  parts,  but  I  am  too  poor  a  German  scholar  and 
the  book  is  too  large  for  me  to  read  it  all.  I  cannot 
tell  you  how  much  I  regret  this,  for  I  am  sure  that  nearly 

1  Hacker's  Gcnerelle  Morphologie,  1866.     See  Life  and  Letters,  III., 
pp.  67,  68. 

3  The  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication,   1868. 

3  The  Reign  of  Law  (1867),  by  the  late   Duke  of  Argyll.     See  Lite 
and  Letters,    III.,  p.  65. 

4  Generelle  Morphologie,   1866. 


278  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  19S  the  whole  would  interest  me  greatly,  and  I  have  already 
found  several  parts  very  useful,  such  as  the  discussion  on 
cells  and  on  the  different  forms  of  reproduction.  I  feel  sure, 
after  considering  the  subject  deliberately  and  after  consulting 
with  Hux]ey,  that  it  would  be  hopeless  to  endeavour  to 
get  a  publisher  to  print  an  English  translation  ;  the  work 
is  too  profound  and  too  long  for  our  English  countrymen. 
The  number  of  new  terms  would  also,  I  am  sure,  tell 
much  against  its  sale  ;  and,  indeed,  I  wish  for  my  own  sake 
that  you  had  printed  a  glossary  of  all  the  new  terms  which 
you  use.  I  fully  expect  that  your  book  will  be  highly 
successful  in  Germany,  and  the  manner  in  which  you  often 
refer  to  me  in  your  text,  and  your  dedication  and  the 
title,  I  shall  always  look  at  as  one  of  the  greatest  honours1 
conferred  on  me  during  my  life. 

I  sincerely  hope  that  you  have  had  a  prosperous  expe- 
dition, and  have  met  with  many  new  and  interesting  animals. 
If  you  have  spare  time  I  should  much  like  to  hear  what  you 
have  been  doing  and  observing.  As  for  myself,  I  have  sent 
the  MS.  of  my  book  on  domestic  animals,  etc.,  to  the 
printers.  It  turns  out  to  be  much  too  large  ;  it  will  not  be 
published,  I  suppose,  until  next  November.  I  find  that  we 
have  discussed  several  of  the  same  subjects,  and  I  think 
we  agree  on  most  points  fairly  well.  I  have  lately  heard 
several  times  from  Fritz  Miiller,  but  he  seems  now  chiefly 
to  be  working  on  plants.  I  often  think  of  your  visit  to 
this  house,  which  I  enjoyed  extremely,  and  it  will  ever  be 
to  me  a  real  pleasure  to  remember  our  acquaintance.  From 
what  I  heard  in  London  I  think  you  made  many  friends 
there.  Shall  you  return  through  England  ?  If  so,  and  you 
can  spare  the  time,  we  shall  all  be  delighted  to  see  you 
here  again. 


1  As  regards  the  dedication  and  title  this  seems  a  strong  expression. 
The  title  is  "  Generelle  Morphologie  der  Organismen.  Allgemeine 
Grundzuge  der  organischen  Formen-Wissenschaft  mechanisch  begriindet 
durch  die  von  Charles  Darwin  reformirte  Uescendenz-Theorie."  The 
dedication  of  the  second  volume  is  "  Den  Begriindern  der  Descendenz- 
Theorie,  den  denkenden  Naturforschern,  Charles  Darwin,  Wolfgang 
Goethe,  Jean  Lamarck  widmet  diese  Grundzuge  der  Allgemeinen 
Entwickelungsgeschichte  in  vorziiglicher  Verehrung,  der  Verfasser." 


1864—1869]  BUD^-VARIATION  279 

To     T.  Rivers.  Letter  199 

Down,  Jan  nth  [1867?]. 

How  rich  and  valuable  a  letter  you  have  most  kindly  sent 
me  !  The  case  of  Baronne  Pr&vost}  with  its  different  shoots, 
foliage,  spines,  and  flowers,  will  be  grand  to  quote.  I  am 
extremely  glad  to  hear  about  the  seedling  moss-roses.  That 
case  of  a  seedling  like  a  Scotch  rose,  unless  you  are  sure  that 
no  Scotch  rose  grew  near  (and  it  is  unlikely  that  you  can 
remember),  must,  one  would  think,  have  been  a  cross. 

I  have  little  compunction  for  being  so  troublesome — not 
more  than  a  grand  Inquisitor  has  in  torturing  a  heretic — for 
am  I  not  doing  a  real  good  public  service  in  screwing  crumbs 
of  knowledge  out  of  your  wealth  of  information  ? 

P.S.  Since  the  above  was  written  I  have  read  your  paper 
in  the  Gardeners'  Chronicle  :  it  is  admirable,  and  will,  I  know, 
be  a  treasure  to  me.  I  did  not  at  all  know  how  strictly  the 
character  of  so  many  flowers  is  inherited. 

On  my  honour,  when  I  began  this  note  I  had  no  thought 
of  troubling  you  with  a  question  ;  but  you  mention  one  point 
so  interesting,  and  which  I  have  had  occasion  to  notice,  that 
I  must  supplicate  for  a  few  more  facts  to  quote  on  your 
authority.  You  say  that  you  have  one  or  two  seedling 
peaches 2  approaching  very  nearly  to  thick-fleshed  almonds 
(I  know  about  A.  Knight  and  the  Italian  hybrid  cases). 
Now,  did  any  almond  grow  near  your  mother  peach  ?  Hut 
especially  I  want  to  know  whether  you  remember  what  shape 
the  stone  was,  whether  flattened  like  that  of  an  almond  ;  this, 
botanically,  seems  the  most  important  distinction.  I  earnestly 
wish  to  quote  this.     Was  the  flesh  at  all  sweet  ? 

Forgive  if  you  can. 

Have  you  kept  these  seedling  peaches  ?  if  you  would  give 
me  next  summer  a  fruit,  I  want  to  have  it  engraved. 

1  See  Variation  under  Domestication,  Ed.  II.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  406.  Mr. 
Rivers  had  a  new  French  rose  with  a  delicate  smooth  stem,  pale  glaucous 
leaves  and  striped  flesh-coloured  flowers  ;  on  branches  thus  charac- 
terised there  appeared  "  the  famous  old  rose  called  Baronne  Prevost" 
with  its  stout  thorny  stem  and  uniform  rich-coloured  double  flowers. 

2  "On  raising  Peaches,  Nectarines,  and  other  Fruits  from  Seed."  By 
Thomas  Rivers,  Sawbridgeworth. — Gard.  Chron.,  1866,  p.  731. 


28o  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  200  To  I.  Anderson-Henry.1 

May  22nd  [1867]. 
You  arc  so  kind  as  to  offer  to  lend  me  Maillet's 2  work, 
which  I  have  often  heard  of,  but  never  seen.  I  should  like 
to  have  aJook  at  it,  and  would  return  it  to  you  in  a  short 
time.  I  am  bound  to  read  it,  as  my  former  friend  and  present 
bitter  enemy  Owen  generally  ranks  mc  and  Maillet  as  a  pair 
of  equal  fools. 

Letter  201  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  April  4th  [1867]. 

You  have  done  mc  a  very  great  service  in  sending  mc  the 
pages  of  the  Farmer.  I  do  not  know  whether  you  wish  it 
returned  ;  but  I  will  keep  it  unless  I  hear  that  you  want 
it.  Old  I.  Anderson-Henry  passes  a  magnificent  but  rather 
absurd  culogium  on  me  ;  but  the  point  of  such  extreme  value 
in  my  eyes  is  Mr.  Traill's 3  statement  that  he  made  a  mottled 
mongrel  by  cutting  eyes  through  and  joining  two  kinds  of 
potatoes.4  1  have  written  to  him  for  full  information,  and 
then  I  will  set  to  work  on  a  similar  trial.  It  would  prove,  I 
think,   to  demonstration    that    propagation  by  buds  and  by 

1  Isaac  Anderson-Henry,  of  Edinburgh  (1799? — 1884),  was  educated 
as  a  lawyer,  but  devoted  himself  to  horticulture,  more  particularly  to 
experimental  work  on  grafting  and  hybridisation.  As  President  of  the 
Botanical  Society  of  Edinburgh  he  delivered  two  addresses  on  "  Hybridi- 
sation or  Crossing  of  Plants,"  of  which  a  full  abstract  was  published  in 
the  Gardeners'  Chronicle,  April  13th,  1867,  p.  379,  and  Dec.  21st,  1867, 
p.  1296.     See  obit,  notice  in  Gardener?  Chronicle,  Sept.  27th,  1884,  p.  400. 

*  For  De  Maillet  see  Mr.  Huxley's  review  on  The  Origin  of  Species 
in  the  Westminster  Review,  i860,  reprinted  in  Lay  Sermons,  1870,  p.  314. 
De  Maillet's  evolutionary  views  were  published  after  his  death  in  1748 
under  the  name  of  Telliamed  (De  Maillet  spelt  backwards). 

3  Mr.  Traill's  results  are  given  at  p.  420  of  Animals  and  Plants, 
Ed.  II.,  Vol.  I.  In  the  Life  and  Letters  of  G.  J.  Romanes,  1896,  an 
interesting  correspondence  is  published  with  Mr.  Darwin  on  this  subject. 
The  plan  of  the  experiments  suggested  to  Romanes  was  to  raise  seedlings 
from  graft -hybrids  :  if  the  seminal  offspring  of  plants  hybridised  by 
grafting  should  show  the  hybrid  character,  it  would  be  striking  evidence 
in  favour  of  pangenesis.     The  experiment,  however,  did  not  succeed. 

4  For  an  account  of  similar  experiments  now  in  progress,  see  a  "  Note 
on  some  Grafting  Experiments  "  by  R.  Biffen  in  the  Annals  of  Botany, 
Vol.  XVI.,  p.  174,  1902. 


iS64— 1869]  PANGENESIS  28 1 

the    sexual    elements    are    essentially    the    same    process,    as  Letter  201 
pangenesis   in    the    most    solemn    manner    declares    to    be 
the  case. 

To    T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  202 

Down,  June  12th  [1S67  ?]. 

We  come  up  on  Saturday,  the  1  5th,  for  a  week.  I  want 
much  to  sec  you  for  a  short  time  to  talk  about  my  youngest 
boy  and  the  School  of  Mines.  1  know  it  is  rather  unreason- 
able, but  you  must  let  me  come  a  little  after  10  o'clock  on 
Sunday  morning,  the  16th.  If  in  any  way  inconvenient,  send 
me  a  line  to  "6,  Queen  Anne  Street,  W.  ";  but  if  I  do  not 
hear,  I  will  (stomacJio  volente)  call,  but  I  will  not  stay  very 
long  and  spoil  your  whole  morning  as  a  holiday.  Will  you 
turn  two  or  three  times  in  your  mind  this  question  :  what  I 
called  pangenesis  means  that  each  cell  throws  off  an  atom  of 
its  contents  or  a  gcmmule,  and  that  these  aggregated  form 
the  true  ovule  or  bud,  etc.  ?  Now  I  want  to  know  whether 
I  could  not  invent  a  better  word.  Cyttaroge)iesisx—i.e.  ce.ll- 
genesis — is  more  true  and  expressive,  but  long.  Atomogenesis 
sounds  rather  better,  I  think,  but  an  "  atom  "  is  an  object 
which  cannot  be  divided  ;  and  the  term  might  refer  to  the 
origin  of  atoms  of  inorganic  matter.  I  believe  I  like  pangenesis 
best,  though  so  indefinite  ;  and  though  my  wife  says  it  sounds 
wicked,  like  pantheism  ;  but  I  am  so  familiar  now  with  this 
word,  that  I  cannot  judge.     I  supplicate  you  to  help  me. 

To  A.  R.  Wallace.  Letter  205 

Down,   Oct,   1 2th  and  13th  [1867]. 

I  ordered  the  journal 2  a  long  time  ago,  but  by  some 
oversight  received  it  only  yesterday,  and  read  it.  You  will 
think  my  praise  not  worth  having,  from  being  so  indiscrimi- 
nate ;  but  if  I  am  to  speak  the  truth,  I  must  say  I  admire 
every  word.  You  have  just  touched  on  the  points  which  I 
particularly  wished  to  see  noticed.  I  am  glad  you  had  the 
courage  to  take  up  Angnzcum3  after  the  Duke's  attack;  for 

1  From  KvTTapos,  a  bee's-cell :  cytogenesis  would  be  a  natural  form 
of  the  word  from  kvtos. 

2  Quarterly  Journal  of  Science,  Oct.,  1867,  p.  472.     A  review  of  the 
Duke  of  Argyll's  Reign  of  Lam. 

'■'  Angracum  sesquipedale,  a  Madagascar!  orchid,  with  a  whiplike 
nectary,  11  to  12  inches  in  length,  which,  according  to  Darwin  (Fertilisa- 


2&2  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  203  I  believe  the  principle  in  this  case  may  be  widely  applied.  I 
like  the  figure,  but  I  wish  the  artist  had  drawn  a  better  sphinx. 
With  respect  to  beauty,  your  remarks  on  hideous  objects  and 
on  flowers  not  being  made  beautiful  except  when  of  practical 
use  to  them,  strike  me  as  very  good.  On  this  one  point  of 
beauty  I  can  hardly  think  that  the  Duke  was  quite  candid. 
I  have  used  in  the  concluding  paragraph  of  my  present  book 
precisely  the  same  argument  as  you  have,  even  bringing  in 
the  bull-dog,1  with  respect  to  variations  not  having  been 
specially  ordained.  Your  metaphor  of  the  river2  is  new  to 
me,  and  admirable  ;  but  your  other  metaphor,  in  which  you 
compare  classification  and  complex  machines,  does  not  seem 
to  me  quite  appropriate,  though  I  cannot  point  out  what 
seems  deficient.  The  point  which  seems  to  me  strong  is  that 
all  naturalists  admit  that  there  is  a  natural  classification,  and 
it  is  this  which  descent  explains.  I  wish  you  had  insisted  a 
little  more  against  the  North  British*  on  the  reviewer  assuming 

tion  of  Orchids,  Ed.  II.,  p.  163),  is  adapted  to  the  visits  of  a  moth  with 
a  proboscis  of  corresponding  length.  He  points  out  that  there  is  no 
difficulty  in  believing  in  the  existence  of  such  a  moth  as  F.  M  filler  has 
described  (Nature,  1873,  p.  223) — a  Brazilian  sphinx-moth  with  a  trunk  of 
10  to  11  inches  in  length.  Moreover,  Forbes  has  given  evidence  to  show 
that  such  an  insect  does  exist  in  Madagascar  (Nature,  VIII.,  1873,  p.  121). 
The  case  of  Angrcecum  was  put  forward  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll  as  being 
necessarily  due  to  the  personal  contrivance  of  the  Deity.  Mr.  Wallace 
(p.  476)  shows  that  both  proboscis  and  nectary  might  be  increased  in 
length  by  means  of  Natural  Selection.  It  may  be  added  that  Hermann 
Midler  has  shown  good  grounds  for  believing  that  mutual  specialisation 
of  this  kind  is  beneficial  both  to  insect  and  plant. 

1  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants,  Ed.  I.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  431  :  "Did 
He  cause  the  frame  and  mental  qualities  of  the  dog  to  vary  in  order  that 
a  breed  might  be  formed  of  indomitable  ferocity,  with  jaws  fitted  to  pin 
down  the  bull  for  man's  brutal  sport  ?  " 

2  See  Wallace,  op.  cit.,  pp.  477-8.  He  imagines  an  observer  examining 
a  great  river-system,  and  finding  everywhere  adaptations  which  reveal  the 
design  of  the  Creator.  "  He  would  see  special  adaptation  to  the  wants 
of  man  in  broad,  quiet,  navigable  rivers,  through  fertile  alluvial  plains 
that  would  support  a  large  population,  while  the  rocky  streams  and 
mountain  torrents  were  confined  to  those  sterile  regions  suitable  only  for 
a  small  population  of  shepherds  and  herdsmen." 

3  At  p.  485  Mr.  Wallace  deals  with  Fleeming  Jenkin's  review  in  the 
North  British  Review,  1867.  The  review  strives  to  show  that  there  are 
strict  limits  to  variation,  since  the  most  rigorous  and  long-continued 
selection  does  not  indefinitely  increase  such  a  quality  as  the  fleetness 


i864— 1869]  REIGN    OF    LAW  283 

that  each  variation  which  appears  is  a  strongly  marked  Letter  203 
one  ;  though  by  implication  you  have  made  this  very  plain. 
Nothing  in  your  whole  article  has  struck  me  more  than  your 
view  with  respect  to  the  limit  of  flcetness  in  the  racehorse 
and  other  such  cases  :  I  shall  try  and  quote  you  on  this  head 
in  the  proof  of  my  concluding  chapter.  I  quite  missed  this 
explanation,  though  in  the  case  of  wheat  I  hit  upon  something 
analogous.  I  am  glad  you  praise  the  Duke's  book,  for  I  was 
much  struck  with  it.  The  part  about  flight  seemed  to  me  at 
first  very  good  ;  but  as  the  wing  is  articulated  by  a  ball-and- 
socket  joint,  I  suspect  the  Duke  would  find  it  very  difficult  to 
give  any  reason  against  the  belief  that  the  wing  strikes  the 
air  more  or  less  obliquely.  I  have  been  very  glad  to  see  your 
article  and  the  drawing  of  the  butterfly  in  Science  Gossip. 
By  the  way,  I  cannot  but  think  that  you  push  protection  too 
far  in  some  cases,  as  with  the  stripes  on  the  tiger.  I  have  also 
this  morning  read  an  excellent  abstract  in  the  Gardeners' 
Chronicle  of  your  paper  on  nests.1  I  was  not  by  any  means 
fully  converted  by  your  letter,  but  I  think  now  I  am  so  ;  and 
I  hope  it  will  be  published  somewhere  in  extenso.  It  strikes 
me  as  a  capital  generalisation,  and  appears  to  me  even  more 
original  than  it  did  at  first.  .  .  . 

I  have  finished  Volume  I.  of  my  book  [Variation  of 
Animals  and  Plants'],  and  I  hope  the  whole  will  be  out  by 
the  end  of  November.  If  you  have  the  patience  to  read  it 
through,  which  is  very  doubtful,  you  will  find,  I  think,  a  large 
accumulation  of  facts  which  will  be  of  service  to  you  in 
future  papers  ;  and  they  could  not  be  put  to  better  use,  for 
you  certainly  are  a  master  in  the  noble  art  of  reasoning. 

To  T.   H.   Huxley.  Letter  204 

Down,  Oct.   3rd  [no  date]. 
I  know  you  have  no  time  for  speculative  correspondence  ; 
and  I  did  not  in  the  least  expect  an  answer  to  my  last.     But 
I  am  very  glad  to  have  had  it,  for  in  my  eclectic  work  the 
opinions  of  the  few  good  men  are  of  great  value  to  me. 

of  a  racehorse.  On  this  Mr.  Wallace  remarks  that  "this  argument  fails 
to  meet  the  real  question,"  which  is,  not  whether  indefinite  change  is 
possible,  "  but  whether  such  differences  as  do  occur  in  nature  could  have 
been  produced  by  the  accumulation  of  variations  by  selection." 

1  An  abstract  of  a  paper  on  "  Birds'  Nests  and  Plumage,"  read  before 
the  British  Association  :  see  Gard.  Chron.,  1867,  p.  1047. 


284  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  204  I  knew,  of  course,  of  the  Cuvicrian  view  of  classification  ; ' 
but  I  think  that  most  naturalists  look  for  something  further, 
and  search  for  "  the  natural  system," — "  for  the  plan  on  which 
the  Creator  has  worked,"  etc.,  etc.  It  is  this  further  element 
which  I  believe  to  be  simply  genealogical. 

But  I  should  be  very  glad  to  have  your  answer  (either 
when  we  meet  or  by  note)  to  the  following  case,  taken  by 
itself,  and  not  allowing  yourself  to  look  any  further  than  to 
the  point  in  question.  Grant  all  races  of  man  descended 
from  one  race — grant  that  all  the  structure  of  each  race  of 
man  were  perfectly  known — grant  that  a  perfect  table  of  the 
descent  of  each  race  was  perfectly  known — grant  all  this,  and 
then  do  you  not  think  that  most  would  prefer  as  the  best 
classification,  a  genealogical  one,  even  if  it  did  occasionally 
put  one  race  not  quite  so  near  to  another,  as  it  would  have 
stood,  if  collocated  by  structure  alone?  Generally,  we  may 
safely  presume,  that  the  resemblance  of  races  and  their 
pedigrees  would  go  together. 

I  should  like  to  hear  what  you  would  say  on  this  purely 
theoretical  case. 

It  might  be  asked  why  is  development  so  all-potent  in 
classification's  I  fully  admit  it  is?  I  believe  it  is  because 
it  depends  on,  and  best  betrays,  genealogical  descent  ;  but 
this  is  too  large  a  point  to  enter  on. 

Letter  205  To  C.  Lyell. 

Down,  Dec.  7th  [1867]. 

I  send  by  this  post  the  article  in  the  Victorian  Institute 
with  respect  to  frogs'  spawn.  If  you  remember  in  your  boy- 
hood having  ever  tried  to  take  a  small  portion  out  of  the 
water,  you  will  remember  that  it  is  most  difficult.  I  believe 
all  the  birds  in  the  world  might  alight  every  day  on  the  spawn 
of  batrachians,  and  never  transport  a  single  ovum.  With 
respect  to  the  young  of  molluscs,  undoubtedly  if  the  bird  to 
which  they  were  attached  alighted  on  the  sea,  they  would 
be  instantly  killed  ;  but  a  land-bird  would,  I  should  think, 
never  alight  except  under  dire  necessity  from  fatigue.     This, 

1  Cuvier  proved  that  "animals  cannot  be  arranged  in  a  single  series, 
but  that  there  are  several  distinct  plans  of  organisation  to  be  observed 
among  them,  no  one  of  which,  in  its  highest  and  most  complicated 
modification,  leads  to  any  of  the  others"  (Huxley's  Darwiniana,  p.  215). 


1864-  -1S69]  GRAFT-HYBRIDS  285 

however,  has  been  observed  near  Heligoland  '  ;  and  land-birds,  Letter  205 
after  resting  for  a  time  on  the  tranquil  sea,  have  been  seen  to 
rise  and  continue  their  flight.  I  cannot  give  you  the  reference 
about  Heligoland  without  much  searching.  This  alighting  on 
the  sea  may  aid  you  in  your  unexpected  difficulty  of  the 
too-easy  diffusion  of  land-molluscs  by  the  agency  of  birds. 
I  much  enjoyed  my  morning's  talk  with  you. 


To  F.  Hildebrand.  Letter  206 

Down,  Jan.   5th  [1868]. 

I  thank  you  for  your  letter,  which  has  quite  delighted  me. 
I  sincerely  congratulate  you  on  your  success  in  making  a 
graft-hybrid,2  for  I  believe  it  to  be  a  most  important  observa- 
tion. I  trust  that  you  will  publish  full  details  on  this  subject 
and  on  the  direct  action  of  pollen  3 :  I  hope  that  you  will  be 
so  kind  as  to  send  me  a  copy  of  your  paper.  If  I  had  suc- 
ceeded in  making  a  graft-hybrid  of  the  potato,  I  had  intended 
to  raise  seedlings  from  the  graft-hybrid  and  from  the  two 
parent-forms  (excluding  insects)  and  carefully  compare  the 
offspring.  This,  however,  would  be  difficult  on  account  of 
the  sterility  and  variability  of  the  potato.  When  in  the 
course  of  a  few  months  you  receive  my  second  volume,4  you 
will  see  why  I  think  these  two  subjects  so  important.  They 
have  led  me  to  form  a  hypothesis  on  the  various  forms  of  re- 
production, development,  inheritance,  etc.,  which  hypothesis, 
I  believe,  will  ultimately  be  accepted,  though  how  it  will  be 
now  received   I   am  very  doubtful. 

Once  again  I  congratulate  you  on  your  success. 

1  Instances  are  recorded  by  Gatke  in  his  Heligoland  as  an  Ornitho- 
logical Observatory  (translated  by  Rudolph  Rosenstock,  Edinburgh, 
1895)  of  land-birds,  such  as  thrushes,  buntings,  finches,  etc.,  resting  for 
a  short  time  on  the  surface  of  the  water.  The  author  describes  observa- 
tions made  by  himself  about  two  miles  west  of  Heligoland  (p.  129). 

2  Prof.  Hildebrand's  paper  is  in  the  Bot.  Zeilung,  1868  :  the  substance 
is  given  in  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants,  Ed.  II.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  420. 

3  See  Prof.  Hildebrand,  Bot.  Zeitung,  1868,  and  Variation  of  Animals 
and  Plants,  Ed.  11.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  430.  A  yellow-grained  maize  was  fertilised 
with  pollen  from  a  brown-grained  one  ;  the  result  was  that  ears  were 
produced  bearing  both  yellow  and  dark-coloured  grains. 

4  This  sentence  may  be  paraphrased—"  When  you  receive  my  book 
and  read  the  second  volume." 


2S6  EVOLUTION  ['hap.  IV 

Letter  207  To  J.   D.    Hooker. 

Down,  Jan.  6th  [1868]. 

Many  thanks  about  names  of  plants,  synonyms,  and  male 
flowers — all  that  I  wanted. 

1  have  been  glad  to  see  Watson's  letter,  and  am  sorry  he 
is  a  renegade  about  Natural  Selection.  It  is,  as  you  say, 
characteristic,  with  the  final   fling  at  you. 

His  difficulty  about  the  difference  between  the  two  genera 
of  St.  Helena  Umbellifcrs  is  exactly  the  same  as  what  Nageli 
has  urged  in  an  able  pamphlet,1  and  who  in  consequence 
maintains  that  there  is  some  unknown  innate  tendency  to 
progression  in  all  organisms.  I  said  in  a  letter  to  him  that 
of  course  I  could  not  in  the  least  explain  such  cases  ;  but 
that  they  did  not  seem  to  me  of  overwhelming  force,  as  long 
as  we  are  quite  ignorant  of  the  meaning  of  such  structures, 
whether  they  are  of  any  service  to  the  plants,  or  inevitable 
consequences  of  modifications  in  other  parts. 

I  cannot  understand  what  Watson  means  by  the  "  counter- 
balance in  nature "  to  divergent  variation.  There  is  the 
counterbalance  of  crossing,  of  which  my  present  work  daily 
leads  me  to  see  more  and  more  the  efficiency  ;  but  I  suppose 
he  means  something  very  different.  Further,  I  believe  varia- 
tion to  be  divergent  solely  because  diversified  forms  can  best 
subsist.     But  you  will  think  me  a  bore. 

I  enclose  half  a  letter  from  F.  Midler  (which  please  return) 
for  the  chance  of  your  liking  to  see  it  ;  though  I  have  doubted 
much  about  sending  it,  as  you  are  so  overworked.  I  imagine 
the  Solannm-\\ke  (lower  is  curious. 

1  heard  yesterday  to  my  joy  that  Dr.  Hildcbrand  has  been 
experimenting  on  the  direct  action  of  pollen  on  the  mother- 
plant  with  success.  He  has  also  succeeded  in  making  a  true 
graft-hybrid  between  two  varieties  of  potatoes,  in  which  I 
failed.  I  look  at  this  as  splendid  for  pangenesis,  as  being 
strong  evidence  that  bud-reproduction  and  seminal  repro- 
duction do  not  essentially  differ. 

My  book  is  horribly  delayed,  owing  to  the  accursed 
index-maker.2     I  have  almost  forgotten  it ! 

1  "  Ueber  Entstehung  und  Begriff  der  naturhist.  Art."  Site,  der  K. 
Bayer.  A  had.  der  Wiss.  zu  Miinchcn,  1865.  Some  of  Niigeli's  points 
are  discussed  in  the  Origin,  Ed.  v.,  p.  151. 

1  Darwin  thoroughly  appreciated  the  good  work  put  into  the  index  of 
The  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants. 


i864— 1869]  STERILITY    OF    HYBRIDS  287 

To   T.    H.    Huxley.  Letter  208 

Down,  Jan.  30th   [1868]. 

Most  sincere  thanks  for  your  kind  congratulations.  I 
never  received  a  note  from  you  in  my  life  without  pleasure  ; 
but  whether  this  will  be  so  after  you  have  read  pangenesis,1 
I  am  very  doubtful.  Oh  Lord,  what  a  blowing  up  I  may 
receive  !  I  write  now  partly  to  say  that  you  must  not  think 
of  looking  at  my  book  till  the  summer,  when  I  hope  you  will 
read  pangenesis,  for  I  care  for  your  opinion  on  such  a  subject 
more  than  for  that  of  any  other  man  in  Europe.  You  are  so 
terribly  sharp-sighted  and  so  confoundedly  honest  !  But  to  the 
day  of  my  death  I  will  always  maintain  that  you  have  been 
too  sharp-sighted  on  hybridism ;  and  the  chapter  on  the 
subject  in  my  book  I  should  like  you  to  read  :  not  that,  as  I 
fear,  it  will  produce  any  good  effect,  and  be  hanged  to  you. 

I  rejoice  that  your  children  are  all  pretty  well.  Give 
Mrs.  Huxley  the  enclosed,2  and  ask  her  to  look  out  when  one 
of  her  childien  is  struggling  and  just  going  to  burst  out  cryh.L;. 
A  dear  young  lady  near  here  plagued  a  very  young  child  for 
my  sake,  till  it  cried,  and  saw  the  eyebrows  for  a  second  or 
two  beautifully  oblique,  just  before  the  torrent  of  tears  began. 

The  sympathy  of  all  our  friends  about  George's  success  (it 
is  the  young  Herald) 3  has  been  a  wonderful  pleasure  to  us. 
George  has  not  slaved  himself,  which  makes  his  success  the 
more  satisfactory.  Farewell,  my  dear  Huxley,  and  do  not  kill 
yourself  with  work. 

The  following  group  of  letters  deals  with  the  problem  of  the  causes  of 
the  sterility  of  hybrids.  Mr.  Darwin's  final  view  is  given  in  the  Origin, 
sixth  edition  (p.  3S4,  edit.  1900).  He  acknowledges  that  it  would  be 
advantageous  to  two  incipient  species,  if  by  physiological  isolation  due 
to  mutual  sterility,  they  could  be  kept  from  blending  :  but  he  continues, 
"  After  mature  reflection  it  seems  to  me  that  this  could  not  have  been 
effected  through  Natural  Selection."    And  finally  he  concludes  (p.  386)  :— 

"  But  it  would  be  superfluous  to  discuss  this  question  in  detail  ;  for 
with  plants  we  have  conclusive  evidence  that  the  sterility  of  crossed 
species  must  be  due  to  some  principle  quite  independent  of  Natural 
Selection.      Both    Gartner  and   Kolreuter  have  proved   that    in    genera 

1  In  Vol.  II.  of  A 111 'mals  and  Plants,  186S. 

2  Queries  on  Expression. 

3  His  son  George  was  Second  Wrangler  in  1868  ;  as  a  boy  he  was  an 
enthusiast  in  heraldry. 


288  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

including  numerous  species,  a  series  can  be  formed  from  species  which 
when  crossed  yield  fewer  and  fewer  seeds,  to  species  which  never  produce 
a  single  seed,  but  yet  are  affected  by  the  pollen  of  certain  other  species, 
for  the  germen  swells.  It  is  here  manifestly  impossible  to  select  the 
more  sterile  individuals,  which  have  already  ceased  to  yield  seeds  ;  so 
that  this  acme  of  sterility,  when  the  germen  alone  is  affected,  cannot 
have  been  gained  through  selection  ;  and  from  the  laws  governing  the 
various  grades  of  sterility  being  so  uniform  throughout  the  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms,  we  may  infer  that  the  cause,  whatever  it  may  be,  is 
the  same  or  nearly  the  same  in  all  cases." 

Mr.  Wallace,  on  the  other  hand,  still  adheres  to  his  view  :  see  his 
Darwinism,  1889,  p.  174,  and  for  a  more  recent  statement  see  p.  292, 
note  1,  Letter  211,  and  p.  299. 

The  discussion  of  1868  began  with  a  letter  from  Mr.  Wallace,  written 
towards  the  end  of  February,  giving  his  opinion  on  the  Variation  of 
Animals  and  Plants  ;  the  discussion  on  the  sterility  of  hybrids  is  at 
p.  185,  Vol.   II.  of  the  first  edition. 

Letler  2°9  A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin. 

Feb.  1868. 

The  only  parts  I  have  yet  met  with  where  I  somewhat 
differ  from  your  views,  are  in  the  chapter  on  the  causes  of 
variability,  in  which  I  think  several  of  your  arguments  are 
unsound  :  but  this  is  too  long  a  subject  to  go  into  now. 
Also,  I  do  not  see  your  objection  to  sterility  between  allied 
species  having  been  aided  by  Natural  Selection.  It  appears 
to  me  that,  given  a  differentiation  of  a  species  into  two  forms, 
each  of  which  was  adapted  to  a  special  sphere  of  existence, 
every  slight  degree  of  sterility  would  be  a  positive  advantage, 
not  to  the  individuals  who  were  sterile,  but  to  each  form.  If 
you  work  it  out,  and  suppose  the  two  incipient  species  a  .  .  .  b 
to  be  divided  into  two  groups,  one  of  which  contains  those 
which  are  fertile  when  the  two  are  crossed,  the  other  being 
slightly  sterile,  you  will  find  that  the  latter  will  certainly 
supplant  the  former  in  the  struggle  for  existence  ;  remem- 
bering that  you  have  shown  that  in  such  a  cross  the 
offspring  would  be  more  vigorous  than  the  pure  breed,  and 
therefore  would  certainly  soon  supplant  them,  and  as  these 
would  not  be  so  well  adapted  to  any  special  sphere  of 
existence  as  the  pure  species  a  and  b,  they  would  certainly  in 
their  turn  give  way  to  a  and  b. 


1864— 1869]  STERILITY   OF   HYBRIDS  289 

To  A.  R.  Wallace.  Letter  210 

Feb.  27th  [1868]. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  to  hear,  at  some  future  day,  your 
criticisms  on  the  "  causes  of  variability."  Indeed,  I  feel  sure 
that  I  am  right  about  sterility  and  Natural  Selection.  Two 
of  my  grown-up  children  who  are  acute  reasoners  have  two 
or  three  times  at  intervals  tried  to  prove  me  wrong ;  and 
when  your  letter  came  they  had  another  try,  but  ended  by 
coming  back  to  my  side.  I  do  not  quite  understand  your 
case,  and  we  think  that  a  word  or  two  is  misplaced.  I  wish 
some  time  you  would  consider  the  case  under  the  following 
point  of  view.  If  sterility  is  caused  or  accumulated  through 
Natural  Selection,  then,  as  every  degree  exists  up  to  absolute 
barrenness,  Natural  Selection  must  have  the  power  of 
increasing  it.  Now  take  two  species  A  and  B,  and  assume 
that  they  are  (by  any  means)  half-sterile,  i.e.,  produce  half  the 
full  number  of  offspring.  Now  try  and  make  (by  Natural 
Selection)  A  and  B  absolutely  sterile  when  crossed,  and  you 
will  find  how  difficult  it  is.  I  grant,  indeed  it  is  certain,  that 
the  degree  of  the  sterility  of  the  individuals  of  A  and  B  will 
vary  ;  but  any  such  extra-sterile  individuals  of,  we  will  say  A, 
if  they  should  hereafter  breed  with  other  individuals  of  A,  will 
bequeath  no  advantage  to  their  progeny,  by  which  these 
families  will  tend  to  increase  in  number  over  other  families  of 
A,  which  are  not  more  sterile  when  crossed  with  B.  But  I  do 
not  know  that  I  have  made  this  any  clearer  than  in  the 
chapter  in  my  book.  It  is  a  most  difficult  bit  of  reasoning, 
which  I  have  gone  over  and  over  again  on  paper  with 
diagrams.1 

A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  211 

March   1st,   1868. 

I  beg  to  enclose  what  appears  to  me  a  demonstration  on 
your  own  principles,  that  Natural  Selection  could  produce 
sterility  of  hybrids.  If  it  does  not  convince  you,  I  shall  be 
glad  if  you  will  point  out  where  the  fallacy  lies.  I  have  taken 
the  two  cases  of  a  slight  sterility  overcoming  perfect  fertility, 
and  of  a  perfect  sterility  overcoming  a  partial  fertility, — the 
beginning  and  end  of  the  process.  You  admit  that  variations 
in  fertility  and  sterility  occur,  and  I  think  you  will  also  admit 

1  This  letter  appeared  in  Life  and  Letters ;  III.,  p.  80. 

19 


2QO  1   VOLUTION  [Chap.IV 

Letter  211  that  if  I  demonstrate  that  a  considerable  amount  of  sterility 
would  be  advantageous  to  a  variety,  that  is  sufficient  proof 
that  the  slightest  variation  in  that  direction  would  be  useful 
also,  and  would  go  on  accumulating. 

1.  Let  there  be  a  species  which  has  varied  into  two  forms, 
each  adapted  to  existing  J  conditions  better  than  the  parent 
form,  which  they  supplant. 

2.  If  these  two  forms,  which  arc  supposed  to  co-exist  in 
the  same  district,  do  not  intercross,  Natural  Selection  will 
accumulate  favourable  variations,  till  they  become  sufficiently 
well  adapted  to  their  conditions  of  life  and  form  two  allied 
species. 

3.  But  if  these  two  forms  freely  intercross  with  each  other 
and  produce  hybrids  which  are  also  quite  fertile  inter  se,  then 
the  formation  of  the  two  distinct  races  or  species  will  be  retarded 
or  perhaps  entirely  prevented  ;  for  the  offspring  of  the  crossed 
unions  will  be  more  vigorous  owing  to  the  cross,  although  less 
adapted  to  their  conditions  of  life  than  either  of  the  pure 
breeds.2 

4.  Now  let  a  partial  sterility  of  some  individuals  of  these 
two  forms  arise  when  they  intercross  ;  and  as  this  would 
probably  be  due  to  some  special  conditions  of  life,  we  may 
fairly  suppose  it  to  arise  in  some  definite  portion  of  the  area 
occupied  by  the  two  forms. 

5.  The  result  is  that  in  this  area  hybrids  will  not  increase 
so  rapidly  as  before  ;  and  as  by  the  terms  of  the  problem  the 
two  pure  forms  are  better  suited  to  the  conditions  of  life  than 
the  hybrids,  they  will  tend  to  supplant  the  latter  altogether 
whenever  the  struggle  for  existence  becomes  severe. 

6.  We  may  fairly  suppose,  also,  that  as  soon  as  any 
sterility  appears  under  natural  conditions,  it  will  be  accom- 
panied by  some  disinclination  to  cross-unions  ;  and  this  will 
further  diminish  the  production  of  hybrids. 

7.  In  the  other  part  of  the  area,  however,  where  hybridism 

1  "  Existing  conditions,"  means  of  course  new  conditions  which  have 
now  come  into  existence.  And  the  "  two  "  being  both  better  adapted  than 
the  parent  form,  means  that  they  are  better  adapted  each  to  a  special 
environment  in  the  same  area— as  one  to  damp,  another  to  dry  places  ; 
one  to  woods,  another  to  open  grounds,  etc.,  etc.,  as  Darwin  had  already 
explained.     A.  R.  W.  (1899). 

2  After  "  pure  breeds,"  add  "  because  less  specialised."  A.  R.  W.  (1899). 


i864— 1869]  STERILITY  OF   HYBRIDS  291 

occurs  unchecked,   hybrids   of  various  degrees  will  soon  far  Letter  211 
outnumber  the  parent  or  pure  form. 

8.  The  first  result,  then,  of  a  partial  sterility  of  crosses 
appearing  in  one  part  of  the  area  occupied  by  the  two  forms, 
will  be,  that  the  great  majority  of  the  individuals  will  there 
consist  of  the  pure  forms  only,  while  in  the  rest  of  the  area 
these  will  be  in  a  minority, — which  is  the  same  as  saying,  that 
the  new  sterile  or  physiological  variety  of  the  two  forms  will 
be  better  suited  to  the  conditions  of  existence  than  the 
remaining  portion  which  has  not  varied  physiologically. 

9.  But  when  the  struggle  for  existence  becomes  severe, 
that  variety  which  is  best  adapted  to  the  conditions  of 
existence  always  supplants  that  which  is  imperfectly  adapted  ; 
therefore  by  Natural  Selection  the  sterile  varieties  of  the  two 
forms  will  become  established  as  the  only  ones. 

10.  Now  let  a  fresh  series  of  variations  in  the  amount  of 
sterility  and  in  the  disinclination  to  crossed  unions  occur, — also 
in  certain  parts  of  the  area :  exactly  the  same  result  must 
recur,  and  the  progeny  of  this  new  physiological  variety  again 
in  time  occupy  the  whole  area. 

11.  There  is  yet  another  consideration  that  supports  this 
view.  It  seems  probable  that  the  variations  in  amount  of 
sterility  would  to  some  extent  concur  with  and  perhaps 
depend  upon  the  structural  variations  ;  so  that  just  in  pro- 
portion as  the  two  forms  diverged  and  became  better  adapted 
to  the  conditions  of  existence,  their  sterility  would  increase. 
If  this  were  the  case,  then  Natural  Selection  would  act  with 
double  strength,  and  those  varieties  which  were  better  adapted 
to  survive  both  structurally  and  physiologically,  would 
certainly  do  so.1 

12.  Let  us  now  consider  the  more  difficult  case  of  two  allied 
species  A,  B,  in  the  same  area,  half  the  individuals  of  each 
(A8  Bs)  being  absolutely  sterile,  the  other  half  (AF,  BF)  being 
partially  fertile  :  will  As,  Bs  ultimately  exterminate  AF,  BF  ? 

13.  To  avoid  complication,  it  must  be  granted,  that 
between  As  and  Bs  no  cross-unions  take  place,  while  be- 
tween AF  and  BF  cross-unions  are  as  frequent  as  direct 
unions,  though  much  less  fertile.     We  must  also  leave  out  of 

1  The  preceding  eleven  paragraphs  are  substantially  but  not  verbally 
identical  with  the  statement  of  the  argument  in  Mr.  Wallace's  Darwinism) 
1889,  pp.  179,  180,  note  1. 


292  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  211  consideration  crosses  between  As  and  AF,  B*  and  BF,  with 
their  various  approaches  to  sterility,  as  I  believe  they  will 
not  affect  the  final  result,  although  they  will  greatly  complicate 
the  problem. 

14.  In  the  first  generation  there  will  result  :  1st,  The 
pure  progeny  of  As  and  of  Bs  ;  2nd,  The  pure  progeny  of 
A1  and  of  BF  ;  and  3rd,  The  hybrid  progeny  of  A*,  BF. 

15.  Supposing  that,  in  ordinary  years,  the  increased 
constitutional  vigour  of  the  hybrids  exactly  counterbalances 
their  imperfect  adaptations  to  conditions,  there  will  be  in  the 
second  generation,  besides  these  three  classes,  hybrids  of  the 
second  degree  between  the  first  hybrids  and  AF  and  BF  re- 
spectively. In  succeeding  generations  there  will  be  hybrids  of 
all  degrees,  varying  between  the  first  hybrids  and  the  almost 
pure  types  of  AF  and  BF. 

16.  Now,  if  at  first  the  number  of  individuals  of  As,  Bs, 
AF  and  BF  were  equal,  and  year  after  year  the  total  number 
continues  stationary,  I  think  it  can  be  proved  that,  while  half 
will  be  the  pure  progeny  of  As  and  Bs,  the  other  half  will 
become  more  and  more  hybridised,  until  the  whole  will  be 
hybrids  of  various  degrees. 

17.  Now,  this  hybrid  and  somewhat  intermediate  race 
cannot  be  so  well  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  life  as  the  two 
pure  species,  which  have  been  formed  by  the  minute  adapta- 
tion to  conditions  through  Natural  Selection  ;  therefore,  in  a 
severe  struggle  for  existence,  the  hybrids  must  succumb, 
especially  as,  by  hypothesis,  their  fertility  would  not  be  so 
great  as  that  of  the  two  pure  species. 

18.  If  we  were  to  take  into  consideration  the  unions  of 
AH  with  AF  and  Bs  with  BF,  the  results  would  become  very 
complicated,  but  it  must  still  lead  to  there  being  a  number  of 
pure  forms  entirely  derived  from  As  and  Bs,  and  of  hybrid 
forms  mainly  derived  from  AF  and  BF  ;  and  the  result  of  the 
struggle  of  these  two  sets  of  individuals  cannot  be  doubtful. 

19.  If  these  arguments  are  sound,  it  follows  that  sterility 
may  be  accumulated  and  increased,  and  finally  made  com- 
plete by  Natural  Selection,  whether  the  sterile  varieties 
originate  together  in  a  definite  portion  of  the  area  occupied 
by  the  two  species,  or  occur  scattered  over  the  whole  area.1 

1  The  first  part  of  this  discussion  should  be  considered  alone,  as  it  is 
both  more  simple  and  more  important.     I  now  believe  that  the  utility,  and 


1S64-1S69]  STERILITY  OF   HYBRIDS  293 

p.S. — In  answer  to  the  objection  as  to  the  unequal  sterility  Letter  211 
of  reciprocal  crosses  {Variation,  etc.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  186)  I  reply 
that,  as  far  as  it  went,  the  sterility  of  one  cross  would  be 
advantageous  even  if  the  other  cross  was  fertile  :  and  just  as 
characters  now  co-ordinated  may  have  been  separately 
accumulated  by  Natural  Selection,  so  the  reciprocal  crosses 
may  have  become  sterile  one  at  a  time. 

To  A.  R.  Wallace.  Letter  212 

4,  Chester  Place,  March  17th,  1868." 
I  do  not  feel  that  I  shall  grapple  with  the  sterility 
argument  till  my  return  home  ;  I  have  tried  once  or  twice, 
and  it  has  made  my  stomach  feel  as  if  it  had  been  placed 
in  a  vice.  Your  paper  has  driven  three  of  my  children 
half  mad — one  sat  up  till  12  o'clock  over  it.  My  second 
son,  the  mathematician,  thinks  that  you  have  omitted  one 
almost  inevitable  deduction  which  apparently  would  modify 
the  result.  He  has  written  out  what  he  thinks,  but  I  have 
not  tried  fully  to  understand  him.  1  suppose  that  you  do 
not  care  enough  about  the  subject  to  like  to  see  what  he 
has  written. 

A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter 

Hurstpierpoint,   March  24th  [1868]. 

I  return  your  son's  notes  with  my  notes  on  them.  With- 
out going  into  any  details,  is  not  this  a  strong  general 
argument  ? 

1.  A  species  varies  occasionally  in  two  directions,  but 
owing  to  their  free  intercrossing  the  varieties  never  increase. 

2.  A  change  of  conditions  occurs  which  threatens  the 
existence  of  the  species  ;  but  the  two  varieties  are  adapted 
to  the  changing  conditions,  and  if  accumulated  will  form  two 
new  species  adapted  to  the  new  conditions. 

3.  Free  crossing,  however,  renders  this  impossible,  and  so 
the  species  is  in  danger  of  extinction. 

therefore  the  cause  of  sterility  between  species,  is  during  the  process  of 
differentiation.  When  species  are  fully  formed,  the  occasional  occurrence 
of  hybrids  is  of  comparatively  small  importance,  and  can  never  be  a 
danger  to  the  existence  of  the  species.     A.  R.  W.  (1899). 

1   Mr.    Darwin   had   already    written  a   short   note   to    Mr.  Wallace 
expressing  a  general  dissent  from  his  view. 


294  EVOLUTION  [Chaiv  IV 

Letter  4.  If  sterility  could  be  induced,  then  the  pure  races  would 

2IJA      increase  more  rapidly,  and  replace  the  old  species. 

5.  It  is  admitted  that  partial  sterility  between  varieties 
does  occasionally  occur.  It  is  admitted  [that]  the  degree  of 
this  sterility  varies  ;  is  it  not  probable  that  Natural  Selection 
can  accumulate  these  variations,  and  thus  save  the  species? 
If  Natural  Selection  can  not  do  this,  how  do  species  ever 
arise,  except  when  a  variety  is  isolated  ? 

Closely  allied  species  in  distinct  countries  being  sterile 
is  no  difficulty  ;  for  either  they  diverged  from  a  common 
ancestor  in  contact,  and  Natural  Selection  increased  the 
sterility,  or  they  were  isolated,  and  have  varied  since :  in 
which  case  they  have  been  for  ages  influenced  by  distinct 
conditions  which  may  well  produce  sterility. 

If  the  difficulty  of  grafting  was  as  great  as  the  difficulty 
of  crossing,  and  as  regular,  I  admit  it  would  be  a  most 
serious  objection.  But  it  is  not.  I  believe  many  distinct 
species  can  be  grafted,  while  others  less  distinct  cannot. 
The  regularity  with  which  natural  species  are  sterile  together, 
even  when  very  much  alike,  I  think  is  an  argument  in  favour 
of  the  sterility  having  been  generally  produced  by  Natural 
Selection  for  the  good  of  the  species. 

The  other  difficulty,  of  unequal  sterility  of  reciprocal 
crosses,  seems  none  to  me  ;  for  it  is  a  step  to  more  complete 
sterility,  and  as  such  would  be  increased  by  selection. 

To  A.  R.  Wallace. 

Letter  213  Down,  April  6th  [1868]. 

I  have  been  considering  the  terrible  problem.  Let  me 
first  say  that  no  man  could  have  more  earnestly  wished 
for  the  success  of  Natural  Selection  in  regard  to  sterility 
than  I  did ;  and  when  I  considered  a  general  statement 
(as  in  your  last  note)  I  always  felt  sure  it  could  be 
worked  out,  but  always  failed  in  detail.  The  cause  being, 
as  I  believe,  that  Natural  Selection  cannot  effect  what  is 
not  good  for  the  individual,  including  in  this  term  a  social 
community.  It  would  take  a  volume  to  discuss  all  the 
points,  and  nothing  is  so  humiliating  to  me  as  to  agree 
with  a  man  like  you  (or  Hooker)  on  the  premises  and 
disagree  about  the  result. 

I  agree  with  my  son's  argument  and  not  with  the  rejoinder. 


1864-1869]  STERILITY     OF     HYBRIDS  295 

The  cause  of  our  difference,  I  think,  is  that  I  look  at  the  Letter  213 
number  of  offspring  as  an  important  element  (all  circum- 
stances remaining  the  same)  in  keeping  up  the  average 
number  of  individuals  within  any  area.  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  amount  of  food  by  any  means  is  the  sole  deter- 
mining cause  of  number.  Lessened  fertility  is  equivalent 
to  a  new  source  of  destruction.  I  believe  if  in  one  district  a 
species  produced  from  any  cause  fewer  young,  the  deficiency 
would  be  supplied  from  surrounding  districts.  This  applies 
to  your  Par.  5.1  If  the  species  produced  fewer  young  from 
any  cause  in  every  district,  it  would  become  extinct  unless 
its  fertility  were  augmented  through  Natural  Selection  (see 
H.  Spencer). 

I  demur  to  probability  and  almost  to  possibility  of 
Par.  1,  as  you  start  with  two  forms  within  the  same  area, 
which  are  not  mutually  sterile,  and  which  yet  have  sup- 
planted the  parent-form. 

(Par.  6.)  I  know  of  no  ghost  of  a  fact  supporting 
belief  that  disinclination  to  cross  accompanies  sterility.  *  It 
cannot  hold  with  plants,  or  the  lower  fixed  aquatic  animals. 
I  saw  clearly  what  an  immense  aid  this  would  be,  but  gave 
it  up.  Disinclination  to  cross  seems  to  have  been  independ- 
ently acquired,  probably  by  Natural  Selection  ;  and  I  do 
not  see  why  it  would  not  have  sufficed  to  have  prevented 
incipient  species  from  blending  to  have  simply  increased 
sexual  disinclination  to  cross. 

(Par.  1 1.)  I  demur  to  a  certain  extent  to  amount  of 
sterility  and  structural  dissimilarity  necessarily  going  to- 
gether, except  indirectly  and  by  no  means  strictly.  Look 
at  vars.  of  pigeons,  fowls,  and  cabbages. 

I  overlooked  the  advantage  of  the  half-sterility  of  re- 
ciprocal crosses  ;  yet,  perhaps  from  novelty,  I  do  not  feel 
inclined  to  admit  probability  of  Natural  Selection  having 
done  its  work  so  queerly. 

I  will  not  discuss  the  second  case  of  utter  sterility,  but 
your  assumptions  in  Par.  13  seem  to  me  much  too  com- 
plicated. I  cannot  believe  so  universal  an  attribute  as 
utter  sterility  between  remote  species  was  acquired  in  so 
complex  a  manner.  I  do  not  agree  with  your  rejoinder 
on  grafting  :   I  fully  admit  that  it  is  not  so  closely  restricted 

1  See  Letter  211. 


296  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  213  as  crossing,  but  this  docs  not  seem  to  mc  to  weaken  the 
case  as  one  of  analogy.  The  incapacity  of  grafting  is  like- 
wise an  invariable  attribute  of  plants  sufficiently  remote 
from    each    other,    and    sometimes  of    plants    pretty    closely 

allied. 

The  difficulty  of  increasing  the  sterility  through  Natural 
Selection  of  two  already  sterile  species  seems  to  me  best 
brought  home  by  considering  an  actual  case.  The  cowslip 
and  primrose  are  moderately  sterile,  yet  occasionally  pro- 
duce hybrids.  Now  these  hybrids,  two  or  three  or  a  dozen 
in  a  whole  parish,  occupy  ground  which  might  have  been 
occupied  by  either  pure  species,  and  no  doubt  the  latter 
suffer  to  this  small  extent.  But  can  you  conceive  that 
any  individual  plants  of  the  primrose  and  cowslip  which 
happened  to  be  mutually  rather  more  sterile  {i.e.  which, 
when  crossed,  yielded  a  few  less  seed)  than  usual,  would 
profit  to  such  a  degree  as  to  increase  in  number  to  the 
ultimate  exclusion  of  the  present  primrose  and  cowslip?  I 
cannot. 

My  son,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  cannot  see  the  full  force  of  your 
rejoinder  in  regard  to  second  head  of  continually  augmented 
sterility.  You  speak  in  this  rejoinder,  and  in  Par.  5,  of 
all  the  individuals  becoming  in  some  slight  degree  sterile 
in  certain  districts :  if  you  were  to  admit  that  by  con- 
tinued exposure  to  these  same  conditions  the  sterility  would 
inevitably  increase,  there  would  be  no  need  of  Natural 
Selection.  But  I  suspect  that  the  sterility  is  not  caused  so 
much  by  any  particular  conditions  as  by  long  habituation 
to  conditions  of  any  kind.  To  speak  according  to  pan- 
genesis, the  gemmules  of  hybrids  are  not  injured,  for 
hybrids  propagate  freely  by  buds ;  but  their  reproductive 
organs  are  somehow  affected,  so  that  they  cannot  accumu- 
late the  proper  gemmules,  in  nearly  the  same  manner  as 
the  reproductive  organs  of  a  pure  species  become  affected 
when  exposed  to  unnatural  conditions. 

This  is  a  very  ill- expressed  and  ill-written  letter.  Do 
not  answer  it,  unless  the  spirit  urges  you.  Life  is  too 
short  for  so  long  a  discussion.  We  shall,  I  greatly  fear, 
never  agree. 


i864— 1869]  STERILITY     OF     HYBRIDS  297 

A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  214 

Hurstpierpoint,  [April?]  8th,  1S68. 

I  am  sorry  you  should  have  given  yourself  the  trouble 
to  answer  my  ideas  on  sterility.  If  you  are  not  convinced, 
I  have  little  doubt  but  that  I  am  wrong ;  and,  in  fact,  I 
was  only  half  convinced  by  my  own  arguments,  and  I  now 
think  there  is  about  an  even  chance  that  Natural  Selection 
may  or  may  not  be  able  to  accumulate  sterility.  If  my 
first  proposition  is  modified  to  the  existence  of  a  species 
and  a  variety  in  the  same  area,  it  will  do  just  as  well 
for  my  argument.  Such  certainly  do  exist.  They  are 
fertile  together,  and  yet  each  maintains  itself  tolerably 
distinct.  I  low  can  this  be,  if  there  is  no  disinclination  to 
crossing  ? 

My  belief  certainly  is  that  number  of  offspring  is  not  so 
important  an  element  in  keeping  up  population  of  a  species 
as  supply  of  food  and  other  favourable  conditions  ;  because 
the  numbers  of  a  species  constantly  vary  greatly  in  different 
parts  of  its  own  area,  whereas  the  average  number  of  offspring 
is  not  a  very  variable  element. 

However,  I  will  say  no  more,  but  leave  the  problem 
as  insoluble,  only  fearing  that  it  will  become  a  formidable 
weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  enemies  of  Natural  Selection. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  215 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  to  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  (dated 
April  3rd,  1868)  refers  to  his  Presidential  Address  for  the  approaching 
meeting  of  the   British  Association  at  Norwich. 

Some  account  of  Sir  Joseph's  success  is  given  in  the  Life  and 
Letters,  III.,  p.  too,  also  in  Huxley's  Life,  Vol.  I.,  p.  297,  where  Huxley 
writes  to  Darwin  : — 

"  We  had  a  capital  meeting  at  Norwich,  and  dear  old  Hooker 
came  out  in  great  force,  as  he  always  does  in  emergencies.  The  only 
fault  was  the  terrible  '  Darwinismus '  which  spread  over  the  section 
and  crept  out  when  you  least  expected  it,  even  in  Fergusson's  lecture 
on  '  Buddhist  Temples.'  You  will  have  the  rare  happiness  to  see  your 
ideas  triumphant  during  your  lifetime. 

"  P.S. —  I  am  going  into  opposition  ;   I  can't  stand  it." 

Down,  April  3rd  [1S68]. 

I  have  been  thinking  over  your  Presidential  Address ; 
I  declare  I  made  myself  quite  uncomfortable  by  fancying 
I  had  to  do  it,  and  feeling  myself  utterly  dumbfounded. 


298  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  215  But  I  do  not  believe  that  you  will  find  it  so  difficult. 
When  you  come  to  Down  I  shall  be  very  curious  to  hear 
what  your  ideas  are  on  the  subject. 

Could  you  make  anything  out  of  a  history  of  the  great 
steps  in  the  progress  of  Botany,  as  representing  the  whole 
of  Natural  History?  Heaven  protect  you  !  I  suppose  there 
are    men    to    whom    such  a  job   would    not  be  so  awful   as 

it   appears  to    me If   you    had    time,   you   ought    to 

read  an  article  by  W.  Bagehot  in  the  April  number  of 
the  Fortnightly}  applying  Natural  Selection  to  early  or 
prehistoric  politics,  and,  indeed,  to  late  politics, — this  you 
know  is  your  view. 

Letter  216  A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin. 

9,  St.  Mark's  Crescent,  N.W.,  August   16th  [1868]. 

I  ought  to  have  written  before  to  thank  you  for  the 
copies  of  your  papers  on  Primula  and  on  "  Cross-unions  of 
Dimorphic  Plants,  etc."  The  latter  is  particularly  interesting 
and  the  conclusion  most  important  ;  but  I  think  it  makes 
the  difficulty  of  how  these  forms,  with  their  varying  degrees 
of  sterility,  originated,  greater  than  ever.  If  "  natural  selec- 
tion "  could  not  accumulate  varying  degrees  of  sterility  for 
the  plant's  benefit,  then  how  did  sterility  ever  come  to  be 
associated  with  one  cross  of  a  trimorphic  plant  rather  than 
another  ?  The  difficulty  seems  to  be  increased  by  the 
consideration  that  the  advantage  of  a  cross  with  a  distinct 
individual  is  gained  just  as  well  by  illegitimate  as  by 
legitimate  unions.  By  what  means,  then,  did  illegitimate 
unions  ever  become  sterile?  It  would  seem  a  far  simpler 
way  for  each  plant's  pollen  to  have  acquired  a  prepotency 
on  another  individual's  stigma  over  that  of  the  same 
individual,  without  the  extraordinary  complication  of  three 
differences  of  structure  and  eighteen  different  unions  with 
varying  degrees  of  sterility  ! 

However,  the  fact  remains  an  excellent  answer  to  the 
statement  that  sterility  of  hybrids  proves  the  absolute  dis- 
tinctness of  the  parents. 

I  have  been  reading  with  great  pleasure  Mr.  Bcntham's 
last  admirable  address,2  in   which    he  so  well  replies  to  the 

1  "  Physic  and  Politics,"  Fortnightly  Review,  Vol.  III.,  p.  452,  1S6S. 
a  Proc.  Linn.  Soc,  1867-8,  p.  lvii. 


i864— 1869]  STERILITY    OF    HYBRIDS  299 

gross    misstatements   of    the   Athenceum  ;    and    also   says    a  Letter  216 
word  in  favour   of  pangenesis.     I    think  we  may  now  con- 
gratulate  you    on   having    made  a  valuable    convert,   whose 
opinions  on  the  subject,  coming  so  late  and  being  evidently 
so  well  considered,  will  have  much  weight. 

I  am  going  to  Norwich  on  Tuesday  to  hear  Dr.  Hooker, 

who    I    hope    will    boldly    promulgate    "  Darwinism  "    in    his 

address.1     Shall  we  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  there? 

I  am  engaged  in  ncgociations  about  my  book. 

Hoping  you    are   well   and    getting   on    with    your  next 

volumes. 

We  are  permitted  by  Mr.  Wallace  to  append  the  following  note 
as  to  his  more  recent  views  on  the  question  of  Natural  Selection  and 
sterility  : — 

''When  writing  my  Darwinism,  and  coming  again  to  the  considera- 
tion of  this  problem  of  the  effect  of  Natural  Selection  in  accumulating 
variations  in  the  amount  of  sterility  between  varieties  or  incipient 
species  twenty  years  later,  I  became  more  convinced,  than  I  was 
when  discussing  with  Darwin,  of  the  substantial  accuracy  of  my  argu- 
ment. Recently  a  correspondent  who  is  both  a  naturalist  and  a 
mathematician  has  pointed  out  to  me  a  slight  error  in  my  calcula- 
tion at  p.  183  (which  does  not,  however,  materially  affect  the  result), 
disproving  the  'physiological  selection'  of  the  late  Dr.  Romanes,  but 
he  can  see  no  fallacy  in  my  argument  as  to  the  power  of  Natural 
Selection  to  increase  sterility  between  incipient  species,  nor,  so  far  as 
I  am  aware,  has  any  one  shown  such  fallacy  to  exist. 

"  On  the  other  points  on  which  I  differed  from  Mr.  Darwin  in 
the  foregoing  discussion— the  effect  of  high  fertility  on  population  of 
a  species,  etc. —  I  still  hold  the  views  I  then  expressed,  but  it  would 
be  out  of  place  to  attempt  to  justify  them  here." 

A.  R.  W.  (1899). 

To   C.    Lyell.  Letter  217 

Down,  Oct.  4th  [1867]. 

With  respect  to  the  points  in  your  note,  I  may  sometimes 
have  expressed  myself  with  ambiguity.  At  the  end  of 
Chapter  XXIII.,  where  I  say  that  marked  races  are  not 
often  (you  omit  "  often  ")  produced  by  changed  conditions,2 

1  Sir  Joseph  Hooker's  Presidential  Address  at  the  British  Associa- 
tion Meeting. 

3  "  Hence,  although  it  must  be  admitted  that  new  conditions  of  life 
do  sometimes  definitely  affect  organic  beings,  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
well-marked  races  have  often  been  produced  by  the  direct  action  of 
changed  conditions  without  the  aid  of  selection  either  by  man  or  nature." 
{Animals  and  Plants,  Vol.  II.,  p.  292,  1868.) 


300  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  217  I  intended  to  refer  to  the  direct  action  of  such  conditions  in 
causing  variation,  and  not  as  leading  to  the  preservation  or 
destruction  of  certain  forms.  There  is  as  wide  a  difference  in 
these  two  respects  as  between  voluntary  selection  by  man  and 
the  causes  which  induce  variability.  I  have  somewhere  in 
my  book  referred  to  the  close  connection  between  Natural 
Selection  and  the  action  of  external  conditions  in  the  sense 
which  you  specify  in  your  note.  And  in  this  sense  all 
Natural  Selection  may  be  said  to  depend  on  changed  con- 
ditions. In  the  Origin  I  think  I  have  underrated  (and  from 
the  cause  which  you  mention)  the  effects  of  the  direct  action 
of  external  conditions  in  producing  varieties  ;  but  I  hope  in 
Chapter  XXIII.  I  have  struck  as  fair  a  balance  as  our 
knowledge  permits. 

It  is  wonderful  to  me  that  you  have  patience  to  read  my 
slips,  and  I  cannot  but  regret,  as  they  are  so  imperfect ;  they 
must,  I  think,  give  you  a  wrong  impression,  and  had  I  sternly 
refused,  you  would  perhaps  have  thought  better  of  my  book. 
Every  single  slip  is  greatly  altered,  and  I  hope  improved. 

With  respect  to  the  human  ovule,  I  cannot  find  dimensions 
given,  though  I  have  often  seen  the  statement.  My  impression 
is  that  it  would  be  just  or  barely  visible  if  placed  on  a  clear 
piece  of  glass.     Huxley  could  answer  your  question  at  once. 

I  have  not  been  well  of  late,  and  have  made  slow  progress, 
but  I  think  my  book  will  be  finished  by  the  middle  of 
November. 

Letter  218  A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin. 

[Enrl   of  Feb.,    IS6S] 

I  am  in  the  second  volume  of  your  book,  and  I  have 
been  astonished  at  the  immense  number  of  interesting  facts 
you  have  brought  together.  I  read  the  chapter  on  pangenesis 
first,  for  I  could  not  wait.  I  can  hardly  tell  you  how  much 
I  admire  it.  It  is  a  positive  comfort  to  me  to  have  any 
feasible  explanation  of  a  difficulty  that  has  always  been 
haunting  me,  and  I  shall  never  be  able  to  give  it  up  till  a 
better  one  supplies  its  place, — and  that  I  think  hardly  possible. 
You  have  now  fairly  beaten  Spencer  on  his  own  ground,  for 
he  really  offered  no  solution  of  the  difficulties  of  the  problem. 
The  incomprehensible  minuteness  and  vast  numbers  of  the 
physiological   germs   or   atoms   (which    themselves    must   be 


i864— 1869]  PANGENESIS  301 

compounded  of  numbers  of  Spencer's  physiological  units)  is  the  Letter  218 
only  difficulty  ;  but  that  is  only  on  a  par  with  the  difficulties 
in  all  conceptions  of  matter,  space,  motion,  force,  etc. 

As  I  understood  Spencer,  his  physiological  units  were 
identical  throughout  each  species,  but  slightly  different  in 
each  different  species  ;  but  no  attempt  was  made  to  show  how 
the  identical  form  of  the  parent  or  ancestors  came  to  be 
built  up  of  such  units. 

To  A.  R.  Wallace.  Letter  219 

Down,  Feb.  27th  [1868]. 

You  cannot  well  imagine  how  much  I  have  been  pleased 
by  what  you  say  about  pangenesis.  None  of  my  friends  will 
speak  out,  except  to  a  certain  extent  Sir  H.  Holland,  who 
found  it  very  tough  reading,  but  admits  that  some  view 
"  closely  akin  to  it"  will  have  to  be  admitted.  Hooker,  as  far 
as  I  understand  him,  which  I  hardly  do  at  present,  seems  to 
think  that  the  hypothesis  is  little  more  than  saying  that 
organisms  have  such  and  such  potentialities.  What  you  say 
exactly  and  fully  expresses  my  feelings— viz.,  that  it  is  a  relief 
to  have  some  feasible  explanation  of  the  various  facts,  which 
can  be  given  up  as  soon  as  any  better  hypothesis  is  found. 
It  has  certainly  been  an  immense  relief  to  my  mind  ;  for  I 
have  been  stumbling  over  the  subject  for  years,  dimly  seeing 
that  some  relation  existed  between  the  various  classes  of 
facts.  I  now  hear  from  H.  Spencer  that  his  views  quoted  in 
my  footnote  refer  to  something  quite  distinct,  as  you  seem  to 
have  perceived.1 

A.  R.  Wallace  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  220 

Hurstpierpoint,   March  1st,   1868. 

...  Sir  C.  Lyell  spoke  to  me  as  if  he  has  greatly  admired 
pangenesis.  I  a  in  very  glad  H.  Spencer  at  once  acknow- 
ledges that  his  view  was  something  quite  distinct  from  yours. 
Although,  as  you  know,  I  am  a  great  admirer  of  his,  I  feel 
how  completely  his  view  failed  to  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter, 
as  yours  does.  His  explained  nothing,  though  he  was 
evidently  struggling  hard  to  find  an  explanation.  Yours,  as  far 
as  I  can  see,  explains  everything  in  growth  and  reproduction— 

1  This  letter  is  published  in  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  79. 


302  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  220  though,  of  course,  the  mystery  of  life  and  consciousness 
remains  as  great  as  ever. 

Parts  of  the  chapter  on  pangenesis  I  found  hard  reading, 
and  have  not  quite  mastered  yet,  and  there  are  also  through- 
out the  discussions  in  Vol.  II.  many  bits  of  hard  reading, 
on  minute  points  which  we,  who  have  not  worked  experi- 
mentally at  cultivation  and  crossing,  as  you  have  done,  can 
hardly  see  the  importance  of,  or  their  bearing  on  the  general 
question. 

If  I  am  asked,  I  may  perhaps  write  an  article  on  the  book 
for  some  periodical,  and,  if  so,  shall  do  what  I  can  to  make 
"  Pangenesis"  appreciated.  .  .   . 

In  Nature,  May  25th,  1871,  p.  69,  appeared  a  letter  on  pangenesis 
from  Mr.  A.  C.  Ranyard,  dealing  with  the  difficulty  that  the  "sexual 
elements  produced  upon  the  scion  "  have  not  been  shown  to  be  affected 
by  the  stock.  Mr.  Darwin,  in  an  annotated  copy  of  this  letter,  disputes 
the  accuracy  of  the  statement,  but  adds  :  "  The  best  objection  yet  raised." 
He  seems  not  to  have  used  Mr.  Ranyard's  remarks  in  the  2nd  edit,  of 
the  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants,  1875. 

Letter  221  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,   May  21st  [186S]. 

I  know  that  you  have  been  overworking  yourself,  and 
that  makes  you  think  that  you  are  doing  nothing  in  science. 
If  this  is  the  case  (which  I  do  not  believe),  your  intellect  has 
all  run  to  letter-writing,  for  I  never  in  all  my  life  received  a 
pleasanter  one  than  your  last.  It  greatly  amused  us  all. 
How  dreadfully  severe  you  are  on  the  Duke ' :  I  really  think 
too  severe,  but  then  I  am  no  fair  judge,  for  a  Duke,  in 
my  eyes,  is  no  common  mortal,  and  not  to  be  judged  by 
common  rules  !  I  pity  you  from  the  bottom  of  my  soul  about 
the  address:2  it  makes  my  flesh  creep  ;  but  when  I  pitied  you 
to  Huxley,  he  would  not  join  at  all,  and  would  only  say  that 
you  did  and  delivered  your  Insular  Flora  lecture  so  admir- 
ably in  every  way  that  he  would  not  bestow  any  pity  on  you. 
He  felt  certain   that  you   would    keep    your  head    high  up. 

1  The  late  Duke  of  Argyll,  whose  Reign  of  Law  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker 
had  been  reading. 

3  Sir  Joseph  was  President  of  the  British  Association  at  Norwich  in 
1868:  see  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  100.  The  reference  to  "Insular 
Floras "  is  to  Sir  Joseph's  lecture  at  the  Nottingham  meeting  of  the 
British  Association  in   1866:  see  Life  and  Letters,   III.,  p.  47. 


1864— 1869]  SELF-STERILITY  303 

Nevertheless,  I  wish  to  God  it  was  all  over  for  your  sake.  I  Letter  221 
think,  from  several  long  talks,  that  Huxley  will  give  an 
excellent  and  original  lecture  on  Geograph.  Distrib.  of  birds. 
I  have  been  working  very  hard — too  hard  of  late — on 
Sexual  Selection,  which  turns  out  a  gigantic  subject  ;  and 
almost  every  day  new  subjects  turn  up  requiring  investiga- 
tion and  leading  to  endless  letters  and  searches  through 
books.  I  am  bothered,  also,  with  heaps  of  foolish  letters  on 
all  sorts  of  subjects,  but  I  am  much  interested  in  my  subject, 
and  sometimes  see  gleams  of  light.  All  my  other  letters 
have  prevented  me  indulging  myself  in  writing  to  you  ;  but 
I  suddenly  found  the  locust  grass  :  yesterday  in  flower,  and 
had  to  despatch  it  at  once.  I  suppose  some  of  your  assistants 
will  be  able  to  make  the  genus  out  without  great  trouble. 
I  have  done  little  in  experiment  of  late,  but  I  find  that 
mignonette  is  absolutely  sterile  with  pollen  from  the  same 
plant.  Any  one  who  saw  stamen  after  stamen  bending 
upwards  and  shedding  pollen  over  the  stigmas  of  the  same 
flower  would  declare  that  the  structure  was  an  admirable 
contrivance  for  self-fertilisation.  How  utterly  mysterious  it 
is  that  there  should  be  some  difference  in  ovules  and  contents 
of  pollen-grains  (for  the  tubes  penetrate  own  stigma)  causing 
fertilisation  when  these  are  taken  from  any  two  distinct 
plants,  and  invariably  leading  to  impotence  when  taken  from 
the  same  plant  !  By  Jove,  even  Pan.2  won't  explain  this. 
It  is  a  comfort  to  me  to  think  that  you  will  be  surely 
haunted  on  your  death-bed  for  not  honouring  the  great  god 
Pan.  I  am  quite  delighted  at  what  you  say  about  my  book, 
and  about  Bentham  ;  when  writing  it,  I  was  much  interested 
in  some  parts,  but  latterly  I  thought  quite  as  poorly  of  it  as 
even  the  Athenceum.  It  ought  to  be  read  abroad  for  the 
sake  of  the  booksellers,  for  five  editions  have  come  or  are 
coming  out  abroad  !  I  am  ashamed  to  say  that  I  have  read 
only  the  organic  part  of  Lyell,  and  I  admire  all  that  I  have 
read  as  much  as  you.  It  is  a  comfort  to  know  that  possibly 
when  one  is  seventy  years  old  one's  brain  may  be  good  for 
work.     It  drives  me  mad,  and   I   know  it  does  you   too,  that 

1  No  doubt  the  plants  raised  from  seeds  taken  from  locust  clung  sent 
by  Mr.  Weale  from  South  Africa.  The  case  is  mentioned  in  the  fifth 
edition  of  the  Origin,  published  in  1869,  p.  439. 

-  Pangenesis. 


304  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  221  one  has  no  time  for  reading  anything  beyond  what  must  be 
read  :  my  room  is  encumbered  with  unread  books.  I  agree 
about  Wallace's  wonderful  cleverness,  but  he  is  not  cautious 
enough  in  my  opinion.  I  find  I  must  (and  I  always  distrust 
myself  when  I  differ  from  him)  separate  rather  widely  from 
him  all  about  birds'  nests  and  protection  ;  he  is  riding  that 
hobby  to  death.  I  never  read  anything  so  miserable  as 
Andrew  Murray's  criticism  on  Wallace  in  the  last  number  of 
his  Journal.1  I  believe  this  Journal  will  die,  and  I  shall  not 
cry  :  what  a  contrast  with  the  old  Natural  Histoiy  Review. 

Letter  222  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Freshwater,  Isle  of  Wight,  July  28th  [1868]. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  you  are  going2  to  touch  on  the 
statement  that  the  belief  in  Natural  Selection  is  passing 
away.  I  do  not  suppose  that  even  the  Athencsum  would 
pretend  that  the  belief  in  the  common  descent  of  species  is 
passing  away,  and  this  is  the  more  important  point.  This 
now  almost  universal  belief  in  the  evolution  (somehow)  of 
species,  I  think  may  be  fairly  attributed  in  large  part  to  the 
Origin.  It  would  be  well  for  you  to  look  at  the  short  Intro- 
duction of  Owen's  Anat.  of  Invertebrates,  and  see  how  fully  he 
admits  the  descent  of  species. 

Of  the  Origin,  four  English  editions,  one  or  two  American, 
two  French,  two  German,  one  Dutch,  one  Italian,  and  several 
(as  I  was  told)  Russian  editions.  The  translations  of  my 
book  on  Variation  under  Domestication  are  the  results  of  the 
Origin ;  and  of  these  two  English,  one  American,  one 
German,  one  French,  one  Italian,  and  one  Russian  have 
appeared,  or  will  soon  appear.  Ernst  Hackel  wrote  to  me  a 
week  or  two  ago,  that  new  discussions  and  reviews  of  the 
Origin  are  continually  still  coming  out  in  Germany,  where 
the  interest  on  the  subject  certainly  does  not  diminish.  I 
have  seen  some  of  these  discussions,  and  they  are  good  ones. 
I  apprehend  that  the  interest  on  the  subject  has  not  died 
out  in  North  America,  from  observing  in  Professor  and  Mrs. 

1  See  Journal  of  Travel  and  Natural  ///story,  Vol.  I.,  No.  3,  p.  137, 
London,  1868,  for  Andrew  Murray's  "Reply  to  Mr.  Wallace's  Theory  of 
Birds'  Nests,"  which  appeared  in  the  same  volume,  p.  73.  The  Journal 
came  to  an  end  after  the  publication  of  one  volume  for  1867-8. 

'  In  his  Presidential  Address  at  Norwich. 


i864— 1869]  REVIEWS  305 

Agassiz's  Book  on  Brazil  how  excessively  anxious  he  is  to  Letter  222 
destroy  me.  In  regard  to  this  country,  every  one  can  judge 
for  himself,  but  you  would  not  say  interest  was  dying  out  if  you 
were  to  look  at  the  last  number  of  the  Anthropological  Review, 
in  which  I  am  incessantly  sneered  at.  I  think  Lyell's  Prin- 
ciples will  produce  a  considerable  effect.  I  hope  I  have  given 
you  the  sort  of  information  which  you  want.  My  head  is  rather 
unsteady,  which  makes  my  handwriting  worse  than  usual. 

If  you  argue  about  the  non-acceptance  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion, it  seems  to  me  a  very  striking  fact  that  the  Newtonian 
theory  of  gravitation,  which  seems  to  every  one  now  so  certain 
and  plain,  was  rejected  by  a  man  so  extraordinarily  able  as 
Leibnitz.     The  truth  will  not  penetrate  a  preoccupied  mind. 

Wallace,1  in  the  Westminster  Review,  in  an  article  on 
Protection  has  a  good  passage,  contrasting  the  success  of 
Natural  Selection  and  its  growth  with  the  comprehension 
of  new  classes  of  facts,2  with  false  theories,  such  as  the 
Ouinarian  Theory,  and  that  of  Polarity,  by  poor  Forbes,  both 
of  which  were  promulgated  with  high  advantages  and  the 
first  temporarily  accepted. 

1  Wallace,  Westminster  Review,  July,  1867.  The  article  begins: 
"  There  is  no  more  convincing  proof  of  the  truth  of  a  comprehensive 
theory,  than  its  power  of  absorbing  and  finding  a  place  for  new  facts,  and 
its  capability  of  interpreting  phenomena,  which  had  been  previously 
looked  upon  as  unaccountable  anomalies  .  .  ."  Mr.  Wallace  illustrates 
his  statement  that  "  a  false  theory  will  never  stand  this  test,"  by  Edward 
Forbes'  "polarity"  speculations  (see  p.  84  of  the  present  volume)  and 
Macleay's  Circular  and  Quinarian  System  published  in  his  Horce  Ento- 
mologicce,  1821,  and  developed  by  Swainson  in  the  natural  history 
volumes  of  Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyelopcedia.  Mr.  Wallace  says  that  a 
"considerable  number  of  well-known  naturalists  either  spoke  approvingly 
of  it,  or  advocated  similar  principles,  and  for  a  good  many  years  it  was 
decidedly  in  the  ascendant  .  .  .  yet  it  quite  died  out  in  a  few  short  years, 
its  very  existence  is  now  a  matter  of  history,  and  so  rapid  was  its  fall 
that  .  .  .  Swainson,  perhaps,  lived  to  be  the  last  man  who  believed  in 
it.  Such  is  the  course  of  a  false  theory.  That  of  a  true  one  is  very 
different,  as  may  be  well  seen  by  the  progress  of  opinion  on  the  subject 
of  Natural  Selection." 

Here  (p.  3)  follows  a  passage  on  the  overwhelming  importance  of 
Natural  Selection,  underlined  with  apparent  approval  in  Mr.  Darwin's 
copy  of  the  review. 

2  This  rather  obscure  phrase  may  be  rendered  :  "  its  power  of  growth 
by  the  absorption  of  new  facts." 

20 


306  EVOLUTION  [Chai.  IV 

Letter  223  To  G-  H-  Lewes." 

The  following  is  printed  from  a  draft  letter  inscribed  by  Mr.  Darwin 
"  Against  organs  having  been  formed  by  direct  action  of  medium  in 
distinct  organisms.  Chiefly  luminous  and  electric  organs  and  thorns." 
The  draft  is  carelessly  written,  and  all  but  illegible. 

Aug.  7th,  186S. 
If  you  mean  that  in  distinct  animals,  parts  or  organs,  such 
for  instance  as  the  luminous  organs  of  insects  or  the  electric 
organs  of  fishes,  are  wholly  the   result  of  the  external  and 
internal  conditions  to  which  the  organs  have  been  subjected, 
in  so  direct  and    inevitable    a  manner  that    they   could    be 
developed  whether  of  use  or  not  to  their  possessor,  I  cannot 
admit  [your  view].     I  could  almost  as  soon  admit  that  the 
whole   structure    of,    for   instance,    a    woodpecker,    had    thus 
originated  ;    and    that   there   should  be    so  close   a    relation 
between  structure  and  external   circumstances  which  cannot 
directly  affect    structure  seems  to    me   to  [be]   inadmissible. 
Such  organs  as  those  above  specified  seem  to  me  much  too 
complex  and  generally  too  well  co-ordinated  with  the  whole 
organisation,  for  the  admission  that  they  result  from  conditions 
independently  of  Natural  Selection.     The  impression  which  I 
have  taken,  studying  nature,  is  strong,  that  in  all  cases,  if  we 
could  collect  all  the  forms  which  have  ever  lived,  we  should 
have    a  close   gradation  from   some   most  simple  beginning. 
If  similar  conditions   sufficed,  without    the    aid    of   Natural 
Selection,  to  give  similar  parts  or  organs,  independently  of 
blood  relationship,   I    doubt  much    whether  we  should  have 
that  striking  harmony  between  the  affinities,  embryological 
development,  geographical    distribution,  and  geological  suc- 
cession  of  all  allied  organisms.     We  should  be  much  more 
puzzled  than  we  now  are  how  to  class,  in  a  natural  method, 
many  forms.     It  is  puzzling  enough  to  distinguish  between 
resemblance  due  to  descent  and  to  adaptation  ;  but  (fortunately 
for  naturalists),  owing  to  the  strong  power  of  inheritance,  and 
to  excessively  complex  causes  and  laws  of  variability,  when 
the  same  end  or  object  has  been  gained,  somewhat  different 
parts  have  generally  been  modified,  and  modified  in  a  different 
manner,  so  that  the  resemblances  due  to  descent  and  adapta- 
tion can  commonly  be  distinguished.     I  should  just  like  to 
add,  that  we  may  understand  each  other,  how  I  suppose  the 

1  G.  H.  Lewes  (1817-78),  author  of  a  History  of  Philosophy,  etc. 


1S64-1869]  DIRECT   ACTION  307 

luminous  organs  of  insects,  for  instance,  to  have  been  developed ;  Letter  223 
but  I  depend  on  conjectures,  for  so  few  luminous  insects 
exist  that  we  have  no  means  of  judging,  by  the  preservation 
to  the  present  day  of  slightly  modified  forms,  of  the  probable 
gradations  through  which  the  organs  have  passed.  Moreover, 
we  do  not  know  of  what  use  these  organs  are.  We  see  that 
the  tissues  of  many  animals,  [as]  certain  centipedes  in  England, 
are  liable,  under  unknown  conditions  of  food,  temperature, 
etc.,  to  become  occasionally  luminous  ;  just  like  the  [illegible] : 
such  luminosity  having  been  advantageous  to  certain  insects, 
the  tissues,  I  suppose,  become  specialised  for  this  purpose  in 
an  intensified  degree  ;  in  certain  insects  in  one  part,  in  other 
insects  in  other  parts  of  the  body.  Hence  I  believe  that  if 
all  extinct  insect-forms  could  be  collected,  we  should  have 
gradations  from  the  Elateridae,  with  their  highly  and  con- 
stantly luminous  thoraxes,  and  from  the  Lampyridae,  with  their 
highly  luminous  abdomens,  to  some  ancient  insects  occasionally 
luminous  like  the  centipede. 

I  do  not  know,  but  suppose  that  the  microscopical  structure 
of  the  luminous  organs  in  the  most  different  insects  is  nearly 
the  same  ;  and  I  should  attribute  to  inheritance  from  a  common 
progenitor,  the  similarity  of  the  tissues,  which  under  similar 
conditions,  allowed  them  to  vary  in  the  same  manner,  and 
thus,  through  Natural  Selection  for  the  same  general  purpose, 
to  arrive  at  the  same  result.  Mutatis  mutandis,  I  should 
apply  the  same  doctrine  to  the  electric  organs  of  fishes  ; 
but  here  I  have  to  make,  in  my  own  mind,  the  violent 
assumption  that  some  ancient  fish  was  slightly  electrical 
without  having  any  special  organs  for  the  purpose.  It  has 
been  stated  on  evidence,  not  trustworthy,  that  certain  reptiles 
are  electrical.  It  is,  moreover,  possible  that  the  so-called 
electric  organs,  whilst  in  a  condition  not  highly  developed, 
may  have  subserved  some  distinct  function  :  at  least,  I  think, 
Matteucci  could  detect  no  pure  electricity  in  certain  fishes 
provided  with  the  proper  organs.  In  one  of  your  letters 
you  alluded  to  nails,  claws,  hoofs,  etc.  From  their  perfect 
coadaptation  with  the  whole  rest  of  the  organisation,  I  cannot 
admit  that  they  would  have  been  formed  by  the  direct  action 
of  the  conditions  of  life.  H.  Spencer's  view  that  they  were 
first  developed  from  indurated  skin,  the  result  of  pressure  on 
the  extremities,  seems  to  me  probable. 


-oS  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  223        In  regard  to  thorns  and  spines   I    suppose   that  stunted 
and  [illegible]  hardened  processes  were  primarily  left  by  the 
abortion  of  various  appendages,  but  I  must  believe  that  their 
extreme  sharpness  and  hardness  is  the  result  of  fluctuating 
variability  and   "the  survival   of  the   fittest."      The   precise 
form,  curvature  and  colour  of  the  thorns  I  freely  admit  to  be 
the  result  of  the  laws  of  growth  of  each  particular  plant,  or 
of  their  conditions,  internal   and  external.     It  would  be  an 
astounding  fact  if  any  varying  plant  suddenly  produced,  with- 
out the  aid  of  reversion  or  selection,  perfect  thorns.     That 
Natural  Selection  would  tend  to  produce  the  most  formidable 
thorns  will  be  admitted  by  every  one  who  has  observed  the 
distribution  in  South  America  and  Africa  {vide  Livingstone) 
of  thorn-bearing  plants,  for  they  always  appear  where  the 
bushes   grow   isolated  and    arc    exposed    to    the    attacks   of 
mammals.      Even  in   England   it  has  been   noticed  that  all 
spine-bearing    and    sting-bearing    plants    are     palatable    to 
quadrupeds,  when  the  thorns  are  crushed.     With  respect  to 
the  Malayan  climbing  Palm,  what  I  meant  to  express  is  that 
the    admirable    hooks  were    perhaps  not   first  developed   for 
climbing  ;    but  having  been    developed   for  protection   were 
subsequently  used,  and  perhaps  further  modified  for  climbing. 

Letter  224  To  J-    D-    Hooker. 

Down,  Sept.  8th  [1868]. 

About  the  Pall  Mall.1     I  do  not  agree  that  the  article  was 
at  all  right ;  it  struck  me  as  monstrous  (and  answered  on  the 

1  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  August  22nd,  1S68.  In  an  article  headed  "Dr. 
Hooker  on  Religion  and  Science,"  and  referring  to  the  British  Associa- 
tion address,  the  writer  objects  to  any  supposed  opposition  between 
religion  and  science.  "Religion,"  he  says,  "is  your  opinion  upon  one 
set  of  subjects,  science  your  opinion  upon  another  set  of  subjects."  But 
he  forgets  that  on  one  side  we  have  opinions  assumed  to  be  revealed 
truths  ;  and  this  is  a  condition  which  either  results  in  the  further  opinion 
that  those  who  bring  forward  irreconcilable  facts  are  more  or  less  wicked, 
or  in  a  change  of  front  on  the  religious  side,  by  which  theological  opinion 
"shifts  its  ground  to  meet  the  requirements  of  every  new  fact  that  science 
establishes,  and  every  old  error  that  science  exposes"  (Dr.  Hooker  as 
quoted  by  the  Pall  Mall).  If  theologians  had  been  in  the  habit  of  recog- 
nising that,  in  the  words  of  the  Pall  Mall  writer,  "Science  is  a  general 
name  for  human  knowledge  in  its  most  definite  and  general  shape,  what- 
ever may  be  the  object  of  that  knowledge,"  probably  Sir  Joseph  Hooker's 
remarks  would  never  have  been  made. 


iS64— 1869]  RELIGION    AND    SCIENCE  3O9 

spot  by  the  Morning  Advertiser)  that  religion  did  not  attack  Letter  224 
science.  When,  however,  I  say  not  at  all  right,  I  am  not 
sure  whether  it  would  not  be  wisest  for  scientific  men  quite 
to  ignore  the  whole  subject  of  religion.  Goldwin  Smith,  who 
has  been  lunching  here,  coming  with  the  Nortons  (son  of 
Professor  Norton  l  and  friend  of  Asa  Gray),  who  have  taken 
for  four  months  Keston  Rectory,  was  strongly  of  opinion  it 
was  a  mistake.  Several  persons  have  spoken  strongly  to  me  as 
very  much  admiring  your  address.  For  chance  of  you  caring 
to  see  yourself  in  a  French  dress,  I  send  a  journal  ;  also  with 
a  weak  article  by  Agassiz  on  Geographical  Distribution. 
Berkeley  has  sent  me  his  address,-  so  I  have  had  a  fail- 
excuse  for  writing  to  him.  I  differ  from  you  :  I  could  hardly 
bear  to  shake  hands  with  the  "  Sugar  of  Lead,"  3  which  I 
never  heard  before  :  it  is  capital.  I  am  so  very  glad  you  will 
come  here  with  Asa  Gray,  as  if  I  am  bad  he  will  not  be  dull. 
We  shall  ask  the  Nortons  to  come  to  dinner.  On  Saturday, 
Wallace  (and  probably  Mrs.  W.),  J.  Jenner  Weir  (a  very  good 
man),  and  Blyth,  and  I  fear  not  Bates,  are  coming  to  stay  the 
Sunday.  The  thought  makes  me  rather  nervous  ;  but  I  shall 
enjoy  it  immensely  if  it  does  not  kill  me.  How  I  wish  it  was 
possible  for  you  to  be  here  ! 

To  M.  J.  Berkeley.1  Letter  225 

Down,  Sept.  7th,   186S. 

I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you  for  having  sent  mc  your 
address 5  ....  for  I  thus   gain   a   fair  excuse   for   troubling 

1  Professor  Charles  Elliot  Norton,  of  Harvard,  is  the  son  of  the  late  Dr. 
Andrews  Norton,  Professor  of  Theology  in  the  Harvard  Divinity  School. 

a  The  Rev.  M.  J.  Berkeley  was  President  of  Section  D  at  Norwich 
in   1868. 

3  "You  know  Mrs.  Carlyle  said  that  Owen's  sweetness  reminded  her 
of  sugar  of  lead."  (Huxley  to  Tyndall,  May  13th,  1887:  Huxley's  Life, 
II.,  p.  167.) 

4  Miles  Joseph  Berkeley  (1803-89)  was  educated  at  Rugby  and  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge  ;  he  took  orders  in  1827.  Berkeley  is  described  by 
Sir  William  Thiselton-Dyer  as  "the  virtual  founder  of  British  Mycology  :' 
and  as  the  first  to  treat  the  subject  of  the  pathology  of  plants  in  a  systematic 
manner.  In  1857  he  published  his  Introduction  to  Cryptogamic  Botany. 
{Annals  of  Botany,  Vol.  XL,  1897,  p.  ix  ;  see  also  an  obituary  notice  by 
Sir  Joseph  Hooker  in  the  Prof.  Royal  Society,  Vol.  XLVIL,  p.  ix,  1890.) 

6  Address  to  Section  D  of  the  British  Association.  [Brit.  Assoc. 
Report,  Norwich  meeting,  1868,  p.  83.) 


310  i:\0LUTI0N  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  225  you  with  this   note  to  thank   you  for  your  most  kind  and 
extremely  honourable  notice  of  my  works. 

When  I  tell  you  that  ever  since  I  was  an  undergraduate 
at  Cambridge  I  have  felt  towards  you  the  most  unfeigned 
respect,  from  all  that  I  continually  heard  from  poor  dear 
Henslow  and  others  of  your  great  knowledge  and  original 
researches,  you  will  believe  me  when  I  say  that  I  have  rarely 
in  my  life  been  more  gratified  than  by  reading  your 
address  ;  though  I  feel  that  you  speak  much  too  strongly 
of  what  I  have  done.  Your  notice  of  pangenesis  :  has  par- 
ticularly pleased  me,  for  it  has  been  generally  neglected  or 
disliked  by  my  friends  ;  yet  I  fully  expect  that  it  will  some 
day  be  more  successful.  I  believe  I  quite  agree  with  you  in 
the  manner  in  which  the  cast-off  atoms  or  so-called  gemmules 
probably  act  :2  I  have  never  supposed  that  they  were  developed 
into  free  cells,  but  that  they  penetrated  other  nascent  cells 
and  modified  their  subsequent  development.  This  process 
I  have  actually  compared  with  ordinary  fertilisation.  The 
cells  thus  modified,  I  suppose  cast  off  in  their  turn  modified 
gemmules,  which  again  combine  with  other  nascent  cells,  and 
so  on.     But  I  must  not  trouble  you  any  further. 

Letter  226  To  August  Weismann. 

Down,  Oct.  22nd,  1S68. 
I   am  very    much    obliged    for   your    kind    letter,    and    I 
have    waited    for   a   week    before   answering    it    in  hopes  of 

1  "  It  would  be  unpardonable  to  finish  these  somewhat  desultory 
remarks  without  adverting  to  one  of  the  most  interesting  subjects  of  the 
day, — the  Darwinian  doctrine  of  pangenesis.  .  .  .  Like  everything  which 
comes  from  the  pen  of  a  writer  whom  I  have  no  hesitation,  so  far  as  my 
judgment  goes,  in  considering  as  by  far  the  greatest  observer  of  our  age, 
whatever  may  be  thought  of  his  theories  when  carried  out  to  their 
extreme  results,  the  subject  demands  a  careful  and  impartial  considera- 
tion."    (Berkeley,  p.  86.) 

3  "Assuming  the  general  truth  of  the  theory  that  molecules  endowed 
with  certain  attributes  are  cast  off  by  the  component  cells  of  such  infini- 
tesimal minuteness  as  to  be  capable  of  circulating  with  the  fluids,  and  in 
the  end  to  be  present  in  the  unimprcgnated  embryo-cell  and  spermato- 
zoid  ...  it  seems  to  me  far  more  probable  that  they  should  be  capable 
under  favourable  circumstances  of  exercising  an  influence  analogous  to 
that  which  is  exercised  by  the  contents  of  the  pollen-tube  or  spermato- 
zoid  on  the  embryo-sac  or  ovum,  than  that  these  particles  should  be 
themselves  developed  into  cells"  (Berkeley,  p.  87). 


1864— 1869]  WEISMANN  311 

receiving  the  "  kleine  Schrift"1  to  which  you  allude;  but  I  Letter  226 
fear  it  is  lost,  which  I  am  much  surprised  at,  as  I  have  seldom 
failed  to  receive  anything  sent  by  the  post. 

As  I  do  not  know  the  title,  and  cannot  order  a  copy,  I 
should  be  very  much  obliged  if  you  can  spare  another. 

I  am  delighted  that  you,  with  whose  name  I  am  familiar, 
should  approve  of  my  work.  I  entirely  agree  with  what 
you  say  about  each  species  varying  according  to  its  own 
peculiar  laws ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  must,  I  think,  be 
admitted  that  the  variations  of  most  species  have  in  the  lapse 
of  ages  been  extremely  diversified,  for  I  do  not  see  how  it 
can  be  otherwise  explained  that  so  many  forms  have  acquired 
analogous  structures  for  the  same  general  object,  indepen- 
dently of  descent.  I  am  very  glad  to  hear  that  you  have 
been  arguing  against  Nageli's  law  of  perfectibility,  which 
seems  to  me  superfluous.  Others  hold  similar  views,  but 
none  of  them  define  what  this  "  perfection  "  is  which  cannot 
be  gradually  attained  through  Natural  Selection.  I  thought 
M.  Wagner's  first  pamphlet2  (for  I  have  not  yet  had  time  to 
read  the  second)  very  good  and  interesting  ;  but  I  think  that 
he  greatly  overrates  the  necessity  for  emigration  and  isolation. 
I  doubt  whether  he  has  reflected  on  what  must  occur  when  his 
forms  colonise  a  new  country,  unless  they  vary  during  the  very 
first  generation  ;  nor  does  he  attach,  I  think,  sufficient  weight 
to  the  cases  of  what  I  have  called  unconscious  selection  by  man  : 
in  these  cases  races  are  modified  by  the  preservation  of  the  best 
and  the  destruction  of  the  worst,  without  any  isolation. 

I  sympathise  with  you  most  sincerely  on  the  state  of 
your  eyesight :  it  is  indeed  the  most  fearful  evil  which  can 
happen  to  any  one  who,  like  yourself,  is  earnestly  attached 
to  the  pursuit  of  natural  knowledge. 

1  The  "  kleine  Schrift "  is  "  Ueber  die  Berechtigung  der  Darwin'schen 
Theorie,"  Leipzig,  1868.  The  "Anhang"  is  "Ueber  den  Einfluss  der 
Wanderung  und  raiimlichen  Isolirung  auf  die  Artbildung." 

*  Wagner's  first  essay,  Die  Darwirische  Theorie  und  das  Migra- 
tionsgesetz,  1868,  is  a  separately  published  pamphlet  of  62  pages.  In 
the  preface  the  author  states  that  it  is  a  fuller  version  of  a  paper  read 
before  the  Royal  Academy  of  Science  at  Munich  in  March  1868.  We 
are  not  able  to  say  which  of  Wagner's  writings  is  referred  to  as  the 
second  pamphlet;  his  second  well-known  essay,  Ueber  den  Einfluss  der 
Geogr.  Isolirung,  etc.,  is  of  later  date,  viz.,  1870. 


312  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  227  To   F.    Muller. 

Down,   March  iSlh  [1869]. 

Since  I  wrote  a  few  days  ago  and  sent  off  three  copies  of 
your  book,  I  have  read  the  English  translation,1  and  cannot 
deny  myself  the  pleasure  of  once  again  expressing  to  you  my 
warm  admiration.  I  might,  but  will  not,  repeat  my  thanks 
for  the  very  honourable  manner  in  which  you  often  mention 
my  name ;  but  I  can  truly  say  that  I  look  at  the  publication 
of  your  essay  as  one  of  the  greatest  honours  ever  conferred 
on  me.  Nothing  can  be  more  profound  and  striking  than 
your  observations  on  development  and  classification.  I  am 
very  glad  that  you  have  added  your  justification  in  regard  to 
the  metamorphoses  of  insects  ;  for  your  conclusion  now  seems 
in  the  highest  degree  probable.-  I  have  re-read  many  parts, 
especially  that  on  cirripedes,  with  the  liveliest  interest.  I  had 
almost  forgotten  your  discussion  on  the  retrograde  develop- 
ment of  the  Rhizocephala.  What  an  admirable  illustration  it 
affords  of  my  whole  doctrine  !  A  man  must  indeed  be  a 
bigot  in  favour  of  separate  acts  of  creation  if  he  is  not 
staggered  after  reading  your  essay  ;  but  I  fear  that  it  is  too 
deep  for  English  readers,  except  for  a  select  few. 

Letter  22S  To  A.  R.  Wallace. 

March  27th  [1869]. 
I  have  lately  {i.e.,  in  new  edition  of  the  Origin)*  been 
moderating  my  zeal,  and  attributing  much  more  to  mere 
useless  variability.  I  did  think  I  would  send  you  the  sheet, 
but  I  daresay  you  would  not  care  to  see  it,  in  which  I  discuss 
Niigeli's  Essay  on  Natural  Selection  not  affecting  characters  of 
no  functional  importance,  and  which  yet  are  of  high  classifi- 
catory  importance.  Hooker  is  pretty  well  satisfied  with  what 
I  have  said  on  this  head. 

1  Facts  and  Arguments  for  Darwin.      See  Life  and  Letters,   III., 

P.  37- 

-  See  Facts  und  Arguments  for  Darwin,  p.  119  (note),  where  F. 
Muller  gives  his  reasons  for  the  belief  that  the  "complete  metamor- 
phosis" of  insects  was  not  a  character  of  the  form  from  which  insects 
have  sprung  :  his  argument  largely  depends  on  considerations  drawn 
from  the  study  of  the  neuroptera. 

:I  Fifth  edition,  1869,  pp.  150-57. 


1864-1869]  HUXLEY    ON     COMTE  313 

To  J.   D.   Hooker.  Letter  229 

Caerdeon,  Barmouth,  North  Wales, 

July  24th  [1S69]. 

We  shall  be  at  home  this  day  week,  taking  two  days  on 
the  journey,  and  right  glad  I  shall  be.  The  whole  has  been 
a  failure  to  me,  but  much  enjoyment  to  the  young.  .  .  .  My 
wife  has  ailed  a  good  deal  nearly  all  the  time  ;  so  that  I  loathe 
the  place,  with  all  its  beauty.  I  was  glad  to  hear  what  you 
thought  of  F.  Miiller,  and  I  agree  wholly  with  you.  Your 
letter  came  at  the  nick  of  time,  for  I  was  writing  on  the  very 
day  to  Miiller,  and  I  passed  on  your  approbation  of  Chaps.  X. 
and  XI.  Some  time  I  should  like  to  borrow  the  Transactions 
of  the  New  Zealand  Institute,  so  as  to  read  Colenso's  article.1 
You  must  read  Huxley  v.  Comte2 ;  he  never  wrote  anything 
so  clever  before,  and  has  smashed  everybody  right  and  left  in 
grand  style.  I  had  a  vague  wish  to  read  Comte,  and  so  had 
George,  but  he  has  entirely  cured  us  of  any  such  vain  wish. 

There  is  another  article3  just  come  out  in  last  North 
British,  by  some  great  mathematician,  which  is  admirably 
done  ;  he  has  a  severe  fling  at  you,4  but  the  article  is  directed 

1  Colenso,  "  On  the  Maori  Races  of  New  Zealand."  N.  Z.  Inst. 
Trans.,   1S68,  Pt.  3. 

2  "The  Scientific  Aspects  of  Positivism."  Fortnightly  Review,  1869, 
p.  652,  and  Lay  Sermons,  1S70,  p.  162.  This  was  a  reply  to  Mr. 
Congreve's  article,  "  Mr.  Huxley  on  M.  Comte,"  published  in  the  April 
number  of  the  Fortnightly,  p.  407,  which  had  been  written  in  criticism 
of  Huxley's  article  in  the  February  number  of  the  Fortnightly,  p.  128, 
"  On  the  Physical  Basis  of  Life." 

3  North  British  Review,  Vol.  50,  1S69  :  "Geological  Time,"  p.  406. 
The  papers  reviewed  are  Sir  William  Thomson,  Trans.  R.  Soe.  Edin., 
1S62  ;  Phil.  Mag.,  1863  ;  Thomson  and  Tait,  Natural  Philosophy,  Vol.  I., 
App.  D  ;  Sir  W.  Thomson,  Proc.  R.  Soe.  Edin.,  1865  ;  Trans.  Geol. 
Soe.  Glasgow,  1868  and  1869  ;  Macmillarts  Mag.,  1862  ;  Prof.  Huxley, 
Presidential  Address,  Geol.  Soe.  London,  Feb.,  1869  ;  Dr.  Hooker, 
Presidential  Address,  Brit.  Assoe.,  Norwich,  1868.  Also  the  review  on 
the  Origin  in  the  North  British  Review,  1867,  by  Fleeming  Jenkin,  and 
an  article  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  May  3rd,  1869.  The  author  treats 
the  last-named  with  contempt  as  the  work  of  an  anonymous  journalist, 
apparently  unconscious  of  his  own  similar  position. 

'  The  author  of  the  North  British  article  appears  to  us,  at  p.  408,  to 
misunderstand  or  misinterpret   Sir  J.   I).   Hooker's  parable  on  "under- 
pinning."     See   Life   and  Letters,    III.,   p.    101  (note).      Sir  Joseph    i 
attacked  with  quite  unnecessary  vehemence  on  another  point  at  p.  413. 


3H  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  229  against  Huxley  and  for  Thomson.  This  review  shows  me — 
not  that  I  required  being  shown — how  devilish  a  clever  fellow 
Huxley  is,  for  the  reviewer  cannot  help  admiring  his  abilities. 
There  are  some  good  specimens  of  mathematical  arrogance  in 
the  review,  and  incidentally  he  shows  how  often  astronomers 
have  arrived  at  conclusions  which  are  now  seen  to  be  mis- 
taken ;  so  that  geologists  might  truly  answer  that  we  must 
be  slow  in  admitting  your  conclusions.  Nevertheless,  all 
uniformitarians  had  better  at  once  cry  "  peccavi," — not  but 
what  I  feel  a  conviction  that  the  world  will  be  found  rather 
older  than  Thomson  makes  it,  and  far  older  than  the  reviewer 
makes  it.  I  am  glad  I  have  faced  and  admitted  the  difficulty 
in  the  last  edition  of  the  Origin,  of  which  I  suppose  you 
received,  according  to  order,  a  copy. 

Letter  230  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Aug.  7th  [1S69]. 

There  never  was  such  a  good  man  as  you  for  telling  me 
things  which  I  like  to  hear.  I  am  not  at  all  surprised  that 
Hallett  has  found  some  varieties  of  wheat  could  not  be 
improved  in  certain  desirable  qualities  as  quickly  as  at  first. 
All  experience  shows  this  with  animals  ;  but  it  would,  I  think, 
be  rash  to  assume,  judging  from  actual  experience,  that  a 
little  more  improvement  could  not  be  got  in  the  course  of 
a  century,  and  theoretically  very  improbable  that  after  a  few 
thousands  [of  years]  rest  there  would  not  be  a  start  in  the 
same  line  of  variation.  What  astonishes  me  as  against 
experience,  and  what  I  cannot  believe,  is  that  varieties 
already  improved  or  modified  do  not  vary  in  other  respects. 
I  think  he  must  have  generalised  from  two  or  three  spon- 
taneously fixed  varieties.  Even  in  seedlings  from  the  same 
capsule  some  vary  much  more  than  others  ;  so  it  is  with 
sub-varieties  and  varieties.1 

It  is  a  grand  fact  about  AnoplotJicrinni?  and  shows  how 

1  In  a  letter  of  August  13th,  1869,  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  wrote  correcting 
Mr.  Darwin's  impression  :  "  I  did  not  mean  to  imply  that  Hallett  affirmed 
that  all  variation  stopped — far  from  it  :  he  maintained  the  contrary,  but  if 
I  understand  him  aright,  he  soon  arrives  at  a  point  beyond  which  any 
further  accumulation  in  the  direction  sought  is  so  small  and  so  slow  that 
practically  a  fixity  of  type  (not  absolute  fixity,  however)  is  the  result." 

1  This  perhaps  refers  to  the  existence  of  Anoplothcrium  in  the  S. 


1864—  1S69]  N.    BRITISH    REVIEW  315 

even  terrestrial  quadrupeds  had  time  formerly  to  spread  to  Letter  230 
very  distant  regions.     At  each  epoch  the  world  tends  to  get 
peopled  pretty  uniformly,  which  is  a  blessing  for  Geology. 
The  article  in  N.  British  Reviezv1  is  well  worth  reading 

fc> 

scientifically  ;  George  D.  and  Erasmus  were  delighted  with 
it.  How  the  author  does  hit !  It  was  a  euphuism  to  speak 
of  a  fling  at  you  :  it  was  a  kick.  He  is  very  unfair  to  Huxley, 
and  accuses  him  of  "quibbling,"  etc.  ;  yet  the  author  cannot 
help  admiring  him  extremely.  I  know  I  felt  very  small  when 
I  finished  the  article.  You  will  be  amused  to  observe  that 
geologists  have  all  been  misled  by  Playfair,  who  was  misled 
by  two  of  the  greatest  mathematicians  !  And  there  are  other 
such  cases  ;  so  we  could  turn  round  and  show  your  reviewer 
how  cautious  geologists  ought  to  be  in  trusting  mathema- 
ticians. 

There  is  another  excellent  original  article,  I  feel  sure  by 
McClennan,  on  Primeval  Man,  well  worth  readine. 

I  do  not  quite  agree  about  Sabine  :  he  is  unlike  every 
other  soldier  or  sailor  I  ever  heard  of  if  he  would  not  put  his 
second  leg  into  the  tomb  with  more  satisfaction  as  K.C.B. 
than  as  a  simple  man.  I  quite  agree  that  the  Government 
ought  to  have  made  him  long  ago,  but  what  does  the  Govern- 
ment know  or  care  for  Science  ?  So  much  for  your  splenditious 
letter. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  2jI 

Down,  Aug.   14th  [1869?] 
I  write  one  line  to  tell  you  that  you  are  a  real  good  man 
to  propose  coming  here  for  a  Sunday  after  Exeter.     Do  keep 

to  this  good  intention I  am  sure  Exeter  and  your  other 

visit  will  do  you  good.     I  often  wonder  how  you  stand   all 
your  multifarious  work. 

I  quite  agree  about  the  folly  of  the  endless  subscriptions 
for  dead  men  ;  but  Faraday  is  an  exception,  and  if  you  will 
pay  three  guineas  for  me,  it  will  save  me  some  trouble  ;  but 
it  will  be  best  to  enclose  a  cheque,  which,  as  you  will  see, 
must  be  endorsed.  If  you  read  the  North  British  Review, 
you  will  like  to  know  that  George  has  convinced  me,  from 

American  Eocene  formation  :  it  is  one  of  the  points  in  which  the  fauna 
of  S.  America  resembles  Europe  rather  than  N.  America.     (See  Wallace 
Geographical  Distribution,  I.,  p.  148.) 
1  See  Letter  229. 


3i6  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  IV 

Letter  231  correspondence  in    style,  and   spirit,  that    the   article    is    by 
Tait,  the  co-worker  with  Thomson. 

I  was  much  surprised  at  the  leaves  of  Drosophyttum  being 
always  rolled  backwards  at  their  tips,  but  did  not  know  that 
it  was  a  unique  character. 

Letter  232  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Nov.   13th  [18C9]. 

I  heard  yesterday  from  a  relation  who  had  seen  in  a 
newspaper  that  you  were  C.B.  I  must  write  one  line  to  say 
"  Hurrah,"  though  I  wish  it  had  been  K.C.B.,  as  it  assuredly 
ought  to  have  been  ;  but  I  suppose  they  look  at  K.C.B.  before 
C.B.  as  a  dukedom  before  an  earldom. 

Wc  had  a  very  successful  week  in  London,  and  I  was 
unusually  well  and  saw  a  good  many  persons,  which,  when 
well,  is  a  great  pleasure  to  me.  I  had  a  jolly  talk  with 
Huxley,  amongst  others.  And  now  I  am  at  the  same  work 
as  before,  and  shall  be  for  another  two  months  — namely, 
putting  ugly  sentences  rather  straighter  ;  and  I  am  sick  of 
the  work,  and,  as  the  subject  is  all  on  sexual  selection,  I  am 
weary  of  everlasting  males  and  females,  cocks  and  hens. 

It  is  a  shame  to  bother  you,  but  I  should  like  some  time 
to  hear  about  the  C.B.  affair. 

I  have  read  one  or  two  interesting  brochures  lately — viz., 
Stirling  the  Hegelian  versus  Huxley  and  protoplasm  ;  Tylor 
in  Journal  of  Royal  Institute  on  the  survivals  of  old  thought 
in  modern  civilisation. 

Farewell.     I  am  as  dull  as  a  duck,  both  male  and  female. 

To  Dr.  Hooker,  C.B.,  F.R.S. 
Dr.  Hooker,  K.C.B. 
(This  looks  better). 

P.S.  I  hear  a  good  account  of  Bentham's  last  address,1 
which  I  am  now  going  to  read. 

I  find  that  I  have  blundered  about  Bentham's  address. 
Lycll  was  speaking  about  one  that  I  read  some  months  ago  ; 
but  I  read  half  of  it  again  last  night,  and  shall  finish  it. 
Some  passages  are  either  new  or  were  not  studied  enough  by 

1  Presidential  Address,  chiefly  on  Geographical  Distribution,  delivered 
before  the  Linn.  Soc,  May  24th,  1869. 


From  a  photograph  by  Wallich 


Sir  J.  I).  Hooker 

1S70? 


1864-1S69]  PERIODICALS  3 17 

me  before.     It  strikes  me  as  admirable,  as  it  did  on  the  first  Letter  232 
reading,  though  I  differ  in  some  few  points. 

Such  an  address  is  worth  its  weight  in  gold,  I  should 
think,  in  making  converts  to  our  views.  Lyell  tells  me  that 
Bunbury  has  been  wonderfully  impressed  with  it,  and  he 
never  before  thought  anything  of  our  views  on  evolution. 

P.S.  (2).  I  have  just  read,  and  like  very  much,  your  review 
of  Schimper.1 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  233 

Down,  Nov.   19th  [1869]. 

Thank  you  much  for  telling  me  all  about  the  C.B.,  for  I 
much  wished  to  hear.  It  pleases  me  extremely  that  the 
Government  have  done  this  much  ;  and  as  the  K.C.B.'s  arc 
limited  in  number  (which  I  did  not  know),  I  excuse  it.  I  will 
not  mention  what  you  have  told  me  to  any  one,  as  it  would 
be  Murchisonian.  But  what  a  shame  it  is  to  use  this  ex- 
pression, for  I  fully  believe  that  Murchison  would  take  aviy 
trouble  to  get  any  token  of  honour  for  any  man  of  science. 

I  like  all  scientific  periodicals,  including  poor  Scientific 
Opinion,  and  I  think  higher  than  you  do  of  Nature.  Lord, 
what  a  rhapsody  that  was  of  Goethe,  but  how  well  translated  ; 
it  seemed  to  me,  as  I  told  Huxley,  as  if  written  by  the 
maddest  English  scholar.  It  is  poetry,  and  can  I  say  any- 
thing more  severe?  The  last  number  of  the  Academy  was 
splendid,  and  I  hope  it  will  soon  come  out  fortnightly.  I  wish 
Nature  would  search  more  carefully  all  foreign  journals  and 
transactions. 

I  am  now  reading  a  German  thick  pamphlet2  by  Kerner 
on  Tubocytisus  ;  if  you  come  across  it,  look  at  the  map  of  the 
distribution  of  the  eighteen  quasi-species,  and  at  the  genealo- 
gical tree.  If  the  latter,  as  the  author  says,  was  constructed 
solely  from  the  affinities  of  the  forms,  then  the  distribution  is 
wonderfully  interesting  ;  we  may  see  the  very  steps  of  the 
formation  of  a  species.     If  you  study  the   genealogical  tree 

1  A  review  of  Schimpers  Trait/  dc  Paliontologie  Vigitale,  the  first 
portion  of  which  was  published  in  1869.     Nature,  Nov.  1  ith,  1869,  p.  48. 

2  "  Die  Abhangigheit  der  Pflanzengestalt  von  Klima  und  Boden.  Ein 
Beitrag  zur  Lehre  von  der  Enstehung  und  Verbreitung  der  Arten,  etc." 
Festschrift  zur  43  Versammlung  Deutscher  Naturforscher  und  Aertze  in 
Innsbruck  (Innsbruck,  1869). 


318  EVOLUTION  [Chat.  IV 

Letter  233  and  map,  you  will  almost  understand  the  book.  The  two  old 
parent  connecting  links  just  keep  alive  in  two  or  three  areas  ; 
then  we  have  four  widely  extended  species,  their  descendants  ; 
and  from  them  little  groups  of  newer  descendants  inhabiting 
rather  small  areas.  .  .  . 

Letter  234  To  Camillc  Dareste. 

Down,  Nov.  20th,  1SC9. 
Dear  Sir, 

I  am  glad  that  you  are  a  candidate  for  the  Chair  of 
Physiology  in  Paris.  As  you  are  aware  from  my  published 
works,  I  have  always  considered  your  investigations  on  the 
production  of  monstrosities  as  full  of  interest.  No  subject  is 
at  the  present  time  more  important,  as  far  as  my  judgment 
goes,  than  the  ascertaining  by  experiment  how  far  structure 
can  be  modified  by  the  direct  action  of  changed  conditions  ; 
and  you  have  thrown  much  light  on  this  subject. 

I  observe  that  several  naturalists  in  various  parts  of 
Europe  have  lately  maintained  that  it  is  now  of  the  highest 
interest  for  science  to  endeavour  to  lessen,  as  far  as  possible, 
our  profound  ignorance  on  the  cause  of  each  individual 
variation  ;  and,  as  Is.  Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire  long  ago  remarked, 
monstrosities  cannot  be  separated  by  any  distinct  line  from 
slighter  variations. 

With  my  best  wishes  for  your  success  in  obtaining  the 
Professorship,  and  with  sincere  respect. 

I  have  the  honour  to  remain,  dear  sir, 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Darwin. 


CHAPTER   V. 

EVOLUTION. 

(1870-82). 

To  J.  Jenncr  Weir.1  Letter  235 

Down,  March  17th  [1870]. 
It   is   my    decided    opinion   that  you    ought    to    send    an 
account  to  some  scientific  society,  and   I  think  to  the  Royal 
Society.3     I    would  communicate  it   if  you  so  decide.     You 

1  Mr.  John  Jenner  Weir  (1822-94)  came  of  a  family  of  Scotch  descent  ; 
in  1839  he  entered  the  service  of  the  Custom  House,  and  during  the  final 
eleven  years  of  his  service,  i.e.  from  1S74  to  1885,  held  the  position  of 
Accountant  and  Controller-General.  He  was  a  born  naturalist,  and  his 
"  aptitude  for  exact  observation  was  of  the  highest  order  "  (Mr.  M'Lachlan 
in  the  Entomologists  Monthly  Magazine,  May  1S94).  He  is  chiefly  known 
as  an  entomologist,  but  he  had  also  extensive  knowledge  of  Ornithology, 
Horticulture,  and  of  the  breeds  of  various  domestic  animals  and  cage- 
birds.  His  personal  qualities  made  him  many  friends,  and  he  was 
especially  kind  to  beginners  in  the  numerous  subjects  on  which  he  was 
an  authority  {Science  Gossip,  May  1894). 

-  Mr.  Jenner  Weir's  case  is  given  in  Animals  and  Plants,  Ed.  II., 
Vol.  I.,  p.  435,  and  does  not  appear  to  have  been  published  elsewhere. 
The  facts  are  briefly  that  a  horse,  the  offspring  of  a  mare  of  Lord 
Mostyn's,  which  had  previously  borne  a  foal  by  a  quagga,  showed  a 
number  of  quagga-like  characters,  such  as  stripes,  low-growing  mane,  and 
elongated  hoofs.  The  passage  in  Animals  and  Plants,  to  which  he  directs 
Mr.  Weir's  attention  in  reference  to  Carpenter's  objection,  is  in  Ed.  I., 
Vol.  I.,  p.  405  :  "  It  is  a  most  improbable  hypothesis  that  the  mere  blood 
of  one  individual  should  affect  the  reproductive  organs  of  another  indi- 
vidual in  such  a  manner  as  to  modify  the  subsequent  offspring.  The 
analogy  from  the  direct  action  of  foreign  pollen  on  the  ovarium  and 
seed-coats  of  the  mother  plant  strongly  supports  the  belief  that  the  male 
element  acts  directly  on  the  reproductive  organs  of  the  female,  wonderful 
as  is  this  action,  and  not  through  the  intervention  of  the  crossed  embryo." 
For  references  to  Mr.  Galton's  experiments  on  transfusion  of  blood,  see 
Letter  273. 


320  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  235  might  give  as  a  preliminary  reason  the  publication  in  the 
Transactions  of  the  celebrated  Morton  case  and  the  pig  case 
by  Mr.  Giles.  You  might  also  allude  to  the  evident  physio- 
logical importance  of  such  facts  as  bearing  on  the  theory  of 
generation.  Whether  it  would  be  prudent  to  allude  to  despised 
pangenesis  I  cannot  say,  but  I  fully  believe  pangenesis  will 
have  its  successful  day.  Pray  ascertain  carefully  the  colour 
of  the  dam  and  sire.  See  about  duns  in  my  book  [Animals 
and  Plants'],  Vol.  I.,  p.  55.  The  extension  of  the  mane  and 
form  of  hoofs  are  grand  new  facts.  Is  the  hair  of  your  horse 
at  all  curly  ?  for  [an]  observed  case  [is]  given  by  me  (Vol.  II., 
p.  325)  from  Azara  of  correlation  of  forms  of  hoof  with  curly 
hairs.  See  also  in  my  book  (Vol.  I.,  p.  55  ;  Vol.  II.,  p.  41) 
how  excessively  rare  stripes  are  on  the  faces  of  horses  in 
England.     Give  the  age  of  your  horse. 

You  are  aware  that  Dr.  Carpenter  and  others  have  tried 
to  account  for  the  effects  of  a  first  impregnation  from  the 
influence  of  the  blood  of  the  crossed  embryo;  but  with 
physiologists  who  believe  that  the  reproductive  elements  are 
actually  formed  by  the  reproductive  glands,  this  view  is  incon- 
sistent. Pray  look  at  what  I  have  said  in  Domestic  Animals 
(Vol.  I.,  pp.  402-5)  against  this  doctrine.  It  seems  to  me 
more  probable  that  the  gemmules  affect  the  ovaria  alone. 
I  remember  formerly  speculating,  like  you,  on  the  assertion 
that  wives  grow  like  their  husbands  ;  but  how  impossible  to 
eliminate  effects  of  imitation  and  same  habits  of  life,  etc. 
Your  letter  has  interested  me  profoundly. 

P.S. — Since  publishing  I  have  heard  of  additional  cases — 
a  very  good  one  in  regard  to  Westphalian  pigs  crossed  by 
English  boar,  and  all  subsequent  offspring  affected,  given  in 
Illust.  Landtuirth-Zeitung,  1868,  p.  143. 

I  have  shown  that  mules  are  often  striped,  though  neither 
parent  may  be  striped, — due  to  ancient  reversion.  Now, 
Fritz  Mullcr  writes  to  me  from  S.  Brazil  :  "  I  have  been 
assured,  by  persons  who  certainly  never  had  heard  of  Lord 
Morton's  mare,  that  mares  which  have  borne  hybrids  to  an  ass 
are  particularly  liable  to  produce  afterwards  striped  ass-colts." 
So  a  previous  fertilisation  apparently  gives  to  the  subsequent 
offspring  a  tendency  to  certain  characters,  as  well  as  characters 
actually  possessed  by  the  first  male. 

In  the  reprint  (not  called  a  second  edition)  of  my  Domestic 


1870-1882]  SPONTANEOUS     GENERATION  321 

Animals  I  give  a  good  additional  case  of  subsequent  progeny  Letter  235 
of  hairless  dog  being  hairy  from  effects  of  first  impregnation. 

P.S.  2nd.  The  suggestion,  no  doubt,  is  superfluous,  but 
you  ought,  I  think,  to  measure  extension  of  mane  beyond  a 
line  joining  front  or  back  of  ears,  and  compare  with  horse. 
Also  the  measure  (and  give  comparison  with  horse),  length, 
breadth,  and  depth  of  hoofs. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  LeUer  236 

Down,  July  12th  [1S70]. 

Your  conclusion  that  all  speculation  about  preordination 
is  idle  waste  of  time  is  the  only  wise  one  ;  but  how  difficult 
it  is  not  to  speculate !  My  theology  is  a  simple  muddle  ;  I 
cannot  look  at  the  universe  as  the  result  of  blind  chance,  yet 
I  can  see  no  evidence  of  beneficent  design,  or  indeed  of 
design  of  any  kind,  in  the  details.  As  for  each  variation  that 
has  ever  occurred  having  been  preordained  for  a  special*  end, 
I  can  no  more  believe  in  it  than  that  the  spot  on  which  each 
drop  of  rain  falls  has  been  specially  ordained. 

Spontaneous  generation  seems  almost  as  great  a  puzzle  as 
preordination.  I  cannot  persuade  myself  that  such  a  multi- 
plicity of  organisms  can  have  been  produced,  like  crystals,  in 
Bastian's1  solutions  of  the  same  kind.  I  am  astonished  that, 
as  yet,  I  have  met  with  no  allusion  to  Wyman's  positive 
statement2  that  if  the  solutions  are  boiled  for  five  hours  no 
organisms  appear  ;  yet,  if  my  memory  serves  me,  the  solu- 
tions when  opened  to  air  immediately  became  stocked. 
Against  all  evidence,  I  cannot  avoid  suspecting  that  organic 

1  On  Sept.  2nd,  1872,  Mr.  Darwin  wrote  to  Mr.  Wallace,  in  reference 
to  the  latter's  review  of  The  Beginnings  of  Life,  by  H.  C.  Bastian  (1872), 
in  Nature,  1872,  pp.  284-99:  "At  present  I  should  prefer  any  mad 
hypothesis,  such  as  that  every  disintegrated  molecule  of  the  lowest  forms 
can  reproduce  the  parent-form  ;  and  that  these  molecules  are  universally 
distributed,  and  that  they  do  not  lose  their  vital  power  until  heated 
to  such  a  temperature  that  they  decompose  like  dead  organic  particles." 

-  "  Observations  and  Experiments  on  Living  Organisms  in  Heated 
Water,"  by  Jeffries  Wyman,  Prof,  of  Anatomy,  Harvard  Coll.  {Amer. 
Journ.  Set.,  XLIV.,  1867,  p.  152.  Solutions  of  organic  matter  in 
hermetically  sealed  flasks  were  immersed  in  boiling  water  for  various 
periods.  "  No  infusoria  of  any  kind  appeared  if  the  boiling  was  prolonged 
beyond  a  period  of  five  hours." 

■21 


322  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  236  particles  (my  gemmules  from  the  separate  cells  of  the  lower 
creatures !)  will  keep  alive  and  afterwards  multiply  under 
proper  conditions. 

What  an  interesting  problem  it  is. 

Letter  237  To  W.  B.  Tegetmeier. 

Down,  July  15th  [1870]. 

It  is  very  long  since  I  have  heard  from  you,  and  I  am  much 
obliged  for  your  letter.  It  is  good  news  that  you  are  going 
to  bring  out  a  new  edition  of  your  Poultry  book,1  and  you  are 
tpjite  at  liberty  to  use  all  my  materials.  Thanks  for  the 
curious  case  of  the  wild  duck  variation  :  I  have  heard  of 
other  instances  of  a  tendency  to  vary  in  one  out  of  a  large 
litter  or  family.  I  have  too  many  things  in  hand  at  present 
to  profit  by  your  offer  of  the  loan  of  the  American  Poultry 
book. 

Pray  keep  firm  to  your  idea  of  working  out  the  subject  of 
analogous  variations  -  with  pigeons  ;  I  really  think  you  might 
thus  make  a  novel  and  valuable  contribution  to  science.  I 
can,  however,  quite  understand  how  much  your  time  must  be 
occupied  with  the  never-ending,  always-beginning  editorial 
cares. 

I  keep  much  as  usual,  and  crawl  on  with  my  work. 

Letter  23S  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Sept.  27th  [1S70]. 
Yours  was  a  splendid  letter,  and  I  was  very  curious  to 
hear  something  about  the  Liverpool 3  meeting,  which  I  much 
wished  to  be  successful  for  Huxley's  sake.  I  am  surprised 
that  you  think  his  address  would  not  have  been  clear  to  the 
public  ;  it  seemed  to  me  as  clear  as  water.  The  general  line 
of  his  argument   might  have  been  answered  by  the  case  of 

1  The  Poultry  Book,  1872. 

2  "  By  this  term  I  mean  that  similar  characters  occasionally  make 
their  appearance  in  the  several  varieties  or  races  descended  from  the 
same  species,  and  more  rarely  in  the  offspring  of  widely  distinct  species 
{Animals  and  Plants,  II.,  Ed,  II.,  p.  340). 

3  Mr.  Huxley  was  President  of  the  British  Association  at  Liverpool  in 
1870.  His  Presidential  Address  on  "Biogenesis  and  Abiogenesis"  is 
reprinted  in  his  collected  Essays,  VIII.,  p.  229.  Some  account  of  the 
meeting  is  given  in  Huxley's  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  332,  336. 


1870-1882]  BRITISH    ASSOCIATION  323 

spontaneous  combustion  :  tens  of  thousands  of  cases  of  things  Letter  23S 
having  been  seen  to  be  set  on  fire  would  be  no  true  argument 
against  any  one  who  maintained  that  flames  sometimes  spon- 
taneously burst  forth.  I  am  delighted  at  the  apotheosis  of 
Sir  Roderick  ;  I  can  fancy  what  neat  and  appropriate 
speeches  he  would  make  to  each  nobleman  as  he  entered  the 
gates  of  heaven.  You  ask  what  I  think  about  Tyndall's 
lecture  l  :  it  seemed  to  me  grand  and  very  interesting,  though 
I  could  not  from  ignorance  quite  follow  some  parts,  and  I 
longed  to  tell  him  how  immensely  it  would  have  been  im- 
proved if  all  the  first  part  had  been  made  very  much  less 
egotistical.  George  independently  arrived  at  the  same 
conclusion,  and  liked  all  the  latter  part  extremely.  He 
thought  the  first  part  not  only  egotistical,  but  rather 
clap-trap. 

How  well  Tyndall  puts  the  "as  if"  manner  of  philoso- 
phising, and  shows  that  it  is  justifiable.  Some  of  those 
confounded  Frenchmen  have  lately  been  pitching  into  me 
for  using  this  form  of  proof  or  argument. 

I  have  just  read  Rolleston's  address  in  Nature-  :  his  style 
is  quite  unparalleled  !  I  see  he  quotes  you  about  seed,  so 
yesterday  I  went  and  observed  more  carefully  the  case  given 
in  the  enclosed  paper,  which  perhaps  you  might  like  to  read 
and  burn. 

How  true  and  good  what  you  say  about  Lyell.  He  is 
always  the  same ;  Dohrn  was  here  yesterday,  and  was  remark- 
ing that  no  one  stood  higher  in  the  public  estimation  of 
Germany  than  Lyell. 

I  am  truly  and  profoundly  glad  that  you  are  thinking  of 
some  general  work  on  Geographical  Distribution,  or  so  forth  ; 
I  hope  to  God  that  your  incessant  occupations  may  not  inter- 
rupt this  intention.  As  for  my  book,  I  shall  not  have  done 
the  accursed  proofs  till  the  end  of  November 3  :  good  Lord, 
what  a  muddled  head  I  have  got  on  my  wretched  old 
shoulders. 

1  Tyndall's  lecture  was  "  On  the  Scientific  Uses  of  the  Imagination.'' 
-  Presidential  Address  to  the  Biological  Section,  British  Association, 
1870.      Nature^  Sept.  22nd,    1870,  p.  423.      Rolleston   referred   to  the 
vitality  of  seeds  in  soil,  a  subject  on  which    Darwin   made  occasional 
observations.     See  Life  and Letters ;  II.,  p.  65. 

3  The  proofs  of  the  Descent  of  Man  were  finished  on  Jan.  15th,  1871. 


324  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  239  To  H.  Settegast. 

Down,  Sept.  29th,   1870. 

1  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  kind  letter  and  present 
of  your  beautiful  volume.1  Your  work  is  not  new  to  me,  for 
I  heard  it  so  highly  spoken  of  that  I  procured  a  copy  of  the 
first  edition.  It  was  a  great  gratification  to  me  to  find  a 
man  who  had  long  studied  with  a  philosophical  spirit  our 
domesticated  animals,  and  who  was  highly  competent  to 
judge,  agreeing  to  a  large  extent  with  my  views.  I  regretted 
much  that  I  had  not  known  your  work  when  I  published  my 
last  volumes. 

I  am  surprised  and  pleased  to  hear  that  science  is  not 
quite  forgotten  under  the  present  exciting  state  of  affairs. 
Every  one  whom  I  know  in  England  is  an  enthusiastic  wisher 
for  the  full  and  complete  success  of  Germany. 

P.S.  I  will  give  one  of  my  two  copies  of  your  work  to 
some  public  scientific  library  in   London. 

Letter  240  To  the  Editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

Down,  March  24th  [1871]. 

Mr.  Darwin  presents  his  compliments  to  the  Editor,  and 
would  be  greatly  obliged  if  he  would  address  and  post  the 
enclosed  letter  to  the  author  of  the  two  admirable  reviews  of 
the  Descent  of  Man? 

Letter  241  To  John  Morley. 

Down,  March  24th,   1S71. 

From  the  spirit  of  your  review  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
of  my  last  book,  which  has  given  me  great  pleasure,  I  have 
thought  that  you  would  perhaps  inform  me  on  one  point, 
withholding,  if  you  please,  your  name. 

You  say  that  my  phraseology  on  beauty  is  "  loose  scienti- 
fically, and  philosophically  most  misleading."3     This  is   not 

1  Die  Thierzucht,  1S68. 

2  The  notices  of  the  Descent  of  Man,  published  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette  of  March  20th  and  21st,  1871,  were  by  Mr.  John  Morley.  We 
are  indebted  to  the  Editor  of  the  rail  Mall  Gazette  for  kindly  allowing 
us  to  consult  his  file  of  the  journal. 

3  "Mr.  Darwin's  work  is  one  of  those  rare  and  capital  achievements 
of  intellect  which  effect  a  grave  modification  throughout  all  the  highest 
departments   of  the    realm   of  opinion.  .   .   .    There   is   throughout  the 


i87o— 1882]  JOHN    MORLEY  325 

at  all  improbable,  as  it  is  almost  a  lifetime  since  I  attended  to  Letter  241 
the  philosophy  of  aesthetics,  and  did  not  then  think  that  I 
should  ever  make  use  of  my  conclusions.  Can  you  refer  me 
to  any  one  or  two  books  (for  my  power  of  reading  is  not 
great)  which  would  illumine  me  ?  or  can  you  explain  in  one  or 
two  sentences  how  I  err  ?  Perhaps  it  would  be  best  for  me 
to  explain  what  I  mean  by  the  sense  of  beauty  in  its  lowest 
stage  of  development,  and  which  can  only  apply  to  animals. 
When  an  intense  colour,  or  two  tints  in  harmony,  or  a  re- 
current and  symmetrical  figure  please  the  eye,  or  a  single 
sweet  note  pleases  the  ear,  I  call  this  a  sense  of  beauty  ;  and 
with  this  meaning  I  have  spoken  (though  I  now  see  in  not  a 
sufficiently  guarded  manner)  of  a  taste  for  the  beautiful  being 
the  same  in  mankind  (for  all  savages  admire  bits  of  bright 
cloth,  beads,  plumes,  etc.)  and  in  the  lower  animals.  If  the 
blue  and  yellow  plumage  of  a  macaw  1  pleases  the  eye  of  this 
bird,  I  should  say  that  it  had  a  sense  of  beauty,  although  its 
taste  was  bad  according  to  our  standard.  Now,  will  you  have 
the  kindness  to  tell  me  how  I  can  learn  to  see  the  error  of 
my  ways  ?  Of  course  I  recognise,  as  indeed  I  have  remarked 
in  my  book,  that  the  sense  of  beauty  in  the  case  of  scenery, 
pictures,  etc.,  is  something  infinitely  complex,  depending  on 
varied  associations  and  culture  of  the  mind.  From  a  very 
interesting  review  in  the  Spectator,  and  from  your  and 
Wallace's  review,  I  perceive  that  I  have  made  a  great  over- 
sight in  not  having  said  what  little  I  could  on  the  acquisition 

description  and  examination  of  Sexual  Selection  a  way  of  speaking  of 
beauty,  which  seems  to  us  to  be  highly  un philosophical,  because  it  assumes 
a  certain  theory  of  beauty,  which  the  most  competent  modern  thinkers  are 
too  far  from  accepting,  to  allow  its  assumption  to  be  quite  judicious.  .  .  . 
Why  should  we  only  find  the  ;esthetic  quality  in  birds  wonderful,  when  it 
happens  to  coincide  with  our  own  ?  In  other  words,  why  attribute  to  them 
conscious  aesthetic  qualities  at  all  ?  There  is  no  more  positive  reason  for 
attributing  aesthetic  consciousness  to  the  Argus  pheasant  than  there  is 
for  attributing  to  bees  geometric  consciousness  of  the  hexagonal  prisms 
and  rhombic  plates  of  the  hive  which  they  so  marvellously  construct. 
Hence  the  phraseology  which  Mr.  Darwin  employs  in  this  part  of  the 
subject,  though  not  affecting  the  degree  of  probability  which  may  belong 
to  this  theory,  seems  to  us  to  be  very  loose  scientifically,  and  philosophi- 
cally most  misleading."     Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

'K  "  What  man  deems  the  horrible  contrasts  of  yellow  and  blue  attract 
the  macaw,  while  ball-and-socket-plumage  attracts  the  Argus  pheasant " 
— Pall  Mall  Gazette,  March  21st,  1871,  p.  1075. 


326  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  241  uf  the  sense  for  the  beautiful  by  man  and  the  lower  animals. 
It  would  indeed  be  an  immense  advantage  to  an  author  if  he 
could  read  such  criticisms  as  yours  before  publishing.  At 
p.  1 1  of  your  review  you  accidentally  misquote  my  words 
placed  by  you  within  inverted  commas,  from  my  Vol.  II., 
p.  354:  I  say  that  "man  cannot  endure  any  great  change," 
and  the  omitted  words  "any  great"  '  make  all  the  difference 
in  the  discussion. 

Permit  me  to  add  a  few  other  remarks.  I  believe  your 
criticism  is  quite  just  about  my  deficient  historic  spirit,  for 
I  am  aware  of  my  ignorance  in  this  line.3  On  the  other 
hand,  if  you  should  ever  be  led  to  read  again  Chapter  III., 
and  especially  Chapter  V.,  I  think  you  will  find  that  I  am 
not  amenable  to  all  your  strictures  ;  though  I  felt  that  I  was 
walking  on  a  path  unknown  to  me  and  full  of  pitfalls  ;  but 
I  had  the  advantage  of  previous  discussions  by  able  men.  I 
tried  to  say  most  emphatically  that  a  great  philosopher,  law- 
giver, etc.,  did  far  more  for  the  progress  of  mankind  by  his 
writings  or  his  example  than  by  leaving  a  numerous  offspring. 
I  have  endeavoured  to  show  how  the  struggle  for  existence 
between  tribe  and  tribe  depends  on  an  advance  in  the  moral 
and  intellectual  qualities  of  the  members,  and  not  merely  on 
their  capacity  of  obtaining  food.  When  I  speak  of  the  neces- 
sity of  a  struggle  for  existence  in  order  that  mankind  should 
advance  still  higher  in  the  scale,  I  do  not  refer  to  the  most, 
but  "  to  the  more  highly  gifted  men  "  being  successful  in  the 
battle  for  life  ;  I  referred  to  my  supposition  of  the  men  in  any 
country  being  divided  into  two  equal  bodies — viz.,  the  more 
and  the  less  highly  gifted,  and  to  the  former  on  an  average 
succeeding  best. 

1  "  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us,  and  gives  us  excellent  reasons  for  thinking,  that 
'  the  men  of  each  race  prefer  what  they  are  accustomed  to  behold  ;  they 
cannot  endure  change.'  Yet  is  there  not  an  inconsistency  between  this 
fact  and  the  other  that  one  race  differs  from  another  exactly  because 
novelties  presented  themselves,  and  were  eagerly  seized  and  propagated?" 

-  "  In  the  historic  spirit,  however,  Mr.  Darwin  must  fairly  be  pro- 
nounced deficient.  When,  for  instance,  he  speaks  of  the  'great  sin  of 
slavery'  having  been  general  among  primitive  nations,  he  forgets  that, 
though  to  hold  a  slave  would  be  a  sinful  degradation  to  a  European 
to-day,  the  practice  of  turning  prisoners  of  war  into  slaves,  instead  of 
butchering  them,  was  not  a  sin  at  all,  but  marked  a  decided  improvement 
in  human  manners." 


1870— iScS2]  JOHN    MORLEY  327 

But  I  have  much  cause  to  apologise  for  the  length  of  this  Letter  241 
ill-expressed  letter.  My  sole  excuse  is  the  extraordinary- 
interest  which  I  have  felt  in  your  review,  and  the  pleasure 
which  I  have  experienced  in  observing  the  points  which  have 
attracted  your  attention.  I  must  say  one  word  more.  Having 
kept  the  subject  of  sexual  selection  in  my  mind  for  very  many 
years,  and  having  become  more  and  more  satisfied  with  it,  I 
feel  great  confidence  that  as  soon  as  the  notion  is  rendered 
familiar  to  others,  it  will  be  accepted,  at  least  to  a  much 
greater  extent  than  at  present.  With  sincere  respect  and 
thanks.  .  .  . 

To  John  Morlcy.  Letter  242 

Down,  April   14th  [1871]. 
As  this  note  requires  no  answer,  I  do  not  scruple  to  write 
a  few  lines  to  say  how  faithful  and  full  a  resume  you  have 
given  of  my  notions  on  the  moral  sense  J  in  the  Pall  Mall,  and 

1  "What  is  called  the  question  of  the  moral  sense  is  really  two  :  how 
the  moral  faculty  is  acquired,  and  how  it  is  regulated.  Why  do  we  obey 
conscience  or  feel  pain  in  disobeying  it  ?  And  why  does  conscience 
prescribe  one  kind  of  action  and  condemn  another  kind  ?  To  put  it  more 
technically,  there  is  the  question  of  the  subjective  existence  of  conscience, 
and  there  is  the  question  of  its  objective  prescriptions.  First,  why  do  I 
think  it  obligatory  to  do  my  duty  ?  Second,  why  do  I  think  it  my  duty  to 
do  this  and  not  do  that  ?  Although,  however,  the  second  question  ought 
to  be  treated  independently,  for  reasons  which  we  shall  presently  suggest, 
the  historical  answer  to  it,  or  the  various  grounds  on  which  men  have 
identified  certain  sorts  of  conduct  with  duty,  rather  than  conduct  of  the 
opposite  sorts,  throws  light  on  the  other  question  of  the  conditions  of 
growth  of  the  idea  of  duty  as  a  sovereign  and  imperial  director.  Mr. 
Darwin  seems  to  us  not  to  have  perfectly  recognised  the  logical  separation 
between  the  two  sides  of  the  moral  sense  question.  For  example,  he  says 
(i.  97)  that  '  philosophers  of  the  derivative  school  of  morals  formerly 
assumed  that  the  foundation  of  morality  lay  in  a  form  of  Selfishness  ;  but 
more  recently  in  the  Greatest  Happiness  principle.'  But  Mr.  Mill,  to 
whom  Mr.  Darwin  refers,  has  expressly  shown  that  the  Greatest  Happiness 
principle  is  a  standard,  and  not  a.  foundation,  and  that  its  validity  as  a 
standard  of  right  and  wrong  action  is  just  as  tenable  by  one  who  believes 
the  moral  sense  to  be  innate,  as  by  one  who  holds  that  it  is  acquired. 
He  says  distinctly  that  the  social  feelings  of  mankind  form  '  the  natural 
basis  of  sentiment  for  utilitarian  morality.'  So  far  from  holding  the 
Greatest  Happiness  principle  to  be  the  foundation  of  morality,  he  would 
describe  it  as  the  forming  principle  of  the  superstructure  of  which  the 
social  feelings  of  mankind  are  the  foundation.     Between  Mr.  Darwin  and 


328  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Lettei  242  to  make  .1  few  extenuating  or  explanatory  remarks.  How 
the  mistake  which  I  have  made  in  speaking  of  greatest 
happiness  as  the  foundation  of  morals  arose,  is  utterly  un- 
intelligible to  me  :  any  time  during  the  last  several  years  I 
should  have  laughed  such  an  idea  to  scorn.  Mr.  Lecky  never 
made  a  greater  blunder,1  and  your  kindness  has  made  you  let 
me  off  too  easily.  With  respect  to  Mr.  Mill,  nothing  would  have 
pleased  me  more  than  to  have  relied  on  his  great  authority  with 
respect  to  the  social  instincts,  but  the  sentence  which  I  quote 
at  [Vol.  I.]  p.  71  ("if,  as  is  my  own  belief,  the  moral  feelings 
arc  not  innate,  but  acquired,  they  are  not  for  that  reason  less 
natural  ")  seems  to  me  somewhat  contradictory  with  the  other 
words  which  I  quote,  so  that  I  did  not  know  what  to  think  ; 
more  especially  as  he  says  so  very  little  about  the  social 
instincts.  When  I  speak  of  intellectual  activity  as  the 
secondary  basis  of  conscience,  I  meant  in  my  own  mind 
secondary  in  period  of  development  ;  but  no  one  could  be 
expected  to  understand  so  great  an  ellipse.  With  reference 
to    your    last    sentence,  do  you  not  think   that    man   might 

utilitarians,  as  utilitarians,  there  is  no  such  quarrel  as  he  would  appear 
to  suppose.  The  narrowest  utilitarian  could  say  little  more  than  Mr. 
Darwin  says  (ii.  393):  'As  all  men  desire  their  own  happiness,  praise 
or  blame  is  bestowed  on  actions  and  motives  according  as  they  tend  to 
this  end  ;  and,  as  happiness  is  an  essential  part  of  the  general  good,  the 
Greatest  Happiness  principle  indirectly  serves  as  a  nearly  safe  standard 
of  right  and  wrong.'  It  is  perhaps  not  impertinent  to  suspect  that  the 
faltering  adverbs  which  we  have  printed  in  italics  indicate  no  more 
than  the  reluctance  of  a  half-conscious  convert  to  pure  utilitarianism. 
In  another  place  (i.  98)  he  admits  that  'as  all  wish  for  happiness,  the 
Greatest  Happiness  principle  will  have  become  a  most  important  secondary 
guide  and  object,  the  social  instincts,  including  sympathy,  always  serving 
as  the  primary  impulse  and  guide.'  This  is  just  what  Mr.  Mill  says,  only 
instead  of  calling  the  principle  a  secondary  guide,  he  would  call  it  a 
standard,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  social  impulse,  in  which,  as  much  as 
Mr.  Darwin,  he  recognises  the  base  and  foundation." — Pall  Mall  Gazelle, 
April  1 2th,  1871. 

1  In  the  first  edition  of  the  Descent  of  Man,  I.,  p.  97,  Mr.  Lecky  is 
quoted  as  one  of  those  who  assumed  that  the  "foundation  of  morality  lay 
in  a  form  of  selfishness  ;  but  more  recently  in  the  'greatest  happiness' 
principle."  Mr.  Lecky's  name  is  omitted  in  this  connection  in  the  second 
edition,  p.  120.  In  this  edition  Mr.  Darwin  makes  it  clearer  that  he 
attaches  most  importance  to  the  social  instinct  as  the  "  primary  impulse 
and  guide." 


1S70— 1882]  LORD    KELVIN'S    ADDRESS  329 

have  retrograded  in  his  parental,  marriage,  and  other  instincts  Letter  242 
without  having  retrograded  in  his  social  instincts  ?  and  I  do 
not  think  that  there  is  any  evidence  that  man  ever  existed  as 
a  non-social  animal.  I  must  add  that  I  have  been  very  glad 
to  read  your  remarks  on  the  supposed  case  of  the  hive-bee  :  it 
affords  an  amusing  contrast  with  what  Miss  Cobbc  has  written 
in  the  Theological  Review}  Undoubtedly  the  great  principle 
of  acting  for  the  good  of  all  the  members  of  the  same  com- 
munity, and  therefore  the  good  of  the  species,  would  still  have 
held  sovereign  sway. 

To  J.   D.   Hooker.  Letter  243 

Sir  Joseph  Hooker  wrote  (Aug.  5th,  1S71)  to  Darwin  about  Lord 
Kelvin's  Presidential  Address  at  the  Edinburgh  meeting  of  the  British 
Association  :  "  It  seems  to  me  to  be  very  able  indeed  ;  and  what  a  good 
notion  it  gives  of  the  gigantic  achievement  of  mathematicians  and 
physicists  ! — it  really  made  one  giddy  to  read  of  them.  I  do  not  think 
Huxley  will  thank  him  for  his  reference  to  him  as  a  positive  unbeliever 
in  spontaneous  generation — these  mathematicians  do  not  seem  to  me 
to  distinguish  between  un-belief  and  a-belief.  I  know  no  other  name  for 
the  state  of  mind  that  is  produced  under  the  term  scepticism.  I  had 
no  idea  before  that  pure  Mathematics  had  achieved  such  wonders  in 
practical  science.  The  total  absence  of  any  allusion  to  Tyndall's  labours, 
even  when  comets  are  his  theme,  seems  strange  to  me." 

Haredene,  Albury,  Guildford,  Aug.  6th  [1871]. 
I  have  read  with  greatest  interest  Thomson's  address  ; 
but  you  say  so  exactly  and  fully  all  that  I  think,  that  you 
have  taken  all  the  words  from  my  mouth  ;  even  about  Tyndall. 
It  is  a  gain  that  so  wonderful  a  man,  though  no  naturalist, 
should  become  a  convert  to  evolution  ;  Huxley,  it  seems, 
remarked  in  his  speech  to  this  effect.      I  should  like  to  know 

1  Mr.  Darwin  says  {Descent  of  Man,  Ed.  1.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  73  ;  Ed.  II., 
p.  99),  "that  if  men  lived  like  bees  our  unmarried  females  would  think  it 
a  sacred  duty  to  kill  their  brothers."  Miss  Cobbe  remarks  on  this  "  that 
the  principles  of  social  duty  would  be  reversed"  {Theological  Review, 
April  1872).  Mr.  Morley,  on  the  other  hand,  says  of  Darwin's  assertion, 
that  it  is  "as  reassuring  as  the  most  absolute  of  moralists  could  desire. 
For  it  is  tantamount  to  saying  that  the  foundations  of  morality,  the 
distinctions  of  right  and  wrong,  are  deeply  laid  in  the  very  conditions  of 
social  existence  ;  that  there  is  in  face  of  these  conditions  a  positive 
and  definite  difference  between  the  moral  and  the  immoral,  the  virtuous 
and  the  vicious,  the  right  and  the  wrong,  in  the  actions  of  individuals 
partaking  of  that  social  existence." 


330  EVOLUTION  [Chap.V 

Letter  243  what  he  means  about  design,1 — I  cannot  in  the  least  under- 
stand, for  I  presume  he  docs  not  believe  in  special  inter- 
positions. Herschel's  was  a  good  sneer.  It  made  me  put  in 
the  simile  about  Raphael's  Madonna,-  when  describing  in  the 
Descent  of  Man  the  manner  of  formation  of  the  wondrous 
ball-and-socket  ornaments,  and  I  will  swear  to  the  truth  of 
this  case. 

You  know  the  oak-leaved  variety  of  the  common  honey- 
suckle ;  I  could  not  persuade  a  lady  that  this  was  not  the 
result  of  the  honeysuckle  climbing  up  a  young  oak  tree  !  Is 
this  not  like  the  Viola  case  ? 

Letter  244  To  John  Lubbock  (Lord  Avebury). 

Haredene,  Albury,  Guildford,  Aug.    12th  [187 1]. 

I  hope  the  proof-sheets  having  been  sent  here  will  not 
inconvenience  you.  I  have  read  them  with  infinite  satisfac- 
tion, and  the  whole  discussion  strikes  me  as  admirable.  I 
have  no  books  here,  and  wish  much  I  could   see  a  plate  of 

1  See  British  Association  Report,  p.  cv.  Lord  Kelvin  speaks  very 
doubtfully  of  evolution.  After  quoting  tbe  concluding  passage  of  the 
Origin,  he  goes  on,  "  I  have  omitted  two  sentences  .  .  .  describing 
briefly  the  hypothesis  of  '  the  origin  of  species  by  Natural  Selection,' 
because  I  have  always  felt  that  this  hypothesis  does  not  contain  the  true 
theory  of  evolution,  if  evolution  there  has  been  in  biology  "  (the  italics 
arc  not  in  the  original).  Lord  Kelvin  then  describes  as  a  "most 
valuable  and  instructive  criticism,"  Sir  John  Herschel's  remark  that  the 
doctrine  of  Natural  Selection  is  "  too  like  the  Laputan  method  of  making 
books,  and  that  it  did  not  sufficiently  take  into  account  a  continually 
guiding  and  controlling  intelligence."  But  it  should  be  remembered  that 
it  was  in  this  address  of  Lord  Kelvin's  that  he  suggested  the  possibility 
of  "  seed-bearing  meteoric  stones  moving  about  through  space  "  inocu- 
lating the  earth  with  living  organisms  ;  and  if  he  assumes  that  the  whole 
population  of  the  globe  is  to  be  traced  back  to  these  "moss-grown 
fragments  from  the  ruins  of  another  world,"  it  is  obvious  that  he  believes 
in  a  form  of  evolution,  and  one  in  which  a  controlling  intelligence  is  not 
very  obvious,  at  all  events  not  in  the  initial  and  all-important  stage. 

■  See  Descent  of  Man,  II.,  p.  141.  Darwin  says  that  no  one  will 
attribute  the  shading  of  the  "eyes  "  on  the  wings  of  the  Argus  pheasant 
to  the  "  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms  of  colouring-matter."  He  goes  on 
to  say  that  the  development  of  the  ball-and-socket  effect  by  means  of 
Natural  Selection  seems  at  first  as  incredible  as  that  "one  of  Raphael's 
Madonnas  should  have  been  formed  by  the  selection  of  chance  daubs  of 
paint."  The  remark  of  Herschel's,  emoted  in  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  241, 
that  the  Origin  illustrates  the  "law  of  higgledy-piggledy,"  is  probably  a 


1870— 1882]  METAMORPHOSIS  331 

Campodea}  I  never  reflected  much  on  the  difficulty2  which  Letter  244 
you  indicate,  and  on  which  you  throw  so  much  light  I  have 
only  a  few  trifling  remarks  to  make.  At  p.  44  I  wish  you 
had  enlarged  a  little  on  what  you  have  said  of  the  distinction 
between  developmental  and  adaptive  changes  ;  for  I  cannot 
quite  remember  the  point,  and  others  will  perhaps  be  in  the 
same  predicament.  I  think  I  always  saw  that  the  larva  and 
the  adult  might  be  separately  modified  to  any  extent. 
Bearing  in  mind  what  strange  changes  of  function  parts 
undergo,  with  the  intermediate  state  of  use,3  it  seems  to  me 
that  you  speak  rather  too  boldly  on  the  impossibility  of  a 
mandibulate  insect  being  converted  into  a  sucking  insect  ; ' 
not  that  I  in  the  least  doubt  the  value  of  your  explanation. 

conversational  variant  of  the  Laputan  comparison  which  gave  rise  to  the 
passage  in  the  Descent  of  Man  (see  Letter  130). 

1  "  On  the  Origin  of  Insects."  By  Sir  John  Lubbock,  Bart.  Tourn. 
Linn.  Soc.  (Zoology),  Vol.  XL,  1873,  PP-  422-6.  (Read  Nov.  2nd,  1871.) 
In  the  concluding  paragraph  the  author  writes,  "If  these  views'are 
correct  the  genus  Campodea  [a  beetle]  must  be  regarded  as  a  form 
of  remarkable  interest,  since  it  is  the  living  representative  of  a  primaeval 
type  from  which  not  only  the  Collembola  and  Thysanura,  but  the  other 
great  orders  of  insects,  have  all  derived  their  origin."  (See  also  Brit. 
Assoc.  Report,  1872,  p.  125— Address  by  Sir  John  Lubbock;  and  for  a 
figure  of  Campodea  see  Nature,  Vol.  VII.,  1873,  P-  447-) 

2  The  difficulty  alluded  to  is  explained  by  the  first  sentence  of  Lord 
Avebury's  paper.  "The  Metamorphoses  of  this  group  (Insects)  have 
always  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  of  the  Darwinian 
theory  ...  I  feel  great  difficulty  in  conceiving  by  what  natural  process 
an  insect  with  a  suctorial  mouth,  like  that  of  a  gnat  or  butterfly,  could 
be  developed  from  a  powerfully  mandibulate  type  like  the  orthoptera,  or 
even  from  the  neuroptera  ...  A  clue  to  the  difficulty  may,  I  think,  be 
found  in  the  distinction  between  the  developmental  and  adaptive  changes 
to  which  I  called  the  attention  of  the  Society  in  a  previous  memoir." 

The  distinction  between  developmental  and  adaptive  changes  is 
mentioned,  but  not  discussed,  in  the  paper  "  On  the  Origin  of  Insects  " 
(loc.  tit.,  p.  422);  in  a  former  paper,  "On  the  Development  of  Chloeon 
(Ephemera)  dimidiatum  (Trans.  Linn.  Soc,  XXV,  p.  477,  1866),  this 
question  is  dealt  with  at  length. 

3  This  slightly  obscure  phrase  may  be  paraphrased,  "  the  gradational 
stages  being  of  service  to  the  organism." 

4  "There  are,  however,  peculiar  difficulties  in  those  cases  in  which,  as 
among  the  lepidoptera,  the  same  species  is  mandibulate  as  a  larva  and 
suctorial  as  an  embryo"  (Lubbock,  "Origin  of  Insects,"  p.  423). 


332  EVOLUTION  [Cn,\r.  V 

Letter  244  Cirripedes  passing  through  what  I  have  called  a  pupal 
state  '  so  far  as  their  mouths  arc  concerned,  rather  supports 
what  you  say  at  p.  52. 

At  p.  40  your  remarks  on  the  Argus-  pheasant  (though  I 
have  not  the  least  objection  to  them)  do  not  seem  to  me  very 
appropriate  as  being  related  to  the  mental  faculties.  If  you 
can  spare  me  these  proof-sheets  when  done  with,  I  shall  be 
obliged,  as  I  shall  be  correcting  a  new  edition  of  the  Origin 
when  I  return  home,  though  this  subject  is  too  large  for  me 
to  enter  on.  I  thank  you  sincerely  for  the  great  interest 
which  your  discussion  has  given  me.  .  .  . 

Letter  245  To   J.   D.    Hooker. 

The  following  letter  refers  to  Mivart's  Genesis  of  Species? 

Down,  Sept.   16th  [1871]. 

I  am  preparing  a  new  and  cheap  edition  of  the  Origin, 
and  shall  introduce  a  new  chapter  on  gradation,  and  on  the 
uses  of  initial  commencements  of  useful  structures  ;  for  this,  1 
observe,  has  produced  the  greatest  effect  on  most  persons. 
Every  one  of  his  [Mivart's]  cases,  as  it  seems  to  me,  can  be 
answered  in  a  fairly  satisfactory  manner.  He  is  very  unfair, 
and  never  says  what  he  must  have  known  could  be  said  on 
my  side.  He  ignores  the  effect  of  use,  and  what  I  have  said 
in  all  my  later  books  and  editions  on  the  direct  effects  of  the 
conditions  of  life  and  so-called  spontaneous  variation.  I  send 
you  by  this  post  a  very  clever,  but  ill-written  review  from 
N.  America  by  a  friend  of  Asa  Gray,  which  I  have  republished.' 

1  "  Hence,  the  larva  in  this,  its  last  stage,  cannot  eat ;  it  may  be 
called  a  locomotive  Pupa  ;  its  whole  organisation  is  apparently  adapted 
for  the  one  great  end  of  finding  a  proper  site  for  its  attachment  and 
final  metamorphosis."  {A  Monograph  on  the  Sub-class  Cirripedia.  15 y 
Charles  Darwin.     London,  Ray  Soc,  1851.) 

■'  There  is  no  mention  of  the  Argus  pheasant  in  the  published 
paper. 

3  St.  George  Mivart,  F.R.S.  (1S27-1900)  was  educated  at  Harrow, 
King's  College,  London,  and  St.  Mary's  College,  Oscotr.  He  was  called 
to  the  liar  in  1851  ;  in  1862  he  was  appointed  Lecturer  in  the  Medical 
School  of  St.  Mary's  Hospital.  In  the  Genesis  of  Species,  published  in 
1871,  Mivart  expressed  his  belief  in  the  guiding  action  of  Divine  power 
as  a  factor  in  E\  olution. 

4  Chauncey  Wright  in  the  North  American  Review^  Vol.  CXI  1 1., 
reprinted  by  Darwin  and  published  as  a  pamphlet  (see  Life  and  Letters, 
III.,  p.  145). 


i87o—  1SS2]  MIVART  333 

I  am  glad  to  hear  about  Huxley.  You  never  read  such  Letter  245 
strong  letters  Mivart  wrote  to  me  about  respect  towards  me, 
begging  that  I  would  call  on  him,  etc.,  etc.  ;  yet  in  the 
Q.  Revieiv  x  he  shows  the  greatest  scorn  and  animosity  towards 
me,  and  with  uncommon  cleverness  says  all  that  is  most 
disagreeable.  He  makes  me  the  most  arrogant,  odious  beast 
that  ever  lived.  I  cannot  understand  him  ;  I  suppose  that 
accursed  religious  bigotry  is  at  the  root  of  it.  Of  course  he 
is  quite  at  liberty  to  scorn  and  hate  me,  but  why  take  such 
trouble  to  express  something  more  than  friendship?  It  has 
mortified  me  a  good  deal. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  246 

Down,  Oct.  4th  [1S71]. 
I  am  quite  delighted  that  you  think  so  highly  of  Huxley's 
article.2  I  was  afraid  of  saying  all  I  thought  about  it,  as 
nothing  is  so  likely  as  to  make  anything  appear  flat.  I  thought 
of,  and  quite  agreed  with,  your  former  saying  that  Huxley 
makes  one  feel  quite  infantile  in  intellect.  He  always  thus  acts 
on  me.  I  exactly  agree  with  what  you  say  on  the  several 
points  in  the  article,  and  I  piled  climax  on  climax  of  admira- 
tion in  my  letter  to  him.  I  am  not  so  good  a  Christian  as 
you  think  me,  for  I  did  enjoy  my  revenge  on  Mivart.  He 
{i.e.  Mivart)  has  just  written  to  me  as  cool  as  a  cucumber, 
hoping  my  health  is  better,  etc.  My  head,  by  the  way, 
plagues  me  terribly,  and  I  have  it  light  and  rocking  half  the 
day.     Farewell,  dear  old  friend — my  best  of  friends. 

To  John  Fiske.  Lelt«  247 

Mr.  Fiske,  who  is  perhaps  best  known  in  England  as  the  author  of 
Outlines  of Cosmic  Philosophy,  had  sent  to  Mr.  Darwin  some  reports  of 
the  lectures  given  at  Harvard  University.  The  point  referred  to  in  the 
postscript  in  Mr.  Darwin's  letter  is  explained  by  the  following  extract  from 
Mr.  Fiske's  work  :  "  I  have  endeavoured  to  show  that  the  transition  from 
animality  (or  bestiality,  stripping  the  word  of  its  bad  connotations)  to 
humanity  must  have  been  mainly  determined  by  the  prolongation  of 
infancy   or  immaturity   which  is  consequent  upon   a  high  development 

1  See  Quarterly  Review,  July  1871  ;  also  Life  and  Letters,  III., 
p.  147. 

-  A  review  of  Wallace's  Natural  Selection,  of  Mivart's  Genesis  of 
Species,  and  of  the  Quarterly  Review  article  on  the  Descent  of  Man  (July, 
1871),  published  in  the  Contetnporary  Review  (1S71),  and  in  Huxley's 
Collected  Essays,  II.,  p.  120. 


334  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

of  intelligence,  and  which  must  have  necessitated  the  gradual  grouping 
together  of  pithecoid  men  into  more  or  less  definite  families."  (See 
Descent,  I.,  p.   13,  on  the  prolonged  infancy  of  the  anthropoid  apes.) 

Down,  Nov.  9th,  1871. 
Letter  247  I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you  for  having  sent  me,  through 
my  son,  your  lectures,  and  for  the  very  honourable  manner  in 
which  you  allude  to  my  works.  The  lectures  seem  to  me  to 
be  written  with  much  force,  clearness,  and  originality.  You 
show  also  a  truly  extraordinary  amount  of  knowledge  of  all 
that  has  been  published  on  the  subject.  The  type  in  many 
parts  is  so  small  that,  except  to  young  eyes,  it  is  very  difficult 
to  read.  Therefore  I  wish  that  you  would  reflect  on  their 
separate  publication,  though  so  much  has  been  published  on 
the  subject  that  the  public  may  possibly  have  had  enough.  I 
hope  that  this  may  be  your  intention,  for  I  do  not  think 
I  have  ever  seen  the  general  argument  more  forcibly  put  so 
as  to  convert  unbelievers. 

It  has  surprised  and  pleased  me  to  see  that  you  and  others 
have  detected  the  falseness  of  much  of  Mr.  Mivart's  reasoning. 
I  wish  I  had  read  your  lectures  a  month  or  two  ago,  as  I  have 
been  preparing  a  new  edition  of  the  Origin,  in  which  I  answer 
some  special  points,  and  I  believe  I  should  have  found  your 
lectures  useful  ;  but  my  MS.  is  now  in  the  printers'  hands, 
and  I  have  not  strength  or  time  to  make  any  more  additions. 

P.S. — By  an  odd  coincidence,  since  the  above  was  written 
I  have  received  your  very  obliging  letter  of  October  23rd.  I 
did  notice  the  point  to  which  you  refer,  and  will  hereafter 
reflect  more  over  it.  I  was  indeed  on  the  point  of  putting  in 
a  sentence  to  somewhat  of  the  same  effect  in  the  new  edition 
of  the  Origin,  in  relation  to  the  query — Why  have  not  apes 
advanced  in  intellect  as  much  as  man  ?  but  I  omitted  it  on 
account  of  the  asserted  prolonged  infancy  of  the  orang.  I 
am  also  a  little  doubtful  about  the  distinction  between  gre- 
gariousness  and  sociability. 

.  .  .  When  you  come  to  England  I  shall  have  much 
pleasure  in  making  your  acquaintance  ;  but  my  health  is 
habitually  so  weak  that  I  have  very  small  power  of  con- 
versing with  my  friends  as  much  as  I  wish.  Let  me  again 
thank  you  for  your  letter.  To  believe  that  I  have  at  all 
influenced  the  minds  of  able  men  is  the  greatest  satisfaction 
I  am  capable  of  receiving. 


1870—  1SS2]  ORIGIN    OF    SPECIES  335 

To   E.    Hackel.  Letter  24S 

Down,  Dec.  27th,   1871. 

I  thank  you  for  your  very  interesting  letter,  which  it  has 
given  me  much  pleasure  to  receive.  I  never  heard  of  anything 
so  odd  as  the  Prior  in  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  believing  in 
our  ape-like  progenitors.  I  much  hope  that  the  Jesuits  will 
not  dislodge  him. 

What  a  wonderfully  active  man  you  are  !  and  I  rejoice 
that  you  have  been  so  successful  in  your  work  on  sponges.1 
Your  book  with  sixty  plates  will  be  magnificent.  I  shall  be 
glad  to  learn  what  you  think  of  Clark's  view  of  sponges 
being  flagellate  infusorians  ;  some  observers  in  this  country 
believe  in  him.  I  am  glad  you  are  going  fully  to  consider 
inheritance,  which  is  an  all-important  subject  for  us.  I  do  not 
know  whether  you  have  ever  read  my  chapter  on  pangenesis. 
My  ideas  have  been  almost  universally  despised,  and  I  suppose 
that  I  was  foolish  to  publish  them  ;  yet  I  must  still  think 
that  there  is  some  truth  in  them.  Anyhow,  they  have  aided 
me  much  in  making  me  clearly  understand  the  facts  of 
inheritance. 

I  have  had  bad  health  this  last  summer,  and  during  two 
months  was  able  to  do  nothing  ;  but  I  have  now  almost 
finished  a  new  edition  of  the  Origin,  which  Victor  Cams 
is  translating.2  There  is  not  much  new  in  it,  except  one 
chapter  in  which  I  have  answered,  I  hope  satisfactorily,  Mr. 
Mivart's  supposed  difficulty  on  the  incipient  development  of 
useful  structures.  I  have  also  given  my  reasons  for  quite 
disbelieving  in  great  and  sudden  modifications.  I  am  pre- 
paring an  essay  on  expression  in  man  and  the  lower  animals. 
It  has  little  importance,  but  has  interested  me.  I  doubt 
whether  my  strength  will  last  for  much  more  serious  work. 
I  hope,  however,  to  publish  next  summer  the  results  of  my 
long-continued  experiments  on  the  wonderful  advantages 
derived  from  crossing.  I  shall  continue  to  work  as  long  as 
I  can,  but  it  does  not  much  signify  when  I  stop,  as  there  arc 
so  many  good  men  fully  as  capable,  perhaps  more  capable, 

1  Die  Kalkschwamme  :  eine  Monographiej  3  vols. :  Berlin,  1872.  H.  J. 
Clark  published  a  paper  "  On  the  Spongiffi  Ciliatae  as  Infusoria  flagellata  " 
in  the  Mem.  Boston  Nat.  Hist.  Soc,  Vol.  I.,  Pt.  iii.,  1S66.  See  Hackel, 
op.  at.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  24. 

3  See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  49. 


336  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  24S  than  myself  of  carrying  on  our  work  ;  and  of  these  you  rank 
as  the  first. 

With  cordial  good  wishes  for  your  success  in  all  your 
work  and  for  your  happiness. 

Letter  249  To  E.  Ray  Lankestcr. 

Down,  April  15th  [1872]. 

Very  many  thanks  for  your  kind  consideration.  The 
correspondence  was  in  the  Atliencewn.  I  got  some  mathema- 
tician to  make  the  calculation,  and  he  blundered  and  caused 
me  much  shame.  I  send  scrap  of  proofs  from  last  edition  of 
the  Origin,  with  the  calculation  corrected.  What  grand  work 
you  did  at  Naples  !  I  can  clearly  sec  that  you  will  some  day 
become  our  first  star  in  Natural  History. 

Here  follows  the  extract  from  the  Origin,  sixth  edition,  p.  51  :  "The 
elephant  is  reckoned  the  slowest  breeder  of  all  known  animals,  and  I 
have  taken  some  pains  to  estimate  its  probable  minimum  rate  of  natural 
increase.  It  will  be  safest  to  assume  that  it  begins  breeding  when  thirty 
years  old,  and  goes  on  breeding  till  ninety  years  old,  bringing  forth  six 
young  in  the  interval,  and  surviving  till  one  hundred  years  old  ;  if  this  be 
so,  after  a  period  of  from  740  to  750  years,  there  would  be  nearly  nineteen 
million  elephants  alive,  descended  from  the  first  pair."  In  the  fifth 
edition,  p.  75,  the  passage  runs  :  "  If  this  be  so,  at  the  end  of  the  fifth 
century,  there  would  be  alive  fifteen  million  elephants,  descended  from 
the  first  pair"  (see  Atkenceum,  June  5,  July  3,  17,  24,  1869). 

Letter  250  To   C.   Lyell. 

Down,   May  10th  [1S72]. 

I  received  yesterday  morning  your  present  of  that  work 
to  which  I,  for  one,  as  well  as  so  many  others,  owe  a  debt 
of  gratitude  never  to  be  forgotten.  I  have  read  with  the 
greatest  interest  all  the  special  additions  ;  and  I  wish  with  all 
my  heart  that  I  had  the  strength  and  time  to  read  again  every 
word  of  the  whole  book.1  I  do  not  agree  with  all  your  criti- 
cisms on  Natural  Selection,  nor  do  I  suppose  that  you  would 
expect  me  to  do  so.  We  must  be  content  to  differ  on  several 
points.      I   differ  most    about  your  difficulty  (p.   496)-'   on  a 

1  Principles  ofGeology>  Ed.  xn.,  1875. 

3  In  Chapter  XLIII.  Lyell  treats  of  "  Man  considered  with  reference 
to  his  Origin  and  Geographical  Distribution."  He  criticises  the  view  that 
Natural  Selection  is  capable  of  bringing  about  any  amount  of  change 
provided  a  series  of  minute  transitional  steps  can  be  pointed  out.     "  But 


1870— 18S2]  LYELL  337 

higher  grade  of  organisation  being  evolved  out  of  lower  ones.  Letter  250 
Is  not  a  very  clever  man  a  grade  above  a  very  dull  one  ?  and 
would  not  the  accumulation  of  a  large  number  of  slight 
differences  of  this  kind  lead  to  a  great  difference  in  the  grade 
of  organisation  ?  And  I  suppose  that  you  will  admit  that  the 
difference  in  the  brain  of  a  clever  and  dull  man  is  not  much 
more  wonderful  than  the  difference  in  the  length  of  the  nose 
of  any  two  men.  Of  course,  there  remains  the  impossibility 
of  explaining  at  present  why  one  man  has  a  longer  nose  than 
another.  But  it  is  foolish  of  me  to  trouble  you  with  these 
remarks,  which  have  probably  often  passed  through  your 
mind.  The  end  of  this  chapter  (XLIII.)  strikes  me  as 
admirably  and  grandly  written.  I  wish  you  joy  at  having 
completed  your  gigantic  undertaking,  and  remain,  my  dear 
Lyell, 

Your  ever  faithful  and  now  very  old  pupil, 

Charles  Darwin. 
To  J.  Traherne  Moggridge.  Letter  251 

Scvenoaks,  Oct.  9th  [1S72]. 
I  have  just  received  your  note,  forwarded  to  me  from  my 
home.  I  thank  you  very  truly  for  your  intended  present,  and 
I  am  sure  that  your  book  l  will  interest  me  greatly.  I  am 
delighted  that  you  have  taken  up  the  very  difficult  and  most 
interesting  subject  of  the  habits  of  insects,  on  which  English- 
men have  done  so  little.  How  incomparably  more  valuable 
are  such  researches  than  the  mere  description  of  a   thousand 

in  reality,"  he  writes,  "  it  cannot  be  said  that  we  obtain  any  insight  into 
the  nature  of  the  forces  by  which  a  higher  grade  of  organisation  or  instinct 
is  evolved  out  of  a  lower  one  by  becoming  acquainted  with  a  series  of 
gradational  forms  or  states,  each  having  a  very  close  affinity  with  the 
other."  ..."  It  is  when  there  is  a  change  from  an  inferior  being  to  one 
of  superior  grade,  from  a  humbler  organism  to  one  endowed  with  new  and 
more  exalted  attributes,  that  we  are  made  to  feel  that,  to  explain  the 
difficulty,  we  must  obtain  some  knowledge  of  those  laws  of  variation  of 
which  Mr.  Darwin  grants  that  we  are  at  present  profoundly  ignorant " 
{op.  tit.,  pp.  4r/>97)- 

1  J.  Traherne  Moggridge  (1842-74)  is  described  by  a  writer  in  Nature 
Vol.  XL,  1874,  p.  1 14,  as  "one  of  our  most  promising  young  naturalists." 
He  published  a  work  on  Harvesting  Ants  and  Trap-door  Spiders, 
London,  1873,  and  wrote  on  the  Flora  of  Mentone  and  on  other  subjects. 
(See  The  Descent  of  Man  Vol.  I.,  Ed.  II.,  p.  104,  188S.) 

22 


338  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  251  species !  I  daresay  you  have  thought  of  experimenting  on 
the  mental  powers  of  the  spiders  by  fixing  their  trap-doors 
open  in  different  ways  and  at  different  angles,  and  observing 
what  they  will  do. 

We  have  been  here  some  days,  and  intend  staying  some 
weeks  ;  for  I  was  quite  worn  out  with  work,  and  cannot  be 
idle  at  home. 

I  sincerely  hope  that  your  health  is  not  worse. 

Letter  252  To  A.   Hyatt.1 

The  correspondence  with  Professor  Hyatt,  of  Boston,  U.S.,  originated 
in  the  reference  to  his  and  Professor  Cope's  s  theories  of  acceleration  and 
retardation,  inserted  in  the  sixth  edition  of  the  Origin,  p.  149. 

Mr.  Darwin,  on  receiving  from  Mr.  Hyatt  a  copy  of  his  "Fossil 
Cephalopods  of  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology.  Embryology," 
from  the  Bull.  Mus.  Cemp.    Zoo!.,  Harvard,  Vol.    III.,   1872,  wrote  as 

follows 3 : —  „ 

Oct.  10th,   1872. 

I  am  very  much  obliged    to  you    for   your   kindness    in 

having  sent  me  your  valuable  memoir  on  the  embryology  of 

the  extinct  cephalopods.     The  work  must  have  been  one  of 

immense  labour,  and   the  results  are  extremely  interesting. 

Permit  me  to  take  this  opportunity  to  express  my  sincere 

regret  at  having  committed  two  grave  errors  in  the  last  edition 

of  my  Origin  of  Species,  in  my  allusion  to  yours  and  Professor 

1  Alpheus  Hyatt  (1838-1902)  was  a  student  under  Louis  Agassiz,  to 
whose  Laboratory  he  returned  after  serving  in  the  Civil  War,  and  under 
whom  he  began  the  researches  on  Fossil  Cephalopods  for  which  he  is 
so  widely  known.  In  1867  he  became  one  of  the  Curators  of  the  Essex 
Institute  of  Salem,  Mass.  In  1870  he  was  made  Custodian,  and  in  1881 
Curator  of  the  Boston  Society  of  Natural  History.  He  held  profes- 
sorial chairs  in  Boston  University  and  in  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of 
Technology,  "and  was  at  one  time  or  another  officially  connected  with 
the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology  and  the  United  States  Geological 
Survey."  See  Mr.  S.  Henshaw  (Science,  XV,  p.  300,  Feb.  1902),  where 
a  sketch  of  Mr.  Hyatt's  estimable  personal  character  is  given.  See  also 
Prof.  Dall  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Feb.  1902. 

3  Edward  Drinker  Cope  (1840-97)  was  for  a  short  time  Professor  at 
Haverford  College ;  he  was  a  member  of  certain  United  States  Geolo- 
gical Survey  expeditions,  and  at  the  time  of  his  death  he  held  a 
Professorship  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  He  wrote  several 
important  memoirs  on  "  Vertebrate  Paleontology,"  and  in  18S7  published 
The  Origin  of  the  Fit  lest. 

:1  Part  of  this  letter  was  published  in  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  154. 


1870-1SS2]  HYATT    AND    COPE  339 

Cope's  views  on  acceleration  and  retardation  of  development.  Letter  252 
I  had  thought  that  Professor  Cope  had  preceded  you  ;  but  I 
now  well  remember  having  formerly  read  with  lively  interest, 
and  marked,  a  paper  by  you  '  somewhere  in  my  library,  on 
fossil  cephalopods,  with  remarks  on  the  subject.  It  seems 
also  that  I  have  quite  misrepresented  your  joint  view  ;  this 
has  vexed  me  much.  I  confess  that  1  have  never  been  able 
to  grasp  fully  what  you  wish  to  show,  and  I  presume  that  this 
must  be  owing  to  some  dulness  on  my  part.  ...  As  the  case 
stands,  the  law  of  acceleration  and  retardation  seems  to  me  to 
be  a  simple  [?]  statement  of  facts  ;  but  the  statement,  if  fully 
established,  would  no  doubt  be  an  important  step  in  out- 
knowledge.  But  I  had  better  say  nothing  more  on  the 
subject,  otherwise  I  shall  perhaps  blunder  again.  I  assure 
you  that  I  regret  much  that  I  have  fallen  into  two  such  grave 
errors. 

A.  Hyatt  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  253 

Mr.  Hyatt  replied  in  a  long  letter,  of  which  only  a  small  part  is  here 

given. 

Cannstadt  bei  Stuttgart,  Nov.    1S72. 

The  letter  with  which  you  have  honoured  me,  bearing  the 
date  of  October  10th,  has  just  reached  here  after  a  voyage  to 
America  and  back. 

I  have  long  had  it  in  mind  to  write  you  upon  the 
subject  of  which  you  speak,  but  have  been  prevented  by  a 
very  natural  feeling  of  distrust  in  the  worthiness  and  truth  of 
the  views  which  I  had  to  present. 

There  is  certainly  no  occasion  to  apologise  for  not  having 
quoted  my  paper.  The  law  of  acceleration  and  retardation 
of  development  was  therein  used  to  explain  the  appearance 
of  other  phenomena,  and  might,  as  it  did  in  nearly  all  cases, 
easily  escape  notice. 

My  relations  with  Prof.  Cope  are  of  the  most  friendly 
character  ;  and  although  fortunate  in  publishing  a  few  months 
ahead,  I  consider  that  this  gives  mc  no  right  to  claim  any- 
thing beyond  such  an  amount  of  participation  in  the  discovery, 

1  The  paper  seems  to  be  "  On  the  Parallelism  between  the  Different 
Stages  of  Life  in  the  Individual  and  those  in  the  Entire  Group  of  the 
Molluscous  Order  Tetrabranchiata,"  from  the  Boston  Soc.  Nat.  J  list. 
Mein.,  I.,  1866-69,  p.  193.  On  the  back  of  the  paper  is  written,  "  I  cannot 
avoid  thinking  this  paper  fanciful." 


340  E  VOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  253  if  it  may  be  so  called,  as  the  thoroughness  and  worth  of  my 

work  entitles  me  to 

The  collections  which  I  have  studied,  it  will  be  remembered, 
are  fossils  collected  without  special  reference  to  the  very 
minute  subdivisions,  such  as  the  subdivisions  of  the  Lower  or 
Middle  Lias  as  made  by  the  German  authors,  especially 
Quenstcdt  and  Oppel,  but  pretty  well  denned  for  the  larger 
divisions  in  which  the  species  are  also  well  defined.  The 
condition  of  the  collections  as  regards  names,  etc.,  was  chaotic, 
localities  alone,  with  some  few  exceptions,  accurate.  To  put 
this  in  order  they  were  first  arranged  according  to  their  adult 
characteristics.  This  proving  unsatisfactory,  I  determined  to 
test  thoroughly  the  theory  of  evolution  by  following  out  the 
developmental  history  of  each  species  and  placing  them  within 
their  formations,  Middle  or  Upper  Lias,  Oolite  or  so,  according 
to  the  extent  to  which  they  represented  each  other's  charac- 
teristics. Thus  an  adult  of  simple  structure  being  taken  as 
the  starting-point  which  we  will  call  a,  another  species  which 
was  a  in  its  young  stage  and  became  b  in  the  adult  was  placed 
above  it  in  the  zoological  series.  By  this  process  I  presently 
found  that  a,  then  a  b  and  a  b  c,  c  representing  the  adult  stage, 
were  very  often  found  ;  but  that  practically  after  passing 
these  two  or  three  stages  it  did  not  often  happen  that  a  species 
was  found  which  was  a  b  c  in  the  young  and  then  became  d 
in  the  adult.  But  on  the  other  hand  I  very  frequently  found 
one  which,  while  it  was  a  in  the  young,  skipped  the  stages 
b  and  c  and  became  d  while  still  quite  young.  Then  some- 
times, though  more  rarely,  a  species  would  be  found  belonging 
to  the  same  series,  which  would  be  a  in  the  young  and  with  a 
very  faint  and  fleeting  resemblance  to  d  at  a  later  stage,  pass 
immediately  while  still  quite  young  to  the  more  advanced 
characteristics  represented  by  e,  and  hold  these  as  its  specific 
characteristics  until  old  age  destroyed  them.  This  skipping 
is  the  highest  exemplification,  or  rather  manifestation,  of 
acceleration  in  development.  In  alluding  to  the  history  of 
diseases  and  inheritance  of  characteristics,  you  in  your  Origin 
of  Species  allude  to  the  ordinary  manifestation  of  acceleration, 
when  you  speak  of  the  tendency  of  diseases  or  characteristics 
to  appear  at  younger  periods  in  the  life  of  the  child  than  of 
its  parents.  This,  according  to  my  observations,  is  a  law,  or 
rather    mode,  of    development,    which    is    applicable    to    all 


1S70-1S82]  HYATT    AND    COPE  34I 

characteristics,  and  in  this  way  it  is  possible  to  explain  why  Letter  253 
the  young  of  later-occurring  animals  are  like  the  adult  stages 
of  those  which  preceded  them  in  time.  If  I  am  not  mistaken 
you  have  intimated  something  of  this  sort  also  in  your  first 
edition,  but  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  it  lately.  Of  course 
this  is  a  very  normal  condition  of  affairs  when  a  series  can 
be  followed  in  this  way,  beginning  with  species  a,  then  going 
through  species  a  b  to  a  b  c,  then  a  b  dor  a  c  d,  and  then  a  d  e 
or  simply  a  c,  as  it  sometimes  comes.  Very  often  the  accelera- 
tion takes  place  in  two  closely  connected  series,  thus  : 

a — ab  — abd —  ae 
^-~ad 

in  which  one  series  goes  on  very  regularly,  while  another 
lateral  offshoot  of  a  becomes  d  in  the  adult.  This  is  an 
actual  case  which  can  be  plainly  shown  with  the  specimens  in 
hand,  and  has  been  verified  in  the  collections  here.  Retardation 
is  entirely  Prof.  Cope's  idea,  but  I  think  also  easily  traceable. 
It  is  the  opponent  of  acceleration,  so  to  speak,  or  the  opposite 
or  negative  of  that  mode  of  development.  Thus  series  may 
occur  in  which,  either  in  size  or  characteristics,  they  return  to 
former  characteristics  ;  but  a  better  discussion  of  this  point 
you  will  find  in  the  little  treatise  which  I  send  by  the  same 
mail  as  this  letter,  "  On  Reversions  among  the  Ammonites." 

To  A.   Hyatt.  Letter  254 

Down,  Dec.  4th,  1S72. 

I  thank  you  sincerely  for  your  most  interesting  letter. 
You  refer  much  too  modestly  to  your  own  knowledge  and 
judgment,  as  you  are  much  better  fitted  to  throw  light  on 
your  own  difficult  problems  than   I   am. 

It  has  quite  annoyed  me  that  I  do  not  clearly  understand 
yours    and   Prof.  Cope's '  views  ;   and  the  fault  lies  in  some 

1  I'rof.  Cope's  views  may  be  gathered  from  his  Origin  of  the  Fittest 
1887  ;  in  this  book  (p.  41)  is  reprinted  his  Origin  of  Genera  from  the 
Proc.  Philadelph.  Acad.  Nat.  Soe.,  1868,  which  was  published  separately 
by  the  author  in  1869,  and  which  we  believe  to  be  his  first  publication  on 
the  subject.  In  the  preface  to  the  Origin  of  the  Fittest,  p.  vi,  he  sums  up 
the  chief  points  in  the  Origin  of  Genera  under  seven  heads,  of  which  the 
following  are  the  most  important  :— "  First,  that  development  of  new 
characters  has  been  accomplished  by  an  acceleration  or  retardation  in 
the  growth  of  the  parts  changed.  .  .  .  Second,  that  of  exact  parallelism 


342  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  254  slight  degree,  I  think,  with  Prof.  Cope,  who  docs  not  write 
very  clearly.  I  think  1  now  understand  the  terms  "accelera- 
tion "  and  "  retardation  "  ;  but  will  you  grudge  the  trouble  of 
telling  me,  by  the  aid  of  the  following  illustration,  whether 
I  do  understand  rightly  ?  When  a  fresh-water  decapod 
crustacean  is  born  with  an  almost  mature  structure,  and 
therefore  does  not  pass,  like  other  decapods,  through  the 
Zoca  stage,  is  this  not  a  case  of  acceleration  ?  Again,  if  an 
imaginary  decapod  retained,  when  adult,  many  Zoea  characters, 
would  this  not  be  a  case  of  retardation  ?  If  these  illustrations 
arc  correct,  I  can  perceive  why  I  have  been  so  dull  in  under- 
standing your  views.  I  looked  for  something  else,  being 
familiar  with  such  cases,  and  classing  them  in  my  own  mind 
as  simply  due  to  the  obliteration  of  certain  larval  or  embryonic 
stages.  This  obliteration  I  imagined  resulted  sometimes 
entirely  from  that  law  of  inheritance  to  which  you  allude ; 
but  that  it  in  many  cases  was  aided  by  Natural  Selection, 
as  I  inferred  from  such  cases  occurring  so  frequently  in 
terrestrial  and  fresh-water  members  of  groups,  which  retain 
their  several  embryonic  stages  in  the  sea,  as  long  as  fitting 
conditions  are  present. 

Another  cause  of  my  misunderstanding  was  the  assumption 
that  in  your  series 

a — ab — abd — ae, 
-ad 

the  differences  between  the  successive  species,  expressed  by 
the  terminal  letter,  was  due  to  acceleration  :  now,  if  I  under- 
stand rightly,  this  is  not  the  case  ;  and  such  characters  must 
have  been  independently  acquired  by  some  means. 

The  two  newest  and  most  interesting  points  in  your 
letter  (and  in,  as  far  as  I  think,  your  former  paper)  seem  to 
me  to  be  about  senile  characteristics  in  one  species  appearing 
in  succeeding  species  during  maturity ;  and  secondly  about 

between  the  adult  of  one  individual  or  set  of  individuals,  and  a  transitional 
stage  of  one  or  more  other  individuals.  This  doctrine  is  distinct  from 
that  of  an  exact  parallelism,  which  had  already  been  stated  by  von  Baer." 
The  last  point  is  less  definitely  stated  by  Hyatt  in  his  letter  of 
Dec.  4U1,  1S72.  "I  am  thus  perpetually  led  to  look  upon  a  series  very 
much  as  upon  an  individual,  and  think  that  I  have  found  that  in  many 
instances  these  afford  parallel  changes."  See  also  Lamarck  the  Founder 
of  Evolution,  by  A.  S.  Packard  :   New  York,  1901. 


1870— 1S82]  HYATT    AND    COPE  343 

certain  degraded  characters  appearing  in  the  last  species  Letter  254 
of  a  series.  You  ask  for  my  opinion  :  I  can  only  send  the 
conjectured  impressions  which  have  occurred  to  me  and  which 
are  not  worth  writing.  (It  ought  to  be  known  whether  the 
senile  character  appears  before  or  after  the  period  of  active  re- 
production.) I  should  be  inclined  to  attribute  the  character  in 
both  your  cases  to  the  laws  of  growth  and  descent,  secondarily 
to  Natural  Selection.  It  has  been  an  error  on  my  part,  and  a 
misfortune  to  me,  that  I  did  not  largely  discuss  what  I  mean 
by  laws  of  growth  at  an  early  period  in  some  of  my  books. 
I  have  said  something  on  this  head  in  two  new  chapters  in 
the  last  edition  of  the  Origin.  I  should  be  happy  to  send 
you  a  copy  of  this  edition,  if  you  do  not  possess  it  and  care 
to  have  it.  A  man  in  extreme  old  age  differs  much  from  a 
young  man,  and  I  presume  every  one  would  account  for  this 
by  failing  powers  of  growth.  On  the  other  hand  the  skulls 
of  some  mammals  go  on  altering  during  maturity  into 
advancing  years  ;  as  do  the  horns  of  the  stag,  the  tail-feathers 
of  some  birds,  the  size  of  fishes  etc.  ;  and  all  such  differences 
I  should  attribute  simply  to  the  laws  of  growth,  as  long  as  full 
vigour  was  retained.  Endless  other  changes  of  structure  in 
successive  species  may,  I  believe,  be  accounted  for  by  various 
complex  laws  of  growth.  Now,  any  change  of  character  thus 
induced  with  advancing  years  in  the  individual  might  easily 
be  inherited  at  an  earlier  age  than  that  at  which  it  first 
supervened,  and  thus  become  characteristic  of  the  mature 
species  ;  or  again,  such  changes  would  be  apt  to  follow  from 
variation,  independently  of  inheritance,  under  proper  con- 
ditions. Therefore  I  should  expect  that  characters  of  this 
kind  would  often  appear  in  later-formed  species  without  the 
aid  of  Natural  Selection,  or  with  its  aid  if  the  characters  were 
of  any  advantage.  The  longer  I  live,  the  more  I  become 
convinced  how  ignorant  we  are  of  the  extent  to  which  all 
sorts  of  structures  are  serviceable  to  each  species.  But  that 
characters  supervening  during  maturity  in  one  species  should 
appear  so  regularly,  as  you  state  to  be  the  case,  in  succeeding 
species,  seems  to  me  very  surprising  and  inexplicable. 

With  respect  to  degradation  in  species  towards  the  close 
of  a  scries,  I  have  nothing  to  say,  except  that  before  I  arrived 
at  the  end  of  your  letter,  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  earlier 
and  simpler  ammonites  must  have  been  well  adapted  to  their 


344  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  254  conditions,  and  that  when  the  species  were  verging  towards 
extinction  (owing  probably  to  the  presence  of  some  more 
successful  competitors)  they  would  naturally  become  re- 
adapted  to  simpler  conditions.  Before  I  had  read  your  final 
remarks  I  thought  also  that  unfavourable  conditions  might 
cause,  through  the  law  of  growth,  aided  perhaps  by  reversion, 
degradation  of  character.  No  doubt  many  new  laws  re- 
main to  be  discovered.  Permit  me  to  add  that  I  have 
never  been  so  foolish  as  to  imagine  that  I  have  succeeded  in 
doing  more  than  to  lay  down  some  of  the  broad  outlines  of 
the  origin  of  species. 

After  long  reflection  I  cannot  avoid  the  conviction  that  no 
innate  tendency  to  progressive  development  exists,  as  is  now 
held  by  so  many  able  naturalists,  and  perhaps  by  yourself. 
It  is  curious  how  seldom  writers  define  what  they  mean  by 
progressive  development  ;  but  this  is  a  point  which  I  have 
briefly  discussed  in  the  Origin.  I  earnestly  hone  that  you  may 
visit  Hilgendorf's  famous  deposit.  Have  you  seen  Weismann's 
pamphlet  Einfluss  der  Isolinuig,  Leipzig,  1872?  He  makes 
splendid  use  of  Hilgendorf's  '  admirable  observations.  I  have 
no  strength  to  spare,  being  much  out  of  health  ;  otherwise 
I  would  have  endeavoured  to  have  made  this  letter  better 
worth  sending.  I  most  sincerely  wish  you  success  in  your 
valuable  and  difficult  researches. 

I  have  received,  and  thank  you,  for  your  three  pamphlets. 
As  far  as  I  can  judge,  your  views  seem  very  probable  ;  but 
what  a  fearfully  intricate  subject  is  this  of  the  succession  of 
ammonites.2 

Letter  255  A.  Hyatt  to  C.  Darwin. 

Cannstadt  bei  Stuttgart,  Dec.   8th,  1872. 

The  quickness  and  earnestness  of  your  reply  to  my  letter 
gives  me  the  greatest  encouragement,  and  I  am  much 
delighted  at  the  unexpected  interest  which  your  questions 
and  comments  display.  What  you  say  about  Prof.  Cope's 
style  has  been  often  before  said  to  me,  and  I  have  remarked 
in   his  writings  an  unsatisfactory  treatment  of  our  common 

1  Hilgendorf,  Monatsb.  K.  Akad.,  Berlin,  1866.  For  a  semi-popular 
account  of  Hilgendorf's  and  I!\att's  work  on  this  subject,  see  Romanes' 
Darwin  and  after  Darwin,  I.,  p.  201. 

-  Sec  various  papers  in  the  publications  of  the  Boston  Soc.  Nat.  Hist. 
and  in  the  Bulletin  of  the  Harvard  Museum  of  Comp.  Zoology. 


1S70— 1882]  HYATT    AND    COPE  345 

theory.  This,  I  think,  perhaps  is  largely  due  to  the  complete  Letter  255 
absorption  of  his  mind  in  the  contemplation  of  his  subject : 
this  seems  to  lead  him  to  be  careless  about  the  methods  in 
which  it  may  be  best  explained,  fie  has,  however,  a  more 
extended  knowledge  than  I  have,  and  has  in  many  ways 
a  more  powerful  grasp  of  the  subject,  and  for  that  very  reason, 
perhaps,  is  liable  to  run  into  extremes.  You  ask  about  the 
skipping  of  the  Zoea  stage  in  fresh-water  decapods  :  is  this  an 
illustration  of  acceleration  ?  It  most  assuredly  is,  if  accelera- 
tion means  anything  at  all.  Again,  another  and  more  general 
illustration  would  be,  if,  among  the  marine  decapods,  a  scries 
could  be  formed  in  which  the  Zoea  stage  became  less  and  less 
important  in  the  development,  and  was  relegated  to  younger 
and  younger  stages  of  the  development,  and  finally  dis- 
appeared in  those  to  which  you  refer.  This  is  the  usual  way 
in  which  the  accelerated  mode  of  development  manifests 
itself;  though  near  the  lowest  or  earliest  occurring  species 
it  is  also  to  be  looked  for.  Perhaps  this  to  which  you  allude 
is  an  illustration  somewhat  similar  to  the  one  which  I  have 
spoken  of  in  my  series, 


which  like  "  a  d"  comes  from  the  earliest  of  a  series,  though  I 
should  think  from  the  entire  skipping  of  the  Zoea  stage  that 
it  must  be,  like  "a  e,"  the  result  of  a  long  line  of  ancestors.  In 
fact,  the  essential  point  of  our  theory  is,  that  characteristics 
are  ever  inherited  by  the  young  at  earlier  periods  than  they 
are  assumed  in  due  course  of  growth  by  the  parents,  and  that 
this  must  eventually  lead  to  the  extinction  or  skipping  of 
these  characteristics  altogether.  .  .  . 

Such  considerations  as  these  and  the  fact  that  near  the 
heads  of  scries  or  near  the  latest  members  of  series,  and  not  at 
the  beginning,  were  usually  found  the  accelerated  types,  which 
skipped  lower  characteristics  and  developed  very  suddenly  to  a 
higher  and  more  complex  standpoint  in  structure,  led  both 
Cope  and  [myself]  into  what  may  be  a  great  error.  I  see 
that  it  has  led  you  at  least  into  the  difficulty  of  which  you 
very  rightly  complain,  and  which,  I  am  sorry  to  see,  has  cost 
you  some  of  your  valuable  time.  We  presumed  that  because 
characteristics    were    perpetually  inherited  at   earlier  stages, 


346  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Loiter  255  that  this  very  concentration  of  the  developed  characteristics 
made  room  for  the  production  of  differences  in  the  adult 
descendants  of  any  given  pair.  Further,  that  in  the  room  thus 
made  other  different  characteristics  must  be  produced,  and 
that  these  would  necessarily  appear  earlier  in  proportion  as 
the  species  was  more  or  less  accelerated,  and  be  greater  or  less 
in  the  same  proportion.  Finally,  that  in  the  most  accelerated, 
such  as  "a  c"  or  "a  d"  the  difference  would  be  so  great  as 
to  constitute  distinct  genera.  Cope  and  I  have  differed  very 
much,  while  he  acknowledged  the  action  of  the  accumulated 
mode  of  development  only  when  generic  characteristics  or 
greater  differences  were  produced,  I  saw  the  same  mode 
of  development  to  be  applicable  in  all  cases  and  to  all 
characteristics,  even  to  diseases.  So  far  the  facts  bore  us  out, 
but  when  we  assumed  that  the  adult  differences  were  the 
result  of  the  accelerated  mode  of  development,  we  were 
perhaps  upon  rather  insecure  ground.  It  is  evidently  this 
assumption  which  has  led  you  to  misunderstand  the  theory. 
Cope  founded  his  belief,  that  the  adult  characteristics  were 
also  the  result  of  acceleration,  if  I  rightly  remember  it, 
mainly  upon  the  class  of  facts  spoken  of  above  in  man  where 
a  sudden  change  in  two  organs  may  produce  entirely  new  and 
unexpected  differences  in  the  whole  organisation,  and  upon 
the  changes  which  acceleration  appeared  to  produce  in  the 
development  of  each  succeeding  species.  Your  difficulty  in 
understanding  the  theory  and  the  observations  you  have  made 
show  me  at  once  what  my  own  difficulties  have  been,  but  of 
these  I  will  not  speak  at  present,  as  my  letter  is  spinning 
itself  out  to  a  fearful  length. 

After  speaking  of  Cope's  comparison  of  acceleration  and  retardation 
in  evolution  to  the  force  of  gravity  in  physical  matters  Mr.  Hyatt 
goes  on  : — 

Now    it   [acceleration]    seems  to  me  to  explain  less  and 
less  the  origin  of  adult  progressive  characteristics  or  simply 
differences,  and  perhaps  now  I  shall  get  on  faster  with  my 
work. 
Letter  256  To  A.  Hyatt. 

Down,   Dec.   14th  [1872]. 
In  reply  to  the  above  letter  from  Mr.  Hyatt. 
Notwithstanding    the  kind   consideration   shown    in  your 
last    sentence,    I    must  thank    you  for   your  interesting  and 


1870-1S82]  HYATT    AND    COPE  347 

clearly   expressed  letter.     I   have  directed    my  publisher  to  Letter  256 

send  you  a  copy  of  the   last  edition  of  the   Origin,  and  you 

can,  if  you   like,  paste  in    the  "From   the   Author"  on  next 

page.      In  relation    to    yours    and   Professor   Cope's   view  on 

"  acceleration  "  causing  a  development  of  new  characters,  it 

would,  I  think,  be  well  if  you  were  to  compare  the  decapods 

which  pass  and  do  not  pass  through  the  Zoea  stage,  and  the 

one  group  which  does  (according  to  Fritz  M tiller)  pass  through 

to  the  still  earlier  Nauplius  stages,  and  see  if  they  present  any 

marked  differences.     You  will,  I  believe,  find  that  this  is  not 

the  case.     I  wish  it  were,  for  I  have  often  been  perplexed  at 

the  omission  of  embryonic  stages  as  well  as  the  acquirement 

of  peculiar  stages  appearing  to  produce  no  special  result  in 

the  mature  form. 

The  remainder  of  this  letter  is  missing,  and  the  whole  of  the  last 
sentence  is  somewhat  uncertainly  deciphered.     (Note  by  Mr.  Hyatt.) 

To    A.    Hyatt.  *       Letter  257 

Down,  Feb.   13th,   1S77. 

I  thank  you  for  your  very  kind,  long,  and  interesting 
letter.  The  case  is  so  wonderful  and  difficult  that  I  dare  not 
express  any  opinion  on  it.  Of  course,  I  regret  that  Ililgen- 
dorf  has  been  proved  to  be  so  greatly  in  error,1  but  it  is  some 
selfish  comfort  to  me  that  I  always  felt  so  much  misgiving 
that  I  never  quoted  his  paper.-  The  variability  of  these 
shells  is  quite  astonishing,  and  seems  to  exceed  that  of  Rubus 
or  Hieracium  amongst  plants.  The  result  which  surprises  me 
most  is  that  the  same  form  should  be  developed  from  various 
and  different  progenitors.     This  seems  to  show  how  potent 

1  This  refers  to  a  controversy  with  Sandberger,  who  had  attacked 
Hilgendorf  in  the  Verh.  der  fihys.-med.  Ges.  zu  IViirzburg,  Bd.  V.,  ami 
in  the  Jahrb.  der  Malakol.  Ges.,  Bd.  I.,  to  which  Hilgendorf  replied  in  the 
Zeitschr.  d.  Deutschen  geolog.  Ges.,  Jahrg.  1877.  Hyatt's  name  occurs 
in  Hilgendorfs  pages,  but  we  find  no  reference  to  any  paper  of  this 
date  ;  his  well-known  paper  is  in  the  Boston  Soc.  Nat.  Hist.,  1880.  In  a 
letter  to  Darwin  (May  23rd,  1SS1 )  Hyatt  regrets  that  he  had  no  oppor- 
tunity of  a  third  visit  to  Steinheim,  and  goes  on  :  "  I  should  then  have  done 
greater  justice  to  Hilgendorf,  for  whom  I  have  such  a  high  respect." 

:  In  the  fifth  edition  of  the  Origin  (p.  362),  however,  Darwin  speaks  of 
the  graduated  forms  of  Planorbis  multiformis,  described  by  Hilgendorf 
from  certain  beds  in  Switzerland,  by  which  we  presume  he  meant  the 
Steinheim  beds  in  Wurtemberg. 


348  K\OLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  257  are  the  conditions  of  life,  irrespectively  of  the  variations  being 
in  any  way  beneficial. 

The  production  of  a  species  out  of  a  chaos  of  varying 
forms  reminds  me  of  Nageli's  conclusion,  as  deduced  from  the 
study  of  Hieractum,  that  this  is  the  common  mode  in  which 
species  arise.  But  I  still  continue  to  doubt  much  on  this 
head,  and  cling  to  the  belief  expressed  in  the  first  edition  of 
the  Origin,  that  protean  or  polymorphic  species  are  those 
which  are  now  varying  in  such  a  manner  that  the  variations 
are  neither  advantageous  nor  disadvantageous.  I  am  glad  to 
hear  of  the  Brunswick  deposit,  as  I  feel  sure  that  the  careful 
study  of  such  cases  is  highly  important.  I  hope  that  the 
Smithsonian    Institution  will  publish  your  memoir. 

Letter  25S  To  A.  De  Candollc. 

Down,  Jan.   iSth  [1S73]. 

It  was  very  good  of  you  to  give  up  so  much  of  your  time 
to  write  to  me  your  last  interesting  letter.  The  evidence 
seems  good  about  the  tameness  of  the  alpine  butterflies,  and 
the  fact  seems  to  me  very  surprising,  for  each  butterfly  can 
hardly  have  acquired  its  experience  during  its  own  short  life. 
Will  you  be  so  good  as  to  thank  M.  Humbert  for  his  note, 
which  I  have  been  glad  to  read.  I  formerly  received  from  a 
man,  not  a  naturalist,  staying  at  Cannes  a  similar  account,  but 
doubted  about  believing  it.  The  case,  however,  does  not 
answer  my  query — viz.,  whether  butterflies  arc  attracted  by 
bright  colours,  independently  of  the  supposed  presence  of 
nectar  ? 

I  must  own  that  I  have  great  difficulty  in  believing  that 
any  temporary  condition  of  the  parents  can  affect  the  off- 
spring. If  it  last  long  enough  to  affect  the  health  or  structure 
of  the  parents,  I  can  quite  believe  the  offspring  would  be 
modified.  But  how  mysterious  a  subject  is  that  of  genera- 
tion !  Although  my  hypothesis  of  pangenesis  has  been 
reviled  on  all  sides,  yet  I  must  still  look  at  generation  under 
this  point  of  view  ;  and  it  makes  me  very  averse  to  believe  in 
an  emotion  having  any  effect  on  the  offspring.  Allow  me  to 
add  one  word  about  blushing  and  shyness  :  I  intended  only 
to  say  the  habit  was  primordially  acquired  by  attention  to  the 
face,  and  not  that  each  shy  man  now  attended  to  his  personal 
appearance. 


1S70—  1SS2]  SEXUALITY  349 

To   J.    D.    Hooker.  Letter  259 

Down,  June  28th.   1873. 

I  write  a  line  to  wish  you  good-bye,  as  I  hear  you  arc 
off  on  Wednesday,  and  to  thank  you  for  the  Dion  tea,  but 
I  cannot  make  the  little  creature  grow  well.  I  have  this 
day  read  Bentham's  last  address,1  and  must  express  my 
admiration  for  it.  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to  do  so,  as  he  fairly 
crushes  me  with  honour. 

I  am  delighted  to  see  how  exactly  I  agree  with  him  on 
affinities,  and  especially  on  extinct  forms  as  illustrated  by  his 
flat-topped  tree.2  My  recent  work  leads  me  to  differ  from 
him  on  one  point — viz.,  on  the  separation  of  the  sexes.3  I 
strongly  suspect  that  sexes  were  primordially  in  distinct 
individuals  ;  then  became  commonly  united  in  the  same 
individual,  and  then  in  a  host  of  animals  and  some  few 
plants  became  again  separated.  Do  ask  Bentham  to  send 
a  copy  of  his  address  to  "  Dr.  H.  Midler,  Lippstadt,  Prussia," 
as  I  am  sure  it  will  please  him  greatly. 

.  .  .  When  in  France  write  me  a  line  and  tell  me  how  you 
get  on,  and  how  Huxley  is  ;  but  do  not  do  so  if  you  feel  idle, 
and  writing  bothers  you. 

1  Presidential  address  to  the  Linnean  Society,  read  May  24th,  1873. 

2  See  p.  1 5  of  separate  copy  :  "  We  should  then  have  the  present 
races  represented  by  the  countless  branchlets  forming  the  flat-topped 
summit"  of  a  genealogical  tree,  in  which  "all  we  can  do  is  to  map  out 
the  summit  as  it  were  from  a  bird's-eye  view,  and  under  each  cluster,  or 
cluster  of  clusters,  to  place  as  the  common  trunk  an  imaginary  type  of  a 
genus,  order,  or  class  according  to  the  depth  to  which  we  would  go." 

3  On  the  question  of  sexuality,  see  p.  10  of  Bentham's  address. 
On  the  back  of  Mr.  Darwin's  copy  he  has  written  :  "As  long  as  lowest 
organisms  free — sexes  separated  :  as  soon  as  they  become  attached,  to 
prevent  sterility  sexes  united — reseparated  as  means  of  fertilisation, 
adapted  [?]  for  distant  [?]  organisms, — in  the  case  of  animals  by  then- 
senses  and  voluntary  movements, — with  plants  the  aid  of  insects  and 
wind,  the  latter  always  existed,  and  long  retained."  The  two  words 
marked  [?]  are  doubtful.  The  introduction  of  freedom  or  attachedness, 
as  a  factor  in  the  problem  also  occurs  in  Cross  and  Self-fertilisation, 
p.  462. 


350  EVOLUTION  [Chap.V 

Letter  260  To  R.  Meldola.1 

Southampton,  August   13th,  1S73. 

I  am  much  obliged  for  your  present,  which  no  doubt  I 
shall  find  at  Down  on  my  return  home.  I  am  sorry  to  say 
that  I  cannot  answer  your  question  ;  nor  do  I  believe  that  you 
could  find  it  anywhere  even  approximately  answered.  It  is 
very  difficult  or  impossible  to  define  what  is  meant  by  a  large 
variation.  Such  graduate  into  monstrosities  or  generally 
injurious  variations.  I  do  not  myself  believe  that  these  arc 
often  or  ever  taken  advantage  of  under  nature.  It  is  a 
common  occurrence  that  abrupt  and  considerable  variations 
are  transmitted  in  an  unaltered  state,  or  not  at  all  transmitted, 
to  the  offspring,  or  to  some  of  them.  So  it  is  with  tailless 
or  hornless  animals,  and  with  sudden  and  great  changes 
of  colour  in  flowers.  I  wish  I  could  have  given  you  any 
answer. 
Letter  261  To  E.  S.  Morse. 

[Undated.] 

I  must  have  the  pleasure  of  thanking  you  for  your  kind- 
ness in  sending  me  your  essay  on  the  Brachiopoda.2  I  have 
just  read  it  with  the  greatest  interest,  and  you  seem  to  me 
(though  I  am  not  a  competent  judge)  to  make  out  with 
remarkable  clearness  an  extremely  strong  case.  What  a 
wonderful  change  it  is  to  an  old  naturalist  to  have  to  look 
at  these  "  shells  "  as  "  worms  "  ;  but,  as  you  truly  say,  as  far 
as  external  appearance  is  concerned,  the  case  is  not  more 
wonderful  than  that  of  cirripedes.  I  have  also  been  particularly 
interested  by  your  remarks  on  the  Geological  Record,  and  on 
the  lower  and  older  forms  in  each  great  class  not  having  been 
probably  protected  by  calcareous  valves  or  a  shell. 

P.S. — Your  woodcut  of  Liugula  is  most  skilfully  intro- 
duced to  compel  one  to  see  its  likeness  to  an  annelid. 

1  Raphael  Meldola,  F.R.S.,  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  Finsbury  Tech- 
nical College  (City  and  Guilds  of  London  Institute),  and  a  well-known 
entomologist ;  translated  and  edited  Weismann's  Studies  in  the  Theory 
of  Descent,  1882-83.  This  letter,  with  others  from  Darwin  to  Meldola, 
is  published  in  Charles  Darwin  and  the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  by 
!■'..  U.  Poulton,  pp.  199  et seq.,  London,  1896. 

-  "The  Brachiopoda,  a  Division  of  Annelida,"  A/ner.  Assoc.  Proc, 
Vol.  XIX.,  p.  272,  1S70,  and  Annuls  and  Mag,  Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  VI., 
p.  267,  1870. 


1870-1882]  SOCIOLOGY  351 

To  H.  Spencer.  Letter  262 

Mr.  Spencer's  book  The  Study  of  Sociology,  1S73,  was  published 
in  the  Contemporary  Review  in  instalments  between  May  1872  and 
October  1873. 

Oct.  31st  [1S73]- 

I  am  glad  to  receive  to-day  an  advertisement  of  your 
book.  I  have  been  wonderfully  interested  by  the  articles  in 
the  Contemporary.  Those  were  splendid  hits  about  the  Prince 
of  Wales  and  Gladstone.1  I  never  before  read  a  good  defence 
of  Toryism.  In  one  place  (but  I  cannot  for  the  life  of  me 
recollect  where  or  what  it  exactly  was)  I  thought  that  you 
would  have  profited  by  my  principle  {i.e.  if  you  do  not  reject 
it)  given  in  my  Descent  of  Man,  that  new  characters  which 
appear  late  in  life  are  those  which  are  transmitted  to  the 
same  sex  alone.  I  have  advanced  some  pretty  strong  evidence, 
and  the  principle  is  of  great  importance  in  relation  to 
secondary  sexual  likenesses.2     I  have  applied  it  to  man  and 

1  See  The  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  392.  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  protest 
against  some  words  of  Mr.  Spencer,  had  said  that  the  appearance  of 
great  men  "  in  great  crises  of  human  history "  were  events  so  striking 
"  that  men  would  be  liable  to  term  them  providential  in  a  pre-scientific 
age."  On  this  Mr.  Spencer  remarks  that  "in  common  with  the  ancient 
Cheek  Mr.  Gladstone  regards  as  irreligious  any  explanation  of  Nature 
which  dispenses  with  immediate  Divine  superintendence."  And  as  an 
instance  of  the  partnership  "  between  the  ideas  of  natural  causation 
and  of  providential  interference,"  he  instances  a  case  where  a  prince 
"gained  popularity  by  outliving  certain  abnormal  changes  in  his  blood," 
and  where  "on  the  occasion  of  his  recovery  providential  aid  and  natural 
causation  were  unitedly  recognised  by  a  thanksgiving  to  God  and  a 
baronetcy  to  the  doctor."  The  passage  on  Toryism  is  on  p.  395,  where 
Mr.  Spencer,  with  his  accustomed  tolerance,  writes  :  "  The  desirable 
thing  is  that  a  growth  of  ideas  and  feelings  tending  to  produce  modifica- 
tion shall  be  joined  with  a  continuance  of  ideas  and  feelings  tending  to 
preserve  stability."  And  from  this  point  of  view  he  concludes  it  to  be 
very  desirable  that  "  one  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  position  should  think  as 
he  does."    The  matter  is  further  discussed  in  the  notes  to  Chapter  XVI., 

p.  423- 

-'  This  refers  to  Mr.  Spencer's  discussion  of  the  evolution  of  the 
mental  traits  characteristic  of  women.  At  p.  377  he  points  out  the 
importance  of  the  limitation  of  heredity  by  sex  in  this  relation.  A 
striking  generalisation  on  this  question  is  given  in  the  Descent  of  Man, 
Ed.  1.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  285  :  that  when  the  adult  male  differs  from  the  adult 
female,  he  differs  in  the  same  way  from  the  young  of  both  sexes.  Can 
this   law   be    applied   in  the  case  in  which  the  adult  female  possesses 


35^ 


EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 


Letter  262  woman,  and  possibly  it  was  here  that  I  thought  that  you 
would  have  profited  by  the  doctrine.  I  fear  that  this  note 
will  be  almost  illegible,  but  I   am  very  tired. 

Letter  263  G.  J.  Romanes1  to  C.  Darwin. 

This  is,  we  believe,  the  first  letter  addressed  by  the  late  Mr.  Romanes 
to  Mr.  Darwin.  It  was  put  away  with  another  on  the  same  subject,  and 
inscribed  "  Romanes  on  Abortion,  with  my  answer  (very  important)."  Mr. 
Darwin's  answer  given  below  is  printed  from  his  rough  draft,  which  is 
in  places  barely  decipherable.  On,  the  subject  of  these  letters  consult 
Romanes,  Darwin  and after  Darwin,  Vol.  II.,  p.  99.  l895- 

Dunskaithj  Paxkhill,  Ross-shire,  July  10th,  1874. 
Knowing  that  you  do  not  dissuade  the  more  attentive  of 
your  readers  from  communicating  directly  to  yourself  any 
ideas  they  may  have  upon  subjects  connected  with  your 
writings,  I  take  the  liberty  of  sending  the  enclosed  copy  of 
a  letter,  which  I  have  recently  addressed  to  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer.  You  will  perceive  that  the  subject  dealt  with  is  the 
same  as  that  to  which  a  letter  of  mine  in  last  week's  Mature 
[July  2nd,  p.  164]  refers — viz.,  "Disuse  as  a  Reducing  Cause 
in  Species."  In  submitting  this  more  detailed  exposition  of 
my  views  to  your  consideration,  I  should  like  to  state  again 
what  I  stated  in  Nature  some  weeks  ago,  viz.,  that  in  pro- 
pounding the  cessation  of  selection  as  a  reducing  cause,  I  do 
not  suppose  that  I  am  suggesting  anything  which  has  not 
occurred  to  you  already.  Not  only  is  this  principle  embodied 
in  the  theory  set  forth  in  the  article  on  Rudimentary  Organs 

characters  not  possessed  by  the  male  :  for  instance,  the  high  degree  of 
intuitive  power  of  reading  the  mental  states  of  others  and  of  concealing 
her  own— characters  which  Mr.  Spencer  shows  to  be  accounted  for  by 
the  relations  between  the  husband  and  wife  in  a  state  of  savagery.  If 
so,  the  man  should  resemble  "  the  young  of  both  sexes  "  in  the  absence 
of'  these  special  qualities.  This  seems  to  be  the  case  with  some 
masculine  characteristics,  and  childishness  of  man  is  not  without  recog- 
nition among  women  :  for  instance,  by  Dolly  Winthrop  in  Silas  Marncr, 
who  is  content  with  bread  for  herself,  but  bakes  cake  for  children  and 
men,  whose  "  stomichs  are  made  so  comical,  they  want  a  change— they 
do,  I  know,  God  help  'em." 

1  G.  J.  Romanes  (1848-94)  was  one  of  Mr.  Darwin's  most  devoted 
disciples.  The  letters  published  in  Mrs.  Romanes'  interesting  Life  and 
Letters  of  her  husband  (1896)  make  clear  the  warm  feelings  of  regard  and 
respect  which  Darwin  entertained  for  his  correspondent. 


i87o— 1882]  PANMIXIA  353 

{Nature,  Vol.  IX.)  ;  but  it  is  more  than  once  hinted  at  in  the  Letter  263 
Origin,  in  the  passages  where  rudimentary  organs  are  said  to 
be   more  variable  than  others,  because  no  longer  under  the 
restraining  influence  of  Natural  Selection.      And  still  more 
distinctly  is  this  principle  recognised  in  p.   120. 

Thus,  in  sending  you  the  enclosed  letter,  I  do  not  imagine 
that  I  am  bringing  any  novel  suggestions  under  your  notice. 
As  I  see  that  you  have  already  applied  the  principle  in 
question  to  the  case  of  artificially-bred  structures,  I  cannot  but 
infer  that  you  have  pondered  it  in  connection  with  naturally- 
bred  structures.  What  objection,  however,  you  can  have 
seen  to  this  principle  in  this  latter  connection,  I  am  unable  to 
divine  ;  and  so  I  think  the  best  course  for  me  to  pursue  is 
the  one  I  adopt — viz.,  to  send  you  my  considerations  in  full. 

In  the  absence  of  express  information,  the  most  natural 
inference  is  that  the  reason  you  refuse  to  entertain  the  prin- 
ciple in  question,  is  because  you  show  the  backward  tendency 
of  indiscriminate  variability  [to  be]  inadequate  to  contend 
with  the  conservative  tendency  of  long  inheritance.  The 
converse  of  this  is  expressed  in  the  words  "  That  the  struggle 
between  Natural  Selection  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  tendency 
to  reversion  and  variability  on  the  other  hand,  will  in  the 
course  of  time  cease  ;  and  that  the  most  abnormally  developed 
organs  may  be  made  constant,  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt " 
{Origin,  p.  121).  Certainly  not,  if,  as  I  doubt  not,  the  word 
"constant  "  is  intended  to  bear  a  relative  signification  ;  but  to 
say  that  constancy  can  ever  become  absolute — i.e.,  that  any 
term  of  inheritance  could  secure  to  an  organ  a  total  immunity 
from  the  smallest  amount  of  spontaneous  variability — to  say 
this  would  be  unwarrantable.  Suppose,  for  instance,  that 
for  some  reason  or  other  a  further  increase  in  the  size  of  a 
bat's  wing  should  now  suddenly  become  highly  beneficial  to 
that  animal  :  we  can  scarcely  suppose  that  variations  would 
not  be  forthcoming  for  Natural  Selection  to  seize  upon 
(unless  the  limit  of  possible  size  has  now  been  reached,  which 
is  an  altogether  distinct  matter).  And  if  we  suppose  that 
minute  variations  on  the  side  of  increase  arc  thus  even  now 
occasionally  taking  place,  much  more  is  it  probable  that 
similar  variations  on  the  side  of  decrease  are  now  taking 
place — i.e.,  that  if  the  conservative  influence  of  Natural 
Selection    were  removed   for   a    long    period    of  time,    more 

23 


3  $4  EVOLUTION  [Chav.  V 

Letter  263  variations  would  ensue  below  the  present  size  of  bats'  wings, 
than  above  it.  To  this  it  may  be  added,  that  when  the 
influence  of  "speedy  selection"  is  removed,  it  seems  in  itself 
highly  probable  that  the  structure  would,  for  this  reason, 
become  more  variable,  for  the  only  reason  why  it  ever 
ceased  to  be  variable  (i.e.,  after  attaining  its  maximum  size), 
was  because  of  the  influence  of  selection  constantly  destroying 
those  individuals  in  which  a  tendency  to  vary  occurred. 
When,  therefore,  this  force  antagonistic  to  variability  was 
removed,  it  seems  highly  probable  that  the  latter  principle 
would  again  begin  to  assert  itself,  and  this  in  a  cumulative 
manner.  Those  individuals  in  which  a  tendency  to  vary 
occurred  being  no  longer  cut  off,  they  would  have  as  good 
a  chance  of  leaving  progeny  to  inherit  their  fluctuating 
disposition  as  would  their  more  inflexible  companions. 

Letter  264  To  G.  J.  Romanes. 

July   16th,    1S74. 

I  am  much  obliged  for  your  kind  and  long  communication, 
which  I  have  read  with  great  interest,  as  well  as  your  articles 
in  Nature.  The  subject  seems  to  me  as  important  and 
interesting  as  it  is  difficult.  1  am  much  out  of  health,  and 
working  very  hard  on  a  very  different  subject,  so  thus  I 
cannot  give  your  remarks  the  attention  which  they  deserve. 
1  will,  however,  keep  your  letter  for  some  later  time,  when 
I  may  again  take  up  the  subject.  Your  letter  makes  it 
clearer  to  mc  than  it  ever  was  before,  how  a  part  or  organ 
which  has  already  begun  from  any  cause  to  decrease,  will  go 
on  decreasing  through  so-called  spontaneous  variability,  with 
intercrossing  ;  for  under  such  circumstances  it  is  very  unlikely 
that  there  should  be  variation  in  the  direction  of  increase 
beyond  the  average  size,  and  no  reason  why  there  should  not 
be  variations  of  decrease.  I  think  this  expresses  your  view. 
I  had  intended  this  summer  subjecting  plants  to  [illegible] 
conditions,  and  observing  the  effects  on  variation  ;  but  the 
work  would  be  very  laborious,  yet  I  am  inclined  to  think 
it  will  be  hereafter  worth  the  labour. 

Letter  265  To  T.  Mcehan. 

Down,  Oct.  9th,  1874. 
I    am    glad    that    you    arc    attending    to    the    colours    of 
dioecious    flowers  ;    but    it    is    well   to    remember    that    their 


IS70—  1SS2]  JAGEK  355 

colours  may  be  as  unimportant  to  them  as  those  of  a  gall,  Letter  265 
or,  indeed,  as  the  colour  of  an  amethyst  or  ruby  is  to  these 
gems.  Some  thirty  years  ago  I  began  to  investigate  the 
little  purple  flowers  in  the  centre  of  the  umbels  of  the  carrot. 
I  suppose  my  memory  is  wrong,  but  it  tells  me  that  these 
flowers  are  female,  and  I  think  that  I  once  got  a  seed  from 
one  of  them  ;  but  my  memory  may  be  quite  wrong.  I  hope 
that  you  will  continue  your  interesting  researches. 

To   G.   Jager.  Letter  2G6 

Down,  Feb.  3rd,  1875. 
I  received  this  morning  a  copy  of  your  work  Contra 
Wigand?  cither  from  yourself  or  from  your  publisher,  and 
I  am  greatly  obliged  for  it.  I  had,  however,  before  bought 
a  copy,  and  have  sent  the  new  one  to  our  best  library,  that 
of  the  Royal  Society.  As  I  am  a  very  poor  german  scholar, 
I  have  as  yet  read  only  about  forty  pages  ;  but  these  have 
interested  me  in  the  highest  degree.  Your  remarks  on  fixed 
and  variable  species  deserve  the  greatest  attention  ;  but  I  am 
not  at  present  quite  convinced  that  there  are  such  independent 
of  the  conditions  to  which  they  are  subjected.  I  think  you 
have  done  great  service  to  the  principle  of  evolution,  which 
we  both  support,  by  publishing  this  work.  I  am  the  more 
glad  to  read  it  as  I  had  not  time  to  read  Wigand's  great  and 
tedious  volume. 

To  Chaunccy  Wright.  Letter  267 

Down,  March  13th,  1S75. 

I  write  to-day  so  that  there  shall  be  no  delay  this  time  in 
thanking  you  for  your  interesting  and  long  letter  received 
this  morning.  I  am  sure  that  you  will  excuse  brevity  when 
I  tell  you  that  I  am  half-killing  myself  in  trying  to  get  a 
book2  ready  for  the  press.  I  quite  agree  with  what  you  say 
about  advantages  of  various  degrees  of  importance  being 
co-selected,3  and  aided  by  the  effects  of  use,  etc.     The  subject 

1  Jager's  In  Sachen  Darwins  insbesondere  contra   Wigand  (Stuttgart, 

1874)    is    directed    against    A.    Wigand's   Der  Darwinismus    und  die 
Nalurforschung  Newtons  und  Cuviers  (Brunswick,  1S74). 

2  The  MS.  of  Insectivorous  Plants  was  got  ready  for  press  in  March, 
1875.  Darwin  seems  to  have  been  more  than  usually  oppressed  by 
the  work. 

3  Mr.  Chaunccy  Wright  wrote  (Feb.  24th,  1S75)  :  "The  inquiry  as  to 
which  of  several  real  uses  is  the  one  through  which  Natural  Selection 


356  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  267  seems  to  mc  well  worth  further  development.  I  do  not  think 
I  have  anywhere  noticed  the  use  of  the  eyebrows,  but  have 
long  known  that  they  protected  the  eyes  from  sweat.  During 
the  voyage  of  the  Beagle  one  of  the  men  ascended  a  lofty 
hill  during  a  very  hot  day.  He  had  small  eyebrows,  and  his 
eyes  became  fearfully  inflamed  from  the  sweat  running  into 
them.  The  Portuguese  inhabitants  were  familiar  with  this 
evil.  I  think  you  allude  to  the  transverse  furrows  on  the 
forehead  as  a  protection  against  sweat ;  but  remember  that 
these  incessantly  appear  on  the  foreheads  of  baboons. 

P.S. — I  have  been   greatly  pleased  by  the  notices  in  the 
Nation. 

Letter  26S  To  A.  Weismann. 

Down,  May  1st,  1875. 
I  did  not  receive  your  essay x  for  some  days  after  your 
very  kind  letter,  and  I  read  german  so  slowly  that  I  have 
only  just  finished  it.  Your  work  has  interested  me  greatly, 
and  your  conclusions  seem  well  established.  I  have  long 
felt  much  curiosity  about  season-dimorphism,  but  never 
could  form  any  theory  on  the  subject.  Undoubtedly  your 
view  is  very  important,  as  bearing  on  the  general  question 
of  variability.  When  I  wrote  the  Origin  I  could  not  find 
any  facts  which  proved  the  direct  action  of  climate  and 
other  external  conditions.  I  long  ago  thought  that  the 
time  would  soon  come  when  the  causes  of  variation  would 
be  fully  discussed,  and  no  one  has  done  so  much  as  you 
in  this  important  subject.  The  recent  evidence  of  the 
difference  between  birds  of  the  same  species  in  the  N.  and 
S.  United    States    well    shows    the   power    of  climate.     The 

has  acted  .  .  .  has  for  several  years  seemed  to  me  a  somewhat  less 
important  question  than  it  seemed  formerly,  and  still  appears  to  most 
thinkers  on  the  subject.  .  .  .  The  uses  of  the  rattling  of  the  rattlesnake 
as  a  protection  by  warning  its  enemies  and  as  a  sexual  call  are  not 
rival  uses  ;  neither  are  the  high-reaching  and  the  far-seeing  uses  of 
the  giraffe's  neck  '  rivals.'  " 

1  SliiJicn  zur  Desce?idenz-Theorie  I.  Ueberden  Saison-Dimorfikismus, 
1875.  The  fact  was  previously  known  that  two  forms  of  the  genus 
Vanessa  which  had  been  considered  to  be  distinct  species  are  only 
seasonal  forms  of  the  same  species — one  appearing  in  spring,  the 
other  in  summer.  This  remarkable  relationship  forms  the  subject 
of  the  essay 


1870-1882]  WE  IS  MANN  357 

two  sexes  of  some  few  birds  arc  there  differently  modified  Letter  268 
by  climate,  and  I  have  introduced  this  fact  in  the  last 
edition  of  my  Descent  of  Man}  I  am,  therefore,  fully 
prepared  to  admit  the  justness  of  your  criticism  on  sexual 
selection  of  lepidoptera ;  but  considering  the  display  of 
their  beauty,  I  am  not  yet  inclined  to  think  that  I  am 
altogether  in  error. 

What  you  say  about  reversion  -  being  excited  by 
various  causes,  agrees  with  what  I  concluded  with  respect 
to  the  remarkable  effects  of  crossing  two  breeds  :  namely, 
that  anything  which  disturbs  the  constitution  leads  to 
reversion,  or,  as  I  put  the  case  under  my  hypothesis  of 
pangenesis,  gives  a  good  chance  of  latent  gemmules 
developing.  Your  essay,  in  my  opinion,  is  an  admirable 
one,  and  I  thank  you  for  the  interest  which  it  has 
afforded  me. 

P.S.  I  find  that  there  are  several  points,  which 
I  have  forgotten.  Mr.  Tenner  Weir  has  not  published 
anything  more  about  caterpillars,  but  I  have  written  to 
him,  asking  him  whether  he  has  tried  any  more  experiments, 
and  will  keep  back  this  letter  till  I  receive  his  answer. 
Mr.  Riley  of  the  United  States  supports  Mr.  Weir,  and 
you  will  find  reference  to  him  and  other  papers  at  p.  426 
of  the  new  and  much-corrected  edit,  of  my  Descent  of 
Man.  As  I  have  a  duplicate  copy  of  Vol.  I.  (I  believe 
Vol.  II.  is  not  yet  published  in  german)  I  send  it  to 
you  by  this  post.  Mr.  Belt,  in  his  travels  in  Nicaragua, 
gives  several  striking  cases  of  conspicuously  coloured 
animals  (but  not  caterpillars)  which  are  distasteful  to  birds 
of  prey :  he  is  an  excellent  observer,  and  his  book,  Tlie 
Naturalist  in  Nicaragua,  very  interesting. 

1  Descent  of  Man,  Eel.  II.  (in  one  volume),  p.  423.  Allen  showed 
that  many  species  of  birds  are  more  strongly  coloured  in  the  south  of 
the  United  States,  and  that  sometimes  one  sex  is  more  affected  than 
the  other.  It  is  this  last  point  that  bears  on  Weismann's  remarks 
(toe.  cit.,  pp.  44,  45)  on  Pieris  nafii.  The  males  of  the  alpine-boreal 
form  bryonies  hardly  differ  from  those  of  the  German  form  (var. 
vemalis),  while  the  females  are  strikingly  different.  Thus  the 
character  of  secondary  sexual  differences  is  determined  by  climate. 

2  For  instance,  the  fact  that  reversion  to  the  primary  winter-form 
may  be  produced  by  the  disturbing  effect  of  high  temperature  (p.  7). 


358  EVOLUTION  [Chai\  V 

Letter  268  I  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  photograph,  which  I 
am  particularly  glad  to  possess,  and  I  send  mine  in  return. 

I  see  you  allude  to  1  lilgcndorf's  statements,  which  I 
was  sorry  to  sec  disputed  by  some  good  German  observer. 
Mr.  Hyatt,  an  excellent  palaeontologist  of  the  United 
States,  visited  the  place,  and  likewise  assured  me  that 
I  lilgcndorf  was   quite  mistaken.1 

I  am  grieved  to  hear  that  your  eyesight  still  continues 
bad,  but  anyhow  it  has  forced  your  excellent  work  in  your 
last  essay. 

May  4th.     Here  is  what  Mr.   Weir  says  :  — 

"  In  reply  to  your  inquiry  of  Saturday,  I  regret  that 
I  have  little  to  add  to  my  two  communications  to  the 
Entomological  Society    Transactions. 

"  I  repeated  the  experiments  with  gaudy  caterpillars  for 
years,  and  always  with  the  same  results :  not  on  a  single 
occasion  did  I  find  richly  coloured,  conspicuous  larvae 
eaten  by  birds.  It  was  more  remarkable  to  observe  that 
the  birds  paid  not  the  slightest  attention  to  gaudy  caterpillars, 
not  even  when  in  motion, — the  experiments  so  thoroughly 
satisfied  my  mind  that  I  have  now  given  up  making  them." 

Letter  269  To  Lawson  Tait. 

The  late  Mr.  Lawson  Tait  wrote  to  Mr.  Darwin  (June  2nd,  1875)  : 
"  I  am  watching  a  lot  of  my  mice  from  whom  I  removed  the  tails 
at  birth,  and  I  am  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  the  essential  use 
of  the  tail  there  is  as  a  recording  organ — that  is,  they  record  in  their 
memories  the  corners  they  turn  and  the  height  of  the  holes  they 
pass  through  by  touching  them  with  their  tails."  Mr.  Darwin  was 
interested  in  the  idea  because  "some  German  sneered  at  Natural 
Selection  and  instanced  the  tails  of  mice." 

June  nth,  1875. 

It  has  just  occurred  to  me  to  look  at  the  Origin  0/ 
Species  (Ed.  VL,  p.  170),  and  it  is  certain  that  Bronn, 
in  the  appended  chapter  to  his  translation  of  my  book 
into  german,  did  advance  cars  and  tail  of  various  species 
of  mice  as  a  difficulty  opposed  to  Natural  Selection.  I 
answered  with  respect  to  cars  by  alluding  to  Schobl's 
curious    paper  (I   forget   when    published)-    on    the    hairs    of 

1  See  Letters  252-7. 

-  J.  Schobl,  "Das  aiissere  Ohr  der  Miiuse  als  wichtiges  Tastorgan." 
Archiv.  Mik.  Anat.,  VII.,  187 1,  p.  260. 


1870— 1SS2]  GRAFT    HYBRIDS  359 

the  ears  being  sensitive  and  provided  with  nerves.  I  Letter  269 
presume  he  made  fine  sections :  if  you  are  accustomed 
to  such  histological  work,  would  it  not  be  worth  while 
to  examine  hairs  of  tail  of  mice?  At  p.  189  I  quote 
Henslow  (confirmed  by  Giinther)  on  Mhs  messorius  (and 
other  species?)  using  tail  as  prehensile  organ. 

Dr.  Kane  in  his  account  of  the  second  Grinnell 
Expedition  says  that  the  Esquimaux  in  severe  weather  carry 
a  fox-tail  tied  to  the  neck,  which  they  use  as  a  respirator 
by  holding  the  tip  of  the  tail  between  their  teeth.1 

He  says  also  that  he  found  a  frozen  fox  curled  up 
with  his  nose  buried  in  his  tail. 

N.B.  It  is  just  possible  that  the  latter  fact  is  stated 
by  M'Clintock,  not  by  Dr.  Kane. 

The  final  passage  is  a  postscript  by  Mr.  W.  E.  Darwin  bearing  on 
Mr.  Lawson  Tait's  idea  of  the  respirator  function  of  the  fox's  tail. 

* 
To  G.  J.  Romanes.  Letter  270 

Down,  July   12th,    1S75. 

I  am  correcting  a  second  edition  of  Variation  under 
Domestication,  and  find  that  I  must  do  it  pretty  fully. 
Therefore  I  give  a  short  abstract  of  potato  graft-hybrids,  and 
I  want  to  know  whether  I  did  not  send  you  a  reference  about 
beet.  Did  you  look  to  this,  and  can  you  tell  me  anything 
about  it  ? 

I  hope  with  all  my  heart  that  you  are  getting  on  pretty 
well  with  your  experiments. 

I  have  been  led  to  think  a  good  deal  on  the  subject,  and 
am  convinced  of  its  high  importance,  though  it  will  take 
years  of  hammering  before  physiologists  will  admit  that  the 
sexual  organs  only  collect  the  generative  elements. 

The  edition  will  be  published  in  November,  and  then  you 
will  sec  all  that  I  have  collected,  but  I  believe  that  you  gave 
all  the  more  important  cases.  The  case  of  vine  in  Gardeners* 
Chronicle,  which  I  sent  you,  I  think  may  only  be  a  bud- 
variation  not  due  to  grafting.  I  have  heard  indirectly  of 
your  splendid    success    with    nerves    of    medusa?.     We  have 


1  The   fact   is   stated   in   Vol.    II.,    p.    24,   of  E.    K.    Kane's   Arctic 

Explorations :    The  Second  Grinnell  Expedition  in  Search  of  Sir  John 
Franklin.     Philadelphia,  1856. 


360  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  270  been  at  Abingcr  Hall  for  a  month  for  rest,  which  I  much 
required,  and  1  saw  there  the  cut-leaved  vine  which  seems 
splendid  for  graft  hybridism. 

Letter  271  To  Francis  Galton. 

Down,  Nov.  7th,  1875. 
I  have  read  your  essay  :  with  much  curiosity  and  interest, 
but  you  probably  have  no  idea  how  excessively  difficult  it  is 
to  understand.  I  cannot  fully  grasp,  only  here  and  there 
conjecture,  what  are  the  points  on  which  we  differ.  I  dare- 
say this  is  chiefly  due  to  muddy-headedness  on  my  part,  but 
I  do  not  think  wholly  so.  Your  many  terms,  not  denned, 
"  developed  germs,"  "  fertile,"  and  "  sterile  germs  "  (the  word 
"  germ "  itself  from  association  misleading  to  me)  "  stirp," 
"sept,"  "residue,"  etc.,  etc.,  quite  confounded  me.  If  I  ask 
myself  how  you  derive,  and  where  you  place  the  innumer- 
able gemmules  contained  within  the  spermatozoa  formed  by 
a  male  animal  during  its  whole  life,  I  cannot  answer  myself. 
Unless  you  can  make  several  parts  clearer  I  believe  (though 
I  hope  I  am  altogether  wrong)  that  only  a  few  will  endeavour 
or  succeed  in  fathoming  your  meaning.  I  have  marked  a 
few  passages  with  numbers,  and  here  make  a  few  remarks 
and  express  my  opinion,  as  you  desire  it,  not  that  I  suppose 
it  will  be  of  any  use  to  you. 

(1)  If  this  implies  that  many  parts  are  not  modified  by 
use  and  disuse  during  the  life  of  the  individual,  I  differ 
widely  from  you,  as  every  year  I  come  to  attribute  more  and 
more  to  such  agency.2 

(2)  This  seems  rather  bold,  as  sexuality  has  not  been 
detected  in  some  of  the  lowest  forms,  though  I  daresay  it 
may  hereafter  be.3 

1  "  A  Theory  of  Heredity"  {Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute, 
1875).  In  this  paper  Mr.  Galton  admits  that  the  hypothesis  of  organic 
units  ''must  lie  at  the  foundation  of  the  science  of  heredity,"  and  proceeds 
to  show  in  what  respect  his  conception  differs  from  the  hypothesis  of 
pangenesis.  The  copy  of  Mr.  Galton's  paper,  which  Darwin  numbered 
in  correspondence  with  the  criticisms  in  his  letter,  is  not  available,  and 
we  are  therefore  only  able  to  guess  at  some  of  the  points  referred  to. 

!  This  seems  to  refer  to  p.  329  of  Mr.  Galton's  paper.  The  passage 
must  have  been  hastily  read,  and  has  been  quite  misunderstood.  Mr. 
Galton  has  never  expressed  the  view  attributed  to  him. 

3  Mr.  Galton,  op.  tit.,  pp.  332-3  :  "There  are  not  of  a  necessity  two 


1870—  18S2]  G  ALTON  361 

(3)  If    gemmules    (to    use    my    own    term)    were    often  Letter  271 
deficient    in    buds,   I    cannot    but   think    that   bud-variations 

would  be  commoner  than  they  arc  in  a  state  of  nature  ;  nor 
does  it  seem  that  bud-variations  often  exhibit  deficiencies 
which  might  be  accounted  for  by  the  absence  of  the  proper 
gemmules.  I  take  a  very  different  view  of  the  meaning  or 
cause  of  sexuality-1 

(4)  I  have  ordered  Frascr's  Magazine?  and  am  curious 
to  learn  how  twins  from  a  single  ovum  are  distinguished 
from  twins  from  two  ova.  Nothing  seems  to  me  more 
curious  than  the  similarity  and  dissimilarity  of  twins. 

(5)  Awfully  difficult  to  understand. 

(6)  I  have  given  almost  the  same  notion. 

(7)  I  hope  that  all  this  will  be  altered.  I  have  received 
new  and  additional  cases,  so  that  I  have  now  not  a  shadow 
of  doubt. 

(8)  Such  cases  can  hardly  be  spoken  of  as  very  rare,  as 
you  would  say  if  you  had  received  half  the  number  of  cases 
I  have.3 

I  am  very  sorry  to  differ  so  much  from  you,  but  I  have 


sexes,  because  swarms  of  creatures  of  the  simplest  organisations  mainly 
multiply  by  some  process  of  self-division." 

1  Mr.  Galton's  idea  is  that  in  a  bud  or  other  asexually  produced  part, 
the  germs  {i.e.  gemmules)  may  not  be  completely  representative  of  the 
whole  organism,  and  if  reproduction  is  continued  asexually  "  at  each 
successive  stage  there  is  always  a  chance  of  some  one  or  more  of  the 
various  species  of  germs  .  .  .  dying  out"  (p.  333).  Mr.  Galton  supposes, 
in  sexual  reproduction,  where  two  parents  contribute  germs  to  the 
embryo  the  chance  of  deficiency  of  any  of  the  necessary  germs  is  greatly 
diminished.  Darwin's  "very  different  view  of  the  meaning  or  cause  of 
sexuality "  is  no  doubt  that  given  in  Cross  and  Self  Fertilisation — i.e., 
that  sexuality  is  equivalent  to  changed  conditions,  that  the  parents  are 
not  representative  of  different  sexes,  but  of  different  conditions  of  life. 

2  "The  History  of  Twins,"  by  F.  Galton,  Fraser s Magazine,  November, 
1875,  republished  with  additions  in  the  Journal  of  the  Anthropological 
Institute,  1S75.  Mr.  Galton  explains  the  striking  dissimilarity  of  twins 
which  is  sometimes  met  with  by  supposing  that  the  offspring  in  this  case 
divide  the  available  gemmules  between  them  in  such  a  way  that  each  is 
the  complement  of  the  other.  Thus,  to  put  the  case  in  an  exaggerated 
way,  similar  twins  would  each  have  half  the  gemmules  A,  15,  G,  .  .  .  Z., 
etc.,  whereas,  in  the  case  of  dissimilar  twins,  one  would  have  all  the 
gemmules  A,  I!,  G,  I),  .  .  .  M,  and  the  other  would  have  N  .  .  .  Z. 

3  We  are  unable  to  determine  to  what  paragraphs  5,  6,  7,  8  refer. 


362  INVOLUTION  [Chap.V 

Letter  271  thought  that  y>u  would  desire  my  open  opinion.     Frank  is 
away,  otherwise  he  should  have  copied  my  scrawl. 

I  have  got  a  good  stock  of  pods  of  sweet  peas,  but  the 
autumn  has  been  frightfully  bad  ;  perhaps  we  may  still  get 
a  few  more  to  ripen. 

Letter  272  To  T.   II.  Huxley. 

Down,  Nov.   121I1  [1875]. 
Many  thanks   for  your   Biology}  which    I   have   read.      It 
was  a  real  stroke  of  genius  to  think  of  such  a  plan.     Lord, 
how  1  wish  1  had  gone  through  such  a  course  ! 

To  Francis  Galton. 
Letler  273  Dec.  18th  [1875]. 

George  has  been  explaining  our  differences.  I  have 
admitted  in  the  new  edition'2  (before  seeing  your  essay)  that 
perhaps  the  gemmulcs  arc  largely  multiplied  in  the  repro- 
ductive organs  ;  but  this  docs  not  make  me  doubt  that  each 
unit  of  the  whole  system  also  sends  forth  its  gcmmules. 
You  will  no  doubt  have  thought  of  the  following  objection  to 
your  views,  and  I  should  like  to  hear  what  your  answer  is. 
If  two  plants  are  crossed,  it  often,  or  rather  generally, 
happens  that  every  part  of  stem,  leaf,  even  to  the  hairs,  and 
flowers  of  the  hybrid  are  intermediate  in  character  ;  and  this 
hybrid  will  produce  by  buds  millions  on  millions  of  other 
buds  all  exactly  reproducing  the  intermediate  character.  I 
cannot  doubt  that  every  unit  of  the  hybrid  is  hybridised  and 
sends  forth  hybridised  gemmulcs.  Here  we  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  reproductive  organs.  There  can  hardly  be  a 
doubt  from  what  we  know  that  the  same  thing  would  occur 
with  all  those  animals  which  are  capable  of  budding,  and 
some  of  these  (as  the  compound  Ascidians)  are  sufficiently 
complex  and  highly  organised. 

1  A  Course  of  Practical  Instruction  in  Elementary  Biology,  by 
T.  II.  Huxley  and  H.  N.  Martin,  1875.  For  an  account  of  the  book 
see  Life  and  Letters  of  I'.  II.  Huxley,  Vol.  I.,  p.  380. 

■  In  the  second  edition  (1875)  of  the  Variation  of  Animals  and 
Plants,  Vol.  II.,  p.  350,  reference  is  made  to  Mr.  Galton's  transfusion 
experiments,  /'roc.  R.  Soc,  XIX.,  p.  393;  also  to  Mr.  Galton's  letter  to 
\  \ture,  April  27th,  1S71,  p.  502.  This  is  a  curious  mistake  ;  the  letter 
in  Nature,  April  27th,  1871,1s  by  Darwin  himself,  and  refers  chiefly  to 
the  question  whether  gemmules  may  be  supposed  to  be  in  the  blood.  Mr. 
Galton's  letter  is  in  Nature,  May  4U1,  1871,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  5.     See  Letter  235. 


i870— 1882]  REGENERATION  363 

To  Lawson  Tait.  Letter  274 

March  25th,  1876. 
The  reference  is  to  the  theory  put  forward  in  the  first  edition  of 
Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants,  II.,  p.  15,  that  the  asserted  tendency 
to  regeneration  after  the  amputation  of  supernumerary  digits  in  man  is  a 
return  to  the  recuperative  powers  characteristic  of  a  "  lowly  organised 
progenitor  provided  with  more  than  five  digits."  Darwin's  recantation  is 
at  Vol.  I.,  p.  459  of  the  second  edition. 

Since  reading  your  first  article,1  Dr.  Riidinger  has  written 
to  me  and  sent  me  an  essay,  in  which  he  gives  the  results  of 
the  most  extensive  inquiries  from  all  eminent  surgeons  in 
Germany,  and  all  are  unanimous  about  non-growth  of  extra 
digits  after  amputation.  They  explain  some  apparent  cases, 
as  Paget  did  to  me.  By  the  way,  I  struck  out  of  my  second 
edition  a  quotation  from  Sir  J.  Simpson  about  re-growth  in 
the  womb,  as  Paget  demurred,  and  as  I  could  not  say  how  a 
rudiment  of  a  limb  due  to  any  cause  could  be  distinguished 
from  an  imperfect  re-growth.  Two  or  three  days  ago  I  had 
another  letter  from  Germany  from  a  good  naturalist,  Dr. 
Kollmann,2  saying  he  was  sorry  that  I  had  given  up  atavism 
and  extra  digits,  and  telling  me  of  new  and  good  evidence  of 
rudiments  of  a  rudimentary  sixth  digit  in  Batrachians  (which 
I  had  myself  seen,  but  given  up  owing  to  Gegenbaur's  views) ; 
but,  with  re-growth  failing  me,  I  could  not  uphold  my  old 
notion. 

To  G.  J.   Romanes.3  Letter  275 

II.  Wedgwood,  Esq.,   Hopedene,  Dorking, 

May  29th  [1876]. 

As  you  arc  interested  in  pangenesis,  and  will  some  day, 

I  hope,  convert  an  "  airy  nothing  "  into  a  substantial  theory, 

1  Lawson  Tait  wrote  two  notices  on  "  The  Variation  of  Animals  and 
Plants  under  Domestication"  in  the  Spectator  of  March  4th,  1876,  p.  312, 
and  March  25th,  p.  406. 

2  Dr.  Kollmann  was  Secretary  of  the  Anthropologische  Gesellschaft 
of  Munich,  in  which  Society  took  place  the  discussion  referred  to  in 
/  'ariation  of  Animals  and  Plants,  I.,  459,  as  originating  Darwin's  doubts 
on  the  whole  question.  The  fresh  evidence  adduced  by  Kollmann  as 
to  the  normal  occurrence  of  a  rudimentary  sixth  digit  in  Batrachians  is 
Borus' paper,  "  Die  sechste  Zehe  der  Anuren"  in  Morpholog.  Jahrbuch, 
Bd.  I.,  p.  435.     On  this  subject  see  Letter  178. 

3  Mr.  Romanes'  reply  to  this  letter  is  printed  in  his  Life  and  Letters, 
p.  93,  where  by  an  oversight  it  is  dated  1880-81. 


364  K  VOLUTION  [Chap.V 

Lettei  275  I  send  by  this  post  an  essay  by  Hackel '  attacking  Pan. 
and  substituting  a  molecular  hypothesis.  If  I  understand 
his  views  rightly,  he  would  say  that  with  a  bird  which 
strengthened  its  wings  by  use,  the  formative  protoplasm  of 
the  strengthened  parts  became  changed,  and  its  molecular 
vibrations  consequently  changed,  and  that  these  vibrations 
are  transmitted  throughout  the  whole  frame  of  the  bird, 
and  affect  the  sexual  elements  in  such  a  manner  that  the 
wings  of  the  offspring  are  developed  in  a  like  strengthened 
manner.  I  imagine  he  would  say,  in  cases  like  those  of  Lord 
Morton's  mare,2  that  the  vibrations  from  the  protoplasm,  or 
"  plasson,"  of  the  seminal  fluid  of  the  zebra  set  plasson  vibrat- 
ing in  the  mare  ;  and  that  these  vibrations  continued  until 
the  hair  of  the  second  colt  was  formed,  and  which  consequently 
became  barred  like  that  of  a  zebra.  I  low  he  explains  re- 
version to  a  remote  ancestor,  I  know  not.  Perhaps  I  have 
misunderstood  him,  though  I  have  skimmed  the  whole  with 
some  care.  He  lays  much  stress  on  inheritance  being  a  form 
of  unconscious  memory,  but  how  far  this  is  part  of  his  mole- 
cular vibration,  I  do  not  understand.  His  views  make  nothing 
clearer  to  me  ;  but  this  may  be  my  fault.  No  one,  I  presume, 
would  doubt  about  molecular  movements  of  some  kind.  His 
essay  is  clever  and  striking.  If  you  read  it  (but  you  must  not 
on  my  account),  I  should  much  like  to  hear  your  judgment, 
and  you  can  return  it  at  any  time.  The  blue  lines  are 
Hackcl's  to  call  my  attention. 

We  have  come  here  for  rest  for  me,  which  I  have  much 
needed  ;  and  shall  remain  here  for  about  ten  days  more,  and 
then  home  to  work,  which  is  my  sole  pleasure  in  life.  I  hope 
your  splendid  Medusa  work  and  your  experiments  on  pan- 
genesis are  going  on  well.  I  heard  from  my  son  Frank 
yesterday  that  he  was  feverish  with  a  cold,  and  could  not 
dine  with  the  physiologists,  which  I  am  very  sorry  for,  as  I 

1  Die  Perigenesis  der  Plasiidule  odcr  die  J I  'ellenzeugung  der  Lcbcns- 
theilcken,  79  pp.     Berlin,  1876. 

-'  A  nearly  pure-bred  Arabian  chestnut  mare  bore  a  hybrid  to  a 
quagga,  and  subsequently  produced  two  striped  colts  by  a  black  Arabian 
horse :  see  Animals  and  Plants,  I.,  p.  403.  The  case  was  originally 
described  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions,  1821,  p.  20.  For  an  account 
of  recent  work  bearing  on  this  question,  see  article  on  "Zebras,  Horses, 
and  Hybrids,"  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  October  1S99.     See  Letter  235. 


1S70-1SS2]  N  ATI-IT  ALI    LEWY  365 

should  have  heard  what  they  think  about  the  new  Bill.     I  see  Leiter  275 
that  you  are  one  of  the  secretaries  to  this  young  Society. 

To  H.  N.  Moseley.1  Letter  276 

Down,  Nov.   22nd  [1S76]. 

It  is  very  kind  of  you  to  send  me  the  Japanese  books, 
which  are  extremely  curious  and  amusing.  My  son  Frank  is 
away,  but  I  am  sure  he  will  be  much  obliged  for  the  two 
papers  which  you  have  sent  him. 

Thanks,  also,  for  your  interesting  note.  It  is  a  pity  that 
Peripatits'2  is  so  stupid  as  to  spit  out  the  viscid  matter  at  the 
wrono-  end  of  its  body  ;  it  would  have  been  beautiful  thus  to 
have  explained  the  origin  of  the  spider's  web. 

Naphtali  Lewy  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  277 

The  following  letter  refers  to  a  book,  Toledoth  Adam,  written  by  a 
learned  Jew  with  the  object  of  convincing  his  co-religionists  of  the  truth 
of  the  theory  of  evolution.  The  translation  we  owe  to  the  late  Hepry 
Bradshaw,  University  Librarian  at  Cambridge.  The  book  is  unfortunately 
no  longer  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Darwin's  library. 

[1876]. 

To  the  Lord,  the  Prince,  who  "  stands  for  an  ensign  of  the 
people"  (Isa.  xi.  10),  the  Investigator  of  the  generation,  the 
"bright  son  of  the  morning  "  (Isa.  xiv.  12),  Charles  Darwin, 
may  he  live  long  ! 

"  From  the  rising  of  the  sun  and  from  the  west"  (Isa.  xlv. 
6)  all  the  nations  know  concerning  the  Torah 3  (Theory) 
which  has  "  proceeded  from  thee  for  a  light  of  the  people " 

1  Henry  Nottidge  Moseley,  F.R.S.  (1844-91),  was  an  undergraduate 
of  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  and  afterwards  studied  medicine  at  University 
College,  London.  In  1872  he  was  appointed  one  of  the  naturalists  on 
the  scientific  staff  of  the  Challenger,  and  in  188 1  succeeded  his  friend 
and  teacher,  Professor  Rolleston,  as  Linacre  Professor  of  Human  and 
Comparative  Anatomy  at  Oxford.  Moseley's  Notes  by  a  Naturalist  on 
the  Challenger,  London,  1879,  was  held  in  high  estimation  by  Darwin,  to 
whom  it  was  dedicated.     (See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  pp.  237-38.) 

2  Moseley  "  On  the  Structure  and  Development  of  Peripatus  capensis" 
{Phil.  Trans.  K.  Sot.,  Vol.  164,  p.  757,  1874).  "When  suddenly  handled 
or  irritated,  they  (i.e.  Peripatits)  shoot  out  fine  threads  of  a  remarkably 
viscid  and  tenacious  milky  fluid  .  .  .  projected  from  the  tips  of  the  oral 
papillae"  (p.  759). 

3  Lit.,  instruction.  The  Torah  is  the  Pentateuch,  strictly  speaking,  the 
source  of  all  knowledge. 


3C6  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  277  (Isa.  li.  4),  and  the  nations  "hear  and  say,  It  is  truth"  (Isa. 
xliii.  9).  But  with  "the  portion  of  my  people"  (Jer.  x.  16), 
J;icob,  "  the  lot  of  my  inheritance  "  (Dcut.  xxxii.  9;,  it  is  not 
so.  This  nation,  "the  ancient  people"  (Isa.  xliv.  7),  which 
"  remembers  the  former  things  and  considers  the  things  of 
old"  (Isa.  xliii.  18),  "knows  not,  neither  doth  it  understand" 
(Psalm  lxxxii.  5),  that  by  thy  Torah  (instruction  or  theory) 
thou  hast  thrown  light  upon  their  Torah  (the  Law),  and  that 
the  eyes  of  the  Hebrews  2  "  can  now  see  out  of  obscurity 
and  out  of  darkness"  (Isa.  xxix.  18).  Therefore"  I  arose" 
(Judges  v.  7)  and  wrote  this  book,  Toledoth  Adam  ("  the 
generations  of  man,"  Gen.  v.  1),  to  teach  the  children  of  my 
people,  the  seed  of  Jacob,  the  Torah  (instruction)  which  thou 
hast  given  for  an  inheritance  to  all  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

And  I  have  "  proceeded  to  do  a  marvellous  work  among 
this  people,  even  a  marvellous  work  and  a  wonder "  (Isa. 
xxix.  14),  enabling  them  now  to  read  in  the  Torah  of  Moses 
our  teacher,  "  plainly  and  giving  the  sense  "  (Neh.  viii.  8),  that 
which  thou  hast  given  in  thy  Torahs  (works  of  instruction). 
And  when  my  people  perceive  that  thy  view  has  by  no 
means  "gone  astray"  (Num.  v.  12,  19,  etc.)  from  the  Torah 
of  God,  they  will  hold  thy  name  in  the  highest  reverence,  and 
"  will  at  the  same  time  glorify  the  God  of  Israel "  (Isa. 
xxix.  23). 

"The  vision  of  all  this"  (Isa.  xxix.  11)  thou  shalt  see,  O 
Prince  of  Wisdom,  in  this  book,  "  which  goeth  before  me " 
(Gen.  xxxii.  21)  ;  and  whatever  thy  large  understanding  finds 
to  criticise  in  it,  come,  "write  it  in  a  table  and  note  it  in  a 
book"  (Isa.  xxx.  8);  and  allow  me  to  name  my  work  with 
thy  name,  which  is  glorified  and  greatly  revered  by 

Thy  servant, 

NAPHTALI  HALLEVI  {i.e.  the  Levite]. 

Dated  here  in  the  city  of  Radom,  in  the  province  of 
Poland,  in  the  month  of  Nisan  in  the  year  636,  according  to 
the  lesser  computation  {i.e.  A.M.  [5]636  =  A.D.  1S76). 

1  One   letter   in   this  word  changed  would    make    the    word  " blind," 

which  is  what  Isaiah  uses  in  the  passage  alluded  to. 


1870— 1882]  UNCONSCIOUS    SELECTION  367 

To  Otto  Zacharias.  Letter  278 

1877. 

When  I  was  on  board  the  Beagle  I  believed  in  the  per- 
manence of  species,  but,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  vague 
doubts  occasionally  flitted  across  my  mind.  On  my  return 
home  in  the  autumn  of  1S36  I  immediately  began  to  prepare 
my  journal  for  publication,  and  then  saw  how  many  facts 
indicated  the  common  descent  of  species,1  so  that  in  July, 
1837,  I  opened  a  note-book  to  record  any  facts  which  might 
bear  on  the  question  ;  but  I  did  not  become  convinced  that 
species  were  mutable  until,  I  think,  two  or  three  years  had 
elapsed.2 

To  G.  J.  Romanes.  Letter  279 

The  following  letter  refers  to  MS.  notes  by  Romanes,  which  we  have 
not  seen.     Darwin's  remarks  on  it  are,  however,  sufficiently  clear. 

My  address  will  be  "  Bassett,  Southampton," 

June   nth  [1877]. 

I  have  received  the  crossing  paper  which  you  were  so  kind 

as  to  send  me.     It   is  very  clear,  and   I  quite  agree  with  it  ; 

but  the  point  in  question  has  not  been  a  difficulty  to  me,  as  I 

have  never  believed  in  a  new  form  originating  from  a  single 

variation.     What   I  have  called  unconscious  selection  by  man 

illustrates,  as  it  seems  to   me,   the  same  principle  as   yours, 

within  the  same  area.     Man  purchases  the  individual  animals 

or  plants  which  seem  to  him  the  best  in  any  respect — some 

more  so,  and   some  less  so— and,  without  any  matching  or 

pairing,    the  breed   in   the  course  of  time    is   surely   altered. 

The    absence    in    numerous    instances    of    intermediate    or 

blending  forms,  in  the   border  country  between  two  closely 

1  "The  facts  to  which  reference  is  here  made  were,  without  doubt, 
eminently  fitted  to  attract  the  attention  of  a  philosophical  thinker  ;  but 
until  the  relations  of  the  existing  with  the  extinct  species  and  of  the 
species  of  the  different  geographical  areas  with  one  another  were  deter- 
mined with  some  exactness,  they  afforded  but  an  unsafe  foundation  for 
speculation.  It  was  not  possible  that  this  determination  should  have 
been  effected  before  the  return  of  the  Beagle  to  England  ;  and  thus  the 
date  which  Darwin  (writing  in  1837)  assigns  to  the  dawn  of  the  new  light 
which  was  rising  in  his  mind  becomes  intelligible." — From  Darwiniana, 
Essays  by  Thomas  11.  Huxley,  London,  1893  ;  pp.  274-5. 

2  On  this  last  point  see  p.  38. 


368  E  V  O  L  U  T I O  N  [Chap.  V 

Letter  279  allied  geographical  races  or  close  species,  seemed  to  me  a 
greater  difficulty  when  I  discussed  the  subject  in  the  Origin. 

With  respect  to  your  illustration,  it  formerly  drove  me 
half  mad  to  attempt  to  account  for  the  increase  or  diminution 
of  the  productiveness  of  an  organism  ;  but  I  cannot  call  to 
mind  where  my  difficulty  lay.1  Natural  Selection  always 
applies,  as  I  think,  to  each  individual  and  its  offspring,  such 
as  its  seeds,  eggs,  which  arc  formed  by  the  mother,  and  which 
arc  protected  in  various  ways.2  There  does  not  seem  any 
difficulty  in  understanding  how  the  productiveness  of  an 
organism  might  be  increased  ;  but  it  was,  as  far  as  I  can 
remember,  in  reducing  productiveness  that  I  was  most 
puzzled.     But  why   I  scribble  about  this   I  know  not. 

I  have  read  your  review  of  Mr.  Allen's  book,3  and  it 
makes  me  more  doubtful,  even,  than  I  was  before  whether  he 
has  really  thrown  much  light  on  the  subject. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  some  physiologists  take  the  same 
view  as  I  did  about  your  giving '  too  much  credit  to  H. 
Spencer — though,  heaven  knows,  this  is  a  rare  fault. 

The  more  I  think  of  your  medusa-nerve-work  the  more 
splendid  it  seems  to  me. 


Letter  280  To  A.  De  Candolle. 

Down.  August  3rd,   1S77. 

I   must  have  the  pleasure  of  thanking  you  for  your  long 

and  interesting  letter.     The  cause  and  means  of  the  transition 

from  an  hermaphrodite  to  a  unisexual  condition  seems  to  me 

a  very  perplexing  problem,  and  I  shall  be  extremely  glad  to 

1  See  Letters  209-16. 

-  It  was  in  regard  to  this  point  that  Romanes  had  sent  the  MS.  to 
Darwin,  In  a  letter  of  June  16th  lie  writes  :  "  It  was  with  reference  to 
the  possibility  of  Natural  Selection  acting  on  organic  types  as  dis- 
tinguished from  individuals, — a  possibility  which  you  once  told  me  did 
not  seem  at  all  clear." 

3  See  Nature  (June  7th,  1877,  p.  9S),  a  review  of  Grant  Allen's 
1  ''hysiologii  at  .  -Est  lie  tics. 

*  The  reference  is  to  Romanes'  lecture  on  Medusa,  given  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  May  25th.  (See  Nature,  XVI.,  pp.  231,  269,  289.)  It 
appears  from  a  letter  of  Romanes  (June  6th)  that  it  was  the  abstract 
in  the  Times  that  gave  the  impression  referred  to.  References  to  Mr. 
Spencer's  theories  of  nerve-genesis  occur  in  Nature,  pp.  232,  271,  289. 


1870—  1SS2]  DE    CANDOLLE  369 

read  your  remarks  on  Smilax,  whenever  I  receive  the  essay  '  Letter  2S0 
which  you  kindly  say  that  you  will  send  me.  There  is  much 
justice  in  your  criticisms2  on  my  use  of  the  terms  object, 
end,  purpose  ;  but  those  who  believe  that  organs  have  been 
gradually  modified  for  Natural  Selection  for  a  special  pur- 
pose may,  1  think,  use  the  above  terms  correctly,  though 
no  conscious  being  has  intervened.  I  have  found  much 
difficulty  in  my  occasional  attempts  to  avoid  these  terms, 
but  I  might  perhaps  have  always  spoken  of  a  beneficial 
or  serviceable  effect.  My  son  Francis  will  be  interested  by 
hearing  about  Smilax.  He  has  dispatched  to  you  a  copy  of 
his  paper  on  the  glands  of  Dipsaais?  and  I  hope  that  you  will 
find  time  to  read  it,  for  the  case  seems  to  me  a  new  and 
highly  remarkable  one.  We  are  now  hard  at  work  on  an 
attempt  to  make  out  the  function  or  use  of  the  bloom  or 
waxy  secretion  on  the  leaves  and  fruit  of  many  plants  ;  but 
I  doubt  greatly  whether  our  experiments  will  tell  us  much.4 
If  you  have  any  decided  opinion  whether  plants  with  con- 
spicuously glaucous  leaves  are  more  frequent  in  hot  than  in 
temperate  or  cold,  in  dry  than  in  damp  countries,  I  should 
be  grateful  if  you  would  add  to  your  many  kindnesses  by 
informing  me.  Pray  give  my  kind  remembrances  to  your 
son,  and  tell  him  that  my  son  has  been  trying  on  a  large 
scale  the  effects  of  feeding  Droscra  with  meat,  and  the  results 
are  most  striking  and  far  more  favourable  than  I  anticipated. 

1  Monographic  Phanerogamarum,  Vol.  I.  In  his  treatment  of  the 
Smilacere,  De  Candolle  distinguishes  : — Heterosmilax  which  has  dioecious 
flowers  without  a  trace  of  aborted  stamens  or  pistils,  Smilax  with  sterile 
stamens  in  the  female  flowers,  and  Rhipogonum  with  hermaphrodite  flowers. 

2  The  passage  criticised  by  De  Candolle  is  in  Forms  of  Flowers  (p.  7) : 
"  It  is  a  natural  inference  that  their  corollas  have  been  increased  in  size 
for  this  special  purpose."  De  Candolle  goes  on  to  give  an  account  of 
the  "  recherche  linguistique"  which,  with  characteristic  fairness,  he  under- 
took to  ascertain  whether  the  word  "purpose"  differs  in  meaning  from 
the  corresponding  French  word  "  but." 

3  Quart.  Journ.  Mic.  Sri.,  1877. 

4  "  As  it  is  we  have  made  out  clearly  that  with  some  plants  (chiefly 
succulent)  the  bloom  checks  evaporation — with  some  certainly  prevents 
attacks  of  insects  ;  with  some  sea-shore  plants  prevents  injury  from  salt- 
water, and,  I  believe,  with  a  few  prevents  injury  from  pure  water  resting 
on  the  leaves."  (See  letter  to  Sir  W.  Thiselton-Dyer,  Life  and  Let  Lis, 
III.,  p.  341.  A  paper  on  the  same  subject  by  Francis  Darwin  was  pub- 
lished in  ihefoum.  Linn.  Soc.  XXII.) 

24 


370  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  281  To  G.  J.  Romanes.1 

Down,   Saturday  Night  [1877]. 

I  have  just  finished  your  lecture2;  it  is  an  admirable 
scientific  argument,  and  most  powerful.  I  wish  that  it  could 
be  sown  broadcast  throughout  the  land.  Your  courage  is 
marvellous,  and  I  wonder  that  you  were  not  stoned  on 
the  spot — and  in  Scotland  !  Do  please  tell  me  how  it  was 
received  in  the  Lecture  Hall.  About  man  being  made  like  a 
monkey  (p.  37  s)  is  quite  new  to  me,  and  the  argument  in  an 
earlier  place  (p.  84)  on  the  law  of  parsimony  admirably  put. 
Yes,  p.  2 15  is  new  to  me.  All  strike  me  as  very  clear, 
and,  considering  small  space,  you  have  chosen  your  lines  of 
reasoning  excellently. 

The  few  last  pages  are  awfully  powerful,  in  my  opinion. 

Sunday  Morning. — The  above  was  written  last  night  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  moment,  and  now — this  dark,  dismal 
Sunday  morning — I  fully  agree  with  what  I  said. 

I  am  very  sorry  to  hear  about  the  failures  in  the  graft 
experiments,  and  not  from  your  own  fault  or  ill-luck.  Trollope 
in  one  of  his  novels  gives  as  a  maxim  of  constant  use  by  a 
brickmaker — "It  is  dogged  as  does  it"6— and  I  have  often 

1  Published  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Romanes,  p.  66. 

3  The  Scientific  Evidence  of  Organic  Evolution :  a  Discourse  (de- 
livered before  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Ross-shire),  Inverness,  1877. 
It  was  reprinted  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  and  was  afterwards  worked 
up  into  a  book  under  the  above  title. 

3  "  And  if  you  reject  the  natural  explanation  of  hereditary  descent, 
you  can  only  suppose  that  the  Deity,  in  creating  man,  took  the  most 
scrupulous   pains   to  make  him  in  the  image  of  the  ape  "     (Discourse, 

P-  37)- 

*  At  p.  8  of  the  Discourse  the  speaker  referred  to  the  law  "  which  Sir 
William  Hamilton  called  the  Law  of  Parsimony — or  the  law  which  forbids 
us  to  assume  the  operation  of  higher  causes  when  lower  ones  are  found 
sufficient  to  explain  the  desired  effects,"  as  constituting  the  "  only  logical 
barrier  between  Science  and  Superstition." 

Discourse,  p.  21.  If  we  accept  the  doctrines  of  individual  creations 
and  ideal  types,  we  must  believe  that  the  Deity  acted  "  with  no  other 
apparent  motive  than  to  suggest  to  us,  by  every  one  of  the  observable 
facts,  that  the  ideal  types  are  nothing  other  than  the  bonds  of  a  lineal 
descent." 

'  "Tell  'ee  what,  Master  Crawley  ; — and  yer  reverence  mustn't  think 
as  I  means  to  be  preaching  ;  there  ain't  nowt  a  man  can't  bear  if  he  '11 


1870— 1882]  CAMBRIDGE    LL.D.  371 

and  often  thought  that  this  is  the  motto  for  every  scientific  Letter  281 
worker.     I  am  sure  it  is  yours — if  you  do  not  give  up  pan- 
genesis with  wicked  imprecations. 

By  the  way,  G.  Jager  x  has  just  brought  out  in  Kosmos 
a  chemical  sort  of  pangenesis  bearing  chiefly  on  inheritance. 

I  cannot  conceive  why  I  have  not  offered  my  garden  for 
your  experiments.  I  would  attend  to  the  plants,  as  far  as 
mere  care  goes,  with  pleasure ;  but  Down  is  an  awkward 
place  to  reach. 

Would  it  be  worth  while  to  try  if  the  Fortnightly  would 
republish  it  [i.e.  the  lecture]  ? 

To  T.   H.   Huxley.  Letter  2S2 

In  1877  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  was  conferred  on  Mr. 
Darwin  by  the  University  of  Cambridge.  At  the  dinner  given  on 
the  occasion  by  the  Philosophical  Society,  Mr.  Huxley  responded 
to  the  toast  of  the  evening  with  the  speech  of  which  an  authorised 
version  is  given  by  Mr.  L.  Huxley  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of  his 
father  (Vol.  I.,  p.  479).  Mr.  Huxley  said,  "  But  whether  that  doctrine 
[of  evolution]  be  true  or  whether  it  be  false,  I  wish  to  express  the 
deliberate  opinion,  that  from  Aristotle's  great  summary  of  the  biological 
knowledge  of  his  time  down  to  the  present  day,  there  is  nothing 
comparable  to  the  Origin  of  Species,  as  a  connected  survey  of  the 
phenomena  of  life  permeated  and  vivified  by  a  central   idea." 

In  the  first  part  of  the  speech  there  was  a  brilliant  sentence  which 
he  described  as  a  touch  of  the  whip  "  tied  round  with  ribbons,"  and 
this  was  perhaps  a  little  hard  on  the  supporters  of  evolution  in  the 
University.  Mr.  Huxley  said  "  Instead  of  offering  her  honours  when 
they  ran  a  chance  of  being  crushed  beneath  the  accumulated  marks 
of  approbation  of  the  whole  civilised  world,  the  University  has  waited 
until  the  trophy  was  finished,  and  has  crowned  the  edifice  with  the 
delicate  wreath  of  academic  appreciation." 

Down,  Monday  night,  Nov.   19th  [1877]. 

I  cannot  rest  easy  without  telling  you  more  gravely 
than  I  did  when  we  met  for  five  minutes  near  the  Museum, 
how  deeply  I  have  felt  the  many  generous  things  (as  far 
as  Frank  could  remember  them)  which  you  said  about  me 

only  be  dogged.  You  go  whome,  Master  Crawley,  and  think  o'  that,  and 
maybe  it'll  do  ye  a  good  yet.  It's  dogged  as  does  it.  It  ain't  thinking 
about  it."  (Giles  Hoggett,  the  old  Brickmaker,  in  Tlic  Last  Chronicle 
qfBarset,  Vol.  II.,  1867,  p.  188.) 

1  Several  papers  by  Jager  on  "  Inheritance  "  were  published  in  the 
first  volume  of  Kosmos,  1877. 


372  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  2S2  at  the  dinner.  Frank  came  early  next  morning  boiling 
over  with  enthusiasm  about  your  speech.  You  have  indeed 
always  been  to  me  a  most  generous  friend  ;  but  I  know, 
alas,  too  well  how  greatly  you  overestimate  me.  Forgive 
me  for  bothering  you  with  these  few  lines. 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  (Feb.  10th,  1878)  to  his  old 
schoolfellow,  Mr.  J.  Price,  gives  a  characteristic  remark  about  the 
honorary  degree. 

"  I  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  kind  congratulations 
about  the  LL.D.  Why  the  Senate  conferred  it  on  me 
I  know  not  in  the  least.  I  was  astonished  to  hear  that 
the  R.  Prof,  of  Divinity  and  several  other  great  Dons 
attended,  and  several  such  men  have  subscribed,  as  I  am 
informed,  for  the  picture  for  the  University  to  commemorate 
the  honour  conferred  on  me." 

Letter  283  To  W.  Bowman. 

We  have  not  discovered  to  what  prize  the  following  letter  to  the 
late  Sir  W.  Bowman  (the  well  known  surgeon)  refers. 

Down,  Feb  22nd,   1S78. 

1  received  your  letter  this  morning,  and  it  was  quite 
impossible  that  you  should  receive  an  answer  by  4  p.m. 
to-day.  But  this  does  not  signify  in  the  least,  for  your 
proposal  seems  to  me  a  very  good  one,  and  I  most  entirely 
agree  with  you  that  it  is  far  better  to  suggest  some  special 
question  rather  than  to  have  a  general  discussion  compiled 
from  books.  The  rule  that  the  Essay  must  be  "  illustrative 
of  the  wisdom  and  beneficence  of  the  Almighty  "  would 
confine  the  subjects  to  be  proposed.  With  respect  to  the 
Vegetable  Kingdom,  I  could  suggest  two  or  three  subjects 
about  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  information  is  much 
required  ;  but  these  subjects  would  require  a  long  course 
of  experiment,  and  unfortunately  there  is  hardly  any 
one  in  this  country  who  seems  inclined  to  devote  himself 
to  experiments. 

Letter  284  To  J-  Torbitt. 

Mr.  Torbitt  was  engaged  in  trying  to  produce  by  methodical 
selection  and  cross-fertilisation  a  fungus-proof  race  of  the  potato. 
The  plan  is  fully  described  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  348. 
The  following  letter  is  given  in  additional  illustration  of  the  keen 
interest  Mr.  Darwin  took  in  the  project. 


1870— 1882]  TOTATO-DISEASE  373 

Down,  Monday,   March  4th,    187S. 

I  have  nothing  good  to  report.  Mr.  Caird  called  upon  Letter  284 
me  yesterday;  both  he  and  Mr.  Farrer1  have  been  most 
energetic  and  obliging.  There  is  no  use  in  thinking  about 
the  Agricultural  Society.  Mr.  Caird  has  seen  several 
persons  on  the  subject,  especially  Mr.  Carruthers,  Botanist 
to  the  Society.  He  (Mr.  Carruthers)  thinks  the  attempt 
hopeless,  but  advances  in  a  long  memorandum  sent  to 
Mr.  Caird,  reasons  which  I  am  convinced  are  not  sound. 
He  specifies  two  points,  however,  which  are  well  worthy 
of  your  consideration — namely,  that  a  variety  should  be 
tested  three  years  before  its  soundness  can  be  trusted  ;  and 
especially  it  should  be  grown  under  a  damp  climate.  Mr. 
Carruthers'  opinion  on  this  head  is  valuable  because  he 
was  employed  by  the  Society  in  judging  the  varieties  sent 
in  for  the  prize  offered  a  year  or  two  ago.  1  f  I  had  strength 
to  get  up  a  memorial  to  Government,  I  believe  that  I 
could  succeed  ;  for  Sir  J.  Hooker  writes  that  he  believes 
you  are  on  the  right  path  ;  but  I  do  not  know  to  whom 
else  to  apply  whose  judgment  would  have  weight  with 
Government,  and  I  really  have  not  strength  to  discuss  the 
matter  and  convert  persons. 

At  Mr.  Farrer's  request,  when  we  hoped  the  Agricultural 
Society  might  undertake  it,  I  wrote  to  him  a  long  letter 
giving  him  my  opinion  on  the  subject  ;  and  this  letter 
Mr.  Caird  took  with  him  yesterday,  and  will  consider 
with  Mr.  Farrer  whether  any  application  can  be  made 
to  Government. 

I  am,  however,  far  from  sanguine.  I  shall  see  Mr.  Farrer 
this  evening,  and  will  do  what  I  can.  When  I  receive 
back    my    letter  I    will    send    it    to   you  for  your  perusal. 

After  much  reflection  it  seems  to  me  that  your  best 
plan  will  be,  if  we  fail  to  get  Government  aid,  to  go  on 
during  the  present  year,  on  a  reduced  scale,  in  raisin;; 
new  cross-fertilised  varieties,  and  next  year,  if  you  are  able, 
testing  the  power  of  endurance  of  only  the  most  promising 
kind.  If  it  were  possible  it  would  be  very  advisable  for 
you  to  get  some  grown  on  the  wet  western  side  of  Ireland. 
If  you    succeed    in    procuring    a    fungus-proof   variety    you 

'  The  late  Lord  Farrer. 


374  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  2S4  may  rely  on  it  that  its  merits  would  soon  become  known 
locally  and  it  would  afterwards  spread  rapidly  far  and 
wide.  Mr.  Caird  gave  me  a  striking  instance  of  such  a 
case  in  Scotland.     I  return  home  to-morrow  morning. 

1  have  the  pleasure  to  enclose  a  cheque  for  .£100.  If 
you  receive  a  Government  grant,  I   ought  to  be  repaid. 

P.S.  If  I  were  in  your  place  I  would  not  expend  any 
labour  or  money  in  publishing  what  you  have  already 
done,  or  in  sending  seeds  or  tubers  to  any  one.  I  would 
work  quietly  on  till  some  sure  results  were  obtained.  And 
these  would  be  so  valuable  that  your  work  in  this  case 
would  soon  be  known.  I  would  also  endeavour  to  pass 
as  severe  a  judgment  as  possible  on  the  state  of  the  tubers 
and  plants. 

Letter  2S5  To  E.  von  Mojsisovics.' 

Down,  June  1st,   1878. 

I  have  at  last  found  time  to  read  [the]  first  chapter  of 
your  Dolomit  Riffe?  and  have  been  exceedingly  interested  by 
it.  What  a  wonderful  change  in  the  future  of  geological 
chronology  you  indicate,  by  assuming  the  descent-theory 
to  be  established,  and  then  taking  the  graduated  changes  of 
the  same  group  of  organisms  as  the  true  standard  !  I  never 
hoped  to  live  to  see  such  a  step  even  proposed  by  any 
one.3 

Nevertheless,  I  saw  dimly  that  each  bed  in  a  formation 
could  contain  only  the  organisms  proper  to  a  certain  depth, 
and  to  other  there  existing  conditions,  and  that  all  the 
intermediate  forms  between  one  marine  species  and  another 
could  rarely  be  preserved  in  the  same  place  and  bed.  Oppel, 
Ncumayr,  and  yourself  will  confer  a  lasting  and  admirable 
service  on  the  noble  science  of  Geology,  if  you  can  spread 
your  views  so  as  to  be  generally  known  and  accepted. 

With  respect  to  the  continental  and  oceanic  periods 
common  to  the  whole  northern  hemisphere,  to  which  you 
refer,  I  have  sometimes  speculated  that  the  present  distribu- 
tion of  the  land  and  sea  over  the  world  may  have  formerly 

1  Dr.  E.  von  Mojsisovics,  Vice-Director  of  the  Imperial  Geological 
Institute,  Vienna. 

3  Dolomitrifft-  Sudtiroh  und  Venetiens.     Wien,  1878. 
3  Published  in  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  pp.  234,  235. 


i87o— 1882]  PALAEONTOLOGY  375 

been  very  different  to  what  it  now  is  ;  and  that  new  genera  Letter  285 
and  families    may   have   been    developed    on    the   shores    of 
isolated  tracts  in   the   south,  and    afterwards  spread    to  the 
north. 

To   J.   W.    Judd.  Letter  2S6 

Down,  June  27th,    1S78. 

1  am  heartily  glad  to  hear  of  your  intended  marriage.  A 
good  wife  is  the  supreme  blessing  in  this  life,  and  I  hope 
and  believe  from  what  you  say  that  you  will  be  as  happy 
as  I  have  been  in  this  respect.  May  your  future  geological 
work  be  as  valuable  as  that  which  you  have  already 
done  ;  and  more  than  this  need  not  be  wished  for  any 
man.  The  practical  teaching  of  Geology  seems  an  excellent 
idea. 

Many  thanks  for  Neumayr,1  but  I  have  already  received 
and  read  a  copy  of  the  same,  or  at  least  of  a  very  similar 
essay,  and  admirably  good  it  seemed  to  me. 

This  essay,  and  one  by  Mojsisovics,2  which  I  have  lately 
read,  show  what  Palaeontology  in  the  future  will  do  for  the 
classification  and  sequence  of  formations.  It  delighted  me 
to  see  so  inverted  an  order  of  proceeding— viz.,  the  assuming 
the  descent  of  species  as  certain,  and  then  taking  the 
changes  of  closely  allied  forms  as  the  standard  of  geological 
time.  My  health  is  better  than  it  was  a  few  years  ago,  but 
I  never  pass  a  day  without  much  discomfort  and  the  sense  of 
extreme  fatigue. 

1  Probably  a  paper  on  "Die  Congerien  und  Paludinenschichten 
Slavoniens  und  deren  Fauna.  Ein  Beitrag  zur  Descendenz-Theorie,' 
Wien.  Geo/.  AbhanJL,  VII.  (Heft  3),  1S74-82.  Melchior  Neumayr 
(1845-90)  passed  his  early  life  at  Stuttgart,  and  entered  the  University 
of  Munich  in  1S63  with  the  object  of  studying  law,  but  he  soon  gave  up 
legal  studies  for  Geology  and  Palaeontology.  In  1873  he  was  recalled 
from  Heidelberg,  where  he  held  a  post  as  Privatdocent,  to  occupy  the 
newly  created  Chair  of  Palaeontology  in  Vienna.  Dr.  Neumayr  was  a 
successful  and  popular  writer,  as  well  as  "one  of  the  best  and  most 
scientific  palaeontologists"  ;  he  was  an  enthusiastic  supporter  of  Darwin's 
views,  and  he  devoted  himself  "  to  tracing  through  the  life  of  former 
times  the  same  law  of  evolution  as  Darwin  inferred  from  that  of  the 
existing  world."  (See  Obit.  Notice,  by  Dr.  W.  T.  Blanford,  Quart. 
Journ.  Geol.  Soc,  Vol.  XLVI.,  p.  54,  1890.) 

-  See  note  to  Letter  285. 


376  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

We  owe  to  Professor  Judd  the  following  interesting  recollections  of 
Mr.  Darwin,  written  about  1883  : — 

Letter  286  '•  On  this  last  occasion,  when  I  congratulated  him  on  his 
seeming  better  condition  of  health,  he  told  me  of  the  cause 
for  anxiety  which  he  had  in  the  state  of  his  heart.  Indeed,  I 
cannot  help  feeling  that  he  had  a  kind  of  presentiment  that 
his  end  was  approaching.  When  I  left  him,  he  insisted  on 
conducting  me  to  the  door,  and  there  was  that  in  his  tone 
and  manner  which  seemed  to  convey  to  me  the  sad  intelli- 
gence that  it  was  not  merely  a  temporary  farewell,  though  he 
himself  was  perfectly  cheerful  and  happy. 

"It  is  impossible  for  me  adequately  to  express  the  im- 
pression made  upon  my  mind  by  my  various  conversations 
with  Mr.  Darwin.  His  extreme  modesty  led  him  to  form  the 
lowest  estimate  of  his  own  labours,  and  a  correspondingly 
extravagant  idea  of  the  value  of  the  work  done  by  others. 
His  deference  to  the  arguments  and  suggestions  of  men 
greatly  his  juniors,  and  his  unaffected  sympathy  in  their 
pursuits,  was  most  marked  and  characteristic  ;  indeed,  he, 
the  great  master  of  science,  used  to  speak,  and  I  am  sure 
felt,  as  though  he  were  appealing  to  superior  authority  for 
information  in  all  his  conversations.  It  was  only  when  a 
question  was  fully  discussed  with  him  that  one  became 
conscious  of  the  fund  of  information  he  could  bring  to  its 
elucidation,  and  the  breadth  of  thought  with  which  he  had 
grasped  it.  Of  his  gentle,  loving  nature,  of  which  I  had  so 
many  proofs,  I  need  not  write  ;  no  one  could  be  with  him, 
even  for  a  few  minutes,  without  being  deeply  impressed  by 
his  grateful  kindliness  and  goodness." 

Letter  287  To  Count  Saporta.1 

Down,  August   15th,   1878. 

I  thank  you  very  sincerely  for  your  kind  and  interesting 
letter.     It  would   be  false  in  me  to  pretend  that  I  care  very 

1  The  Marquis  of  Saporta  (1823-95)  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of 
fossil  plants,  and  by  his  untiring  energy  and  broad  scientific  treatment  of 
the  subject  he  will  always  rank  as  one  of  the  pioneers  of  Vegetable 
Palaeontology.  In  addition  to  many  important  monographs  on  Tertiary 
and  Jurassic  floras,  he  published  several  books  and  papers  in  which  Darwin's 
views  are  applied  to  the  investigation  of  the  records  of  plant-life  furnished 
by  rocks  of  all  ages.  ("  Le  Marquis  G.  de  Saporta,  sa  Vie  et  ses  Travaux," 
by  R.  Zeiller.     Bull.  Soc.  Geol.  France,  Vol.  XXIV.,  p.  197,  1896.) 


i87o— 1882]  DUKE    OF    ARGYLL  377 

much  about  my  election  to  the  Institute,  but  the  sympathy  of  Letter  287 
some  few  of  my  friends  has  gratified  me  deeply. 

I  am  extremely  glad  to  hear  that  you  are  going  to  publish 
a  work  on  the  more  ancient  fossil  plants  ;  and  I  thank  you 
beforehand  for  the  volume  which  you  kindly  say  that  you 
will  send  me.  I  earnestly  hope  that  you  will  give,  at  least 
incidentally,  the  results  at  which  you  have  arrived  with 
respect  to  the  more  recent  Tertiary  plants  ;  for  the  close 
gradation  of  such  forms  seems  to  me  a  fact  of  paramount 
importance  for  the  principle  of  evolution.  Your  cases  are 
like  those  on  the  gradation  in  the  genus  Equus,  recently 
discovered  by  Marsh  in  North  America. 

To  the  Duke  of  Argyll.  Letter  288 

The  following  letter  was  published  in  Nature,  March  5th,  1891,  Vol. 
XLIII.,  p.  415,  together  with  a  note  from  the  late  Duke  of  Argyll,  in  which 
he  stated  that  the  letter  had  been  written  to  him  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  reply 
to  the  question,  "  why  it  was  that  he  did  assume  the  unity  of  mankind  as 
descended  from  a  single  pair."  The  Duke  added  that  in  the  reply 
Mr.  Darwin  "  does  not  repudiate  this  interpretation  of  his  theory,  but 
simply  proceeds  to  explain  and  to  defend  the  doctrine."  On  a  former 
occasion  the  Duke  of  Argyll  had  "alluded  as  a  fact  to  the  circumstance 
that  Charles  Darwin  assumed  mankind  to  have  arisen  at  one  place,  and 
therefore  in  a  single  pair."  The  letter  from  Darwin  was  published  in 
answer  to  some  scientific  friends,  who  doubted  the  fact  and  asked  for  the 
reference  on  which  the  statement  was  based. 

Down,  Sept.  23rd,  1878. 
The  problem  which  you  state  so  clearly  is  a  very  inter- 
esting one,  on  which  I  have  often  speculated.  As  far  as 
I  can  judge,  the  improbability  is  extreme  that  the  same 
well-characterised  species  should  be  produced  in  two  distinct 
countries,  or  at  two  distinct  times.  It  is  certain  that 
the  same  variation  may  arise  in  two  distinct  places,  as 
with  albinism  or  with  the  nectarine  on  peach-trees.  But 
the  evidence  seems  to  me  overwhelming  that  a  well- 
marked  species  is  the  product,  not  of  a  single  or  of  a  few 
variations,  but  of  a  long  series  of  modifications,  each  modifi- 
cation resulting  chiefly  from  adaptation  to  infinitely  complex 
conditions  (including  the  inhabitants  of  the  same  country), 
with  more  or  less  inheritance  of  all  the  preceding  modifica- 
tions. Moreover,  as  variability  depends  more  on  the  nature 
of  the  organism  than  on  that  of  the  environment,  the 
variations  will    tend    to    differ    at    each    successive    stage  of 


378  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  288  descent.  Now  it  seems  to  mc  improbable  in  the  highest 
degree  that  a  species  should  ever  have  been  exposed  in  two 
places  to  infinitely  complex  relations  of  exactly  the  same 
nature  during  a  long  series  of  modifications.  An  illustration 
will  perhaps  make  what  I  have  said  clearer,  though  it  applies 
only  to  the  less  important  factors  of  inheritance  and  varia- 
bility, and  not  to  adaptation — viz.,  the  improbability  of  two 
men  being  born  in  two  countries  identical  in  body  and  mind. 
If,  however,  it  be  assumed  that  a  species  at  each  successive 
stage  of  its  modification  was  surrounded  in  two  distinct 
countries  or  times,  by  exactly  the  same  assemblage  of  plants 
and  animals,  and  by  the  same  physical  conditions,  then  I  can 
see  no  theoretical  difficulty  [in]  such  a  species  giving  birth  to 
the  new  form  in  the  two  countries.  If  you  will  look  to  the 
sixth  edition  of  my  Origin,  at  p.  100,  you  will  find  a  some- 
what analogous  discussion,  perhaps  more  intelligible  than  this 
letter. 

Letter  289  W.  T.  Thiselton-Dyer  to  the  Editor  of  Nature. 

The  following  letter  {Nature,  Vol.  XLIII.,  p.  535)  criticises  the  inter- 
pretation given  by  the  Duke  to  Mr.  Darwin's  letter. 

Royal  Gardens,  Kew,  March  27th  [1891]. 

In  Nature  of  March  5th  (p.  415),  the  Duke  of  Argyll  has 
printed  a  very  interesting  letter  of  Mr.  Darwin's,  from  which 
he  drew  the  inference  that  the  writer  "assumed  mankind  to 
have  arisen  ...  in  a  single  pair."  I  do  not  think  myself 
that  the  letter  bears  this  interpretation.  But  the  point  in  its 
most  general  aspect  is  a  very  important  one,  and  is  often 
found  to  present  some  difficulty  to  students  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
writings. 

Quite  recently  I  have  found  by  accident,  amongst  the 
papers  of  the  late  Mr.  Bentham  at  Kew,  a  letter  of  friendly 
criticism  from  Mr.  Darwin  upon  the  presidential  address 
which  Mr.  Bentham  delivered  to  the  Linnean  Society  on 
May  24th,  1869.  This  letter,  I  think,  has  been  overlooked 
and  not  published  previously.  In  it  Mr.  Darwin  expresses 
himself  with  regard  to  the  multiple  origin  of  races  and 
some  other  points  in  very  explicit  language.  Prof.  Mcldola, 
to  whom  I  mentioned  in  conversation  the  existence  of  the 
letter,  urged  mc  stnmgly  to  print  it.  This,  therefore,  I  now 
do,  with  the  addition  of  a  few  explanatory  notes. 


1870-1SS2]  bentham's   address  379 

To  G.  Bentham.  Letter  290 

Down,   Nov.  25th,   1869. 
The  notes  to  this  letter  are  by  Sir  W.  Thiselton-Dyer,  and  appeared 
in  Nature,  loc,  cit. 

I  was  greatly  interested  by  your  address,  which  I  have 
now  read  thrice,  and  which  I  believe  will  have  much  influence 
on  all  who  read  it.  But  you  are  mistaken  in  thinking  that  I 
ever  said  you  were  wrong  on  any  point.  All  that  I  meant 
was  that  on  certain  points,  and  these  very  doubtful  points,  I 
was  inclined  to  differ  from  you.  And  now,  on  further  con- 
sidering the  point  on  which  some  two  or  three  months  ago  I 
felt  most  inclined  to  differ — viz.,  on  isolation — I  find  I  differ 
very  little.  What  I  have  to  say  is  really  not  worth  saying, 
but  as  I  should  be  very  sorry  not  to  do  whatever  you  asked, 
1  will  scribble  down  the  slightly  dissentient  thoughts  which 
have  occurred  to  me.  It  would  be  an  endless  job  to  specify 
the  points  in  which  you  have  interested  me  ;  but  I  may  just 
mention  the  relation  of  the  extreme  western  flora  of  Europe 
(some  such  very  vague  thoughts  have  crossed  my  mind, 
relating  to  the  Glacial  period)  with  South  Africa,  and  your 
remarks  on  the  contrast  of  passive  and  active  distribution. 

P.  lxx. — I  think  the  contingency  of  a  rising  island,  not  as 
yet  fully  stocked  with  plants,  ought  always  to  be  kept  in 
mind  when  speaking  of  colonisation. 

P.  lxxiv.— I  have  met  with  nothing  which  makes  me  in 
the  least  doubt  that  large  genera  present  a  greater  number 
of  varieties  relatively  to  their  size  than  do  small  genera.1 
Hooker  was  convinced  by  my  data,  never  as  yet  published 
in  full,  only  abstracted  in  the  Origin. 

P.  lxxviii. — I  dispute  whether  a  new  race  or  species  is 
necessarily,  or  even  generally,  descended  from  a  single  or  pair 
of  parents.  The  whole  body  of  individuals,  I  believe,  become 
altered   together — like  our  race-horses,  and  like  all  domestic 

1  Bentham  thought  "  degree  of  variability  .  .  .  like  other  constitu- 
tional characters,  in  the  first  place  an  individual  one,  which  .  .  .  may 
become  more  or  less  hereditary,  and  therefore  specific  ;  and  thence,  but 
in  a  very  faint  degree,  generic."  He  seems  to  mean  to  argue  against 
the  conclusion  which  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  had  ([noted  from  Mr.  Darwin 
that  "species  of  large  genera  are  more  variable  than  those  of  small." 
[On  large  genera  varying,  see  Letter  53.] 


380  INVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  290  breeds  which  are  changed  through  "  unconscious  selection  " 
by  man.1 

When  such  great  lengths  of  time  are  considered  as  are 
necessary  to  change  a  specific  form,  I  greatly  doubt  whether 
more  or  less  rapid  powers  of  multiplication  have  more  than 
the  most  insignificant  weight.  These  powers,  I  think,  arc 
related  to  greater  or  less  destruction  in  early  life. 

P.  lxxix.  —  I  still  think  you  rather  underrate  the  import- 
ance of  isolation.  I  have  come  to  think  it  very  important 
from  various  grounds ;  the  anomalous  and  quasi-extinct 
forms  on  islands,  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

With  respect  to  areas  with  numerous  "  individually 
durable  "  forms,  can  it  be  said  that  they  generally  present 
a  "broken"  surface  with  "impassable  barriers"?  This,  no 
doubt,  is  true  in  certain  cases,  as  Tcncriffe.  But  does  this 
hold  with  South-West  Australia  or  the  Cape  ?  1  much 
doubt.  I  have  been  accustomed  to  look  at  the  cause  of  so 
many  forms  as  being  partly  an  arid  or  dry  climate  (as 
De  Candollc  insists)  which  indirectly  leads  to  diversified  [?] 
conditions  ;  and,  secondly,  to  isolation  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  during  a  very  long  period,  so  that  other  more  dominant 
forms  have  not  entered,  and  there  has  been  ample  time  for 
much  specification  and  adaptation  of  character. 

P.  lxxx. — I  suppose  you  think  that  the  Restiaceae, 
Proteacea;,2  etc.,  etc.,  once  extended  over  the  world,  leaving 
fragments  in  the  south. 

You  in  several  places  speak  of  distribution  of  plants  as  if 
exclusively  governed  by  soil  and  climate.  I  know  that  you 
do  not  mean  this,  but  I  regret  whenever  a  chance  is  omitted 
of  pointing  out  that  the  struggle  with  other  plants  (and  hostile 
animals)  is  far  more  important. 

I  told  you  that  1  had  nothing  worth  saying,  but  I  have 
given  you  my  thoughts. 

1  Bentham  had  said  :  "  We  must  also  admit  that  every  race  has 
probably  been  the  offspring  of  one  parent  or  pair  of  parents,  and  con- 
sequently originated  in  one  spot."  The  Duke  of  Argyll  inverts  the 
proposition. 

■  It  is  doubtful  whether  Bentham  did  think  so.  In  his  1870  address 
he  says  :  "  I  cannot  resist  the  opinion  that  all  presumptive  evidence  is 
against  European  Proteacea;,  and  that  all  direct  evidence  in  their  favour 
has  broken  down  upon  cross-examination." 


1870—  18S2]  WEISMANN  38 1 

How  detestable   are  the    Roman   numerals  !  why   should  Letter  290 
not  the  President's  addresses,  which  are  often,  and  I  am  sure 
in  this  case,  worth  more  than  all  the  rest  of  the  number,  be 
paged  with  Christian  figures  ? 

To    R.    Meldola.1  Letter  291 

4,  Bryanston  Street,  Nov.  26th,  187S. 
I  am  very  sorry  to  say  that  I  cannot  agree  to  your 
suggestion.  An  author  is  never  a  fit  judge  of  his  own  work, 
and  I  should  dislike  extremely  pointing  out  when  and  how 
Weismann's  conclusions  and  work  agreed  with  my  own.  I 
feel  sure  that  I  ought  not  to  do  this,  and  it  would  be  to  me 
an  intolerable  task.  Nor  does  it  seem  to  me  the  proper  office 
of  the  preface,  which  is  to  show  what  the  book  contains,  and 
that  the  contents  appear  to  me  valuable.  But  I  can  see  no 
objection  for  you,  if  you  think  fit,  to  write  an  introduction 
with  remarks  or  criticisms  of  any  kind.  Of  course,  I  would 
be  glad  to  advise  you  on  any  point  as  far  as  lay  in  my  power, 
but  as  a  whole  I  could  have  nothing  to  do  with  it,  on  the 
grounds  above  specified,  that  an  author  cannot  and  ought  not 
to  attempt  to  judge  his  own  works,  or  compare  them  with 
others.     I  am  sorry  to  refuse  to  do  anything  which  you  wish. 

To  T.  H.  Huxley.  Letter  292 

Down,  Jan.   iSth,   1S79. 

I  have  just  finished  your  present  of  the  Life  of  Hume,2  and 
must  thank  you  for  the  great  pleasure  which  it  has  given  me. 
Your  discussions  are,  as  it  seems  to  me,  clear  to  a  quite 
marvellous  degree,  and  many  of  the  little  interspersed  flashes 

1  "  This  letter  was  in  reply  to  a  suggestion  that  in  his  preface  Mr. 
Darwin  should  point  out  by  references  to  The  Origin  of  Species  and  his 
other  writings  how  far  he  had  already  traced  out  the  path  which  Weis- 
mann  went  over.  The  suggestion  was  made  because  in  a  great  many  of 
the  continental  writings  upon  the  theory  of  descent,  many  of  the  points 
which  had  been  clearly  foreshadowed,  and  in  some  cases  even  explicitly 
stated  by  Darwin,  had  been  rediscovered  and  published  as  though 
original.  In  the  notes  to  my  edition  of  Weismann  I  have  endeavoured  to 
do  Darwin  full  justice. — R.  M."     See  Letter  310. 

2  Hume  in  Mr.  Morley's  English  Men  of  Letters  series.  Of  the 
biographical  part  of  this  book  Mr.  Huxley  wrote,  in  a  letter  to  Mr. 
Skelton,  Jan.  1879  (Life  of  T.  H.  Huxley,  II.,  p.  7)  ;  "  It  is  the  nearest 
approach  to  a  work  of  fiction  of  which  I  have  yet  been  guilty.'' 


382  EVOLUTION  [Chap.V 

Letter  292  of  wit  arc  delightful.  I  particularly  enjoyed  the  pithy  judg- 
ment in  about  five  words  on  Comtc.1  Notwithstanding  the 
clearness  of  every  sentence,  the  subjects  are  in  part  so  difficult 
that  I  found  them  stiff  reading.  I  fear,  therefore,  that  it  will 
be  too  stiff  for  the  general  public  ;  but  I  heartily  hope  that 
this  will  prove  to  be  a  mistake,  and  in  this  case  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  public  will  be  greatly  exalted  in  my  eyes.  The 
writing  of  this  book  must  have  been  awfully  hard  work,  I 
should  think. 

Letter  293  To  F.  Miiller.2 

Down,  March  4th  [1879]. 
I  thank  you  cordially  for  your  letter.  Your  facts  and 
discussion  on  the  loss  of  the  hairs  on  the  legs  of  the  caddis- 
flics  seem  to  me  the  most  important  and  interesting  thing 
which  I  have  read  for  a  very  long  time.  I  hope  that  you  will 
not  disapprove,  but  I  have  sent  your  letter  to  Nature*  with  a 
few  prefatory  remarks,  pointing  out  to  the  general  reader  the 
importance  of  your  view,  and  stating  that  I  have  been  puzzled 

1  Possibly  the  passage  referred  to  is  on  p.  52. 

3  Dr.  Johann  Friedrich  Theodor  Miiller(i822-97)  was  born  inThuringia, 
and  left  his  native  country  at  the  age  of  thirty  to  take  up  his  residence  at 
Blumenau,  Sta  Catharina,  South  Brazil,  where  he  was  appointed  teacher 
of  mathematics  at  the  Gymnasium  of  Desterro.  He  afterwards  held  a 
natural  history  post,  from  which  he  was  dismissed  by  the  Brazilian 
Government  in  1S91  on  the  ground  of  his  refusal  to  take  up  his  residence 
at  Rio  de  Janeiro  (Nature,  Dec.  17th,  1891,  p.  156).  Miiller  published  a 
large  number  of  papers  on  zoological  and  botanical  subjects,  and  rendered 
admirable  service  to  the  cause  of  evolution  by  his  unrivalled  powers  of 
observation  and  by  the  publication  of  a  work  entitled  Fur  Darwin  (1865), 
which  was  translated  by  Dallas  under  the  title  Facts  and  Arguments  for 
Darwin  (London,  1869).  The  long  series  of  letters  between  Darwin  and 
Miiller  bear  testimony  to  the  friendship  and  esteem  which  Darwin  felt 
for  his  co-worker  in  Brazil.  In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Hermann  Miiller  (March 
29th,  1867),  Mr.  Darwin  wrote  :  "  I  sent  you  a  few  days  ago  a  paper  on 
climbing  plants  by  your  brother,  and  I  then  knew  for  the  first  time  that 
Fritz  Miiller  was  your  brother.  I  feel  the  greatest  respect  for  him  as  one 
of  the  most  able  naturalists  living,  and  he  has  aided  me  in  many  ways 
with  extraordinary  kindness."  See  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  37  ;  Nature, 
Oct.  7th,  1897,  Vol.  LVI.,  p.  546. 

3  Fritz  Mullcr,  "On  a  Frog  having  Eggs  on  its  Back— On  the 
Abortion  of  the  Hairs  on  the  Legs  of  certain  Caddis-Flies,  etc."  :  Midler's 
letter  and  one  from  Charles  Darwin  were  published  in  Nature,  Vol.  XIX., 
p.  462,  1879. 


i870— 1882]  FRITZ    MULLER  383 

for  many  years  on  this  very  point.     If,  as  I  am  inclined  to  be-  Letter  293 

lieve,  your  view  can  be  widely  extended,  it  will  be  a  capital  gain 

to    the  doctrine  of  evolution.     I  see  by  your  various  papers 

that    you    are    working    away    energetically,    and,    wherever 

you  look,  you   seem   to   discover  something  quite   new   and 

extremely  interesting.    Your  brother  also  continues  to  do  fine 

work  on  the  fertilisation  of  flowers  and  allied  subjects. 

1  have  little  or  nothing  to  tell  you  about  myself.  I  go 
slowly  crawling  on  with  my  present  subject — the  various  and 
complicated  movements  of  plants.  I  have  not  been  very  well 
of  late,  and  am  tired  to-day,  so  will  write  no  more.  With  the 
most  cordial  sympathy  in  all  your  work,  etc. 

To  T.   H.   Huxley.  Letter  294 

Down,  April   19th,    1S79. 

Many  thanks  for  the  book.1  I  have  read  only  the 
preface.  ...  It  is  capital,  and  I  enjoyed  the  tremendous  rap 
on  the  knuckles  which  you  gave  Virchow  at  the  close.  What 
a  pleasure  it  must  be  to  write  as  you  can  do  ! 

To    E.    S.    Morse.  Letter  295 

Down,  Oct.  2ist,  1879. 
Although  you  are  so  kind  as  to  tell  me  not  to  write,  I 
must  just  thank  you  for  the  proofs  of  your  paper,2  which  has 
interested  me  greatly.  The  increase  in  the  number  of  ridges 
in  the  three  species  of  Area  seems  to  be  a  very  noteworthy 
fact,  as  does  the  increase  of  size  in  so  many,  yet  not  all, 
the  species.  What  a  constant  state  of  fluctuation  the  whole 
organic  world  seems  to  be  in  !  It  is  interesting  to  hear  that 
everywhere  the  first  change  apparently  is  in  the  proportional 
numbers  of  the  species.     I   was   much  struck  with   the   fact 

1  Ernst  Hackel's  Freedom  in  Science  and  Teaching.,  with  a  prefatory 
note  by  T.  H.  Huxley,  1879.  Professor  Hackel  has  recently  published 
(without  permission)  a  letter  in  which  Mr.  Darwin  comments  severely  on 
Virchow.  It  is  difficult  to  say  which  would  have  pained  Mr.  Darwin  more 
— the  affront  to  a  colleague,  or  the  breach  of  confidence  in  a  friend. 

2  See  "The  Shell  Mounds  of  Omori"  in  the  Memoirs  of  the  Science 
Department  of  the  Univ.  of  Tokio,  Vol.  I.,  Part  I.,  1879.  The  ridges  on 
Area  are  mentioned  at  p.  25.  In  Nature,  April  15th,  18S0,  Mr.  Darwin 
published  a  letter  by  Mr.  Morse  relating  to  the  review  of  the  above 
paper,  which  appeared  in  Nature,  XXI.,  p.  350.  Mr.  Darwin  introduces 
Mr.  Morse's  letter  with  some  prefatory  remarks.  The  correspondence 
is  republished  in  the  American  Naturalist,  Sept.,  1880. 


384  EVOLUTION  [Chap.V 

Letter  295  in  the  upraised  shells  of  Coquimbo,  in  Chili,  as  mentioned  in 
my  Geological  Observations  on  South  America. 

Of  all  the  wonders  in  the  world,  the  progress  of  Japan,  in 
which  you  have  been  aiding,  seems  to  me  about  the  most 
wonderful. 

Letter  296  To  A.  R.  Wallace. 

Down,  Jan.  5th,  1880. 

As  this  note  requires  no  sort  of  answer,  you  must  allow 
me  to  express  my  lively  admiration  of  your  paper  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century}  You  certainly  arc  a  master  in  the 
difficult  art  of  clear  exposition.  It  is  impossible  to  urge  too 
often  that  the  selection  from  a  single  varying  individual  or 
of  a  single  varying  organ  will  not  suffice.  You  have  worked 
in  capitally  Allen's  -  admirable  researches.  As  usual,  you 
delight  to  honour  me  more  than  I  deserve.  When  I  have 
written  about  the  extreme  slowness  of  Natural  Selection  3  (in 
which  I  hope  I  may  be  wrong),  I  have  chiefly  had  in  my 
mind  the  effects  of  intercrossing.  I  subscribe  to  almost 
everything  you  say  excepting  the  last  short  sentence.4 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  Jan.  1SS0,  p.  93,  "On  the  Origin  of  Species 
and  Genera." 

2  J.  A.  Allen,  "  On  the  Mammals  and  Winter  Birds  of  East  Florida, 
etc."  {Bull.  Mus.  Coiup.  Zoolog.  Harvard,  Vol.  II.) 

3  Mr.  Wallace  makes  a  calculation  based  on  Allen's  results  as  to  the 
very  short  period  in  which  the  formation  of  a  race  of  birds  differing 
10  to  20  per  cent,  from  the  average  in  length  of  wing  and  strength  of 
beak  might  conceivably  be  effected.  He  thinks  that  the  slowness  of  the 
action  of  Natural  Selection  really  depends  on  the  slowness  of  the  changes 
naturally  occurring  in  the  physical  conditions,  etc. 

4  The  passage  in  question  is  as  follows  :  "  I  have  also  attempted  to 
show  that  the  causes  which  have  produced  the  separate  species  of  one 
genus,  of  one  family,  or  perhaps  of  one  order,  from  a  common  ancestor, 
are  not  necessarily  the  same  as  those  which  have  produced  the  separate 
orders,  classes,  and  sub-kingdoms  from  more  remote  common  ancestors. 
That  all  have  been  alike  produced  by  '  descent  with  modification  '  from 
a  few  primitive  types,  the  whole  body  of  evidence  clearly  indicates  ; 
but  while  individual  variation  with  Natuial  Selection  is  proved  to  be 
adequate  for  the  production  of  the  former,  we  have  no  proof  and  hardly 
any  evidence  that  it  is  adequate  to  initiate  those  important  divergences 
of  type  which  characterise  the  latter."  In  this  passage  stress  should  be 
laid  (as  Mr.  Wallace  points  out  to  us)  on  the  word  proof.  He  by  no 
means  asserts  that  the  causes  which  have  produced  the  species  of  a 
genus  are  inadequate  to  produce  greater  differences.  His  object  is 
rather  to  urge  the  difference  between  proof  and  probability. 


1870-1882]  HOMING     EXPERIMENTS  385 

To  J.   H.   Fabre.1  Letter  297 

Down,  Feb.  20th,  1880. 

I  thank  you  for  your  kind  letter,  and  am  delighted  that 
you  will  try  the  experiment  of  rotation.  It  is  very  curious 
that  such  a  belief  should  be  held  about  cats  in  your  country,2 
I  never  heard  of  anything  of  the  kind  in  England.  I  was 
led,  as  I  believe,  to  think  of  the  experiment  from  having  read 
in  Wrangel's  Travels  in  Siberia 3  of  the  wonderful  power 
which  the  Samoyedes  possess  of  keeping  their  direction  in 
a  fog  whilst  travelling  in  a  tortuous  line  through  broken  ice. 
With  respect  to  cats,  I  have  seen  an  account  that  in  Belgium 
there  is  a  society  which  gives  prizes  to  the  cat  which  can 
soonest  find  its  way  home,  and  for  this  purpose  they  are 
carried  to  distant  parts  of  the  city. 

Here  would  be  a  capital  opportunity  for  trying  rotation. 

I  am  extremely  glad  to  hear  that  your  book  will  probably 
be  translated  into  English. 

P.S. — I  shall  be  much  pleased  to  hear  the  result  of  your 
experiments. 

To  J.   H.   Fabre.  Letter  298 

Down,  Jan.  21st,  1881. 

I  am  much  obliged  for  your  very  interesting  letter.  Your 
results  appear  to  me  highly  important,  as  they  eliminate  one 
means  by  which  animals  might  perhaps  recognise  direction  ; 
and  this,  from  what  has  been  said  about  savages,  and  from 
our  own  consciousness,  seemed  the  most  probable  means.  If 
you  think  it  worth  while,  you  can  of  course  mention  my  name 
in  relation  to  this  subject. 

Should  you  succeed  in  eliminating  a  sense  of  the  magnetic 

1  J.  H.  Fabre  is  best  known  for  his  Souvenirs  Entomologiques,  in 
No.  VI.  of  which  he  gives  a  wonderfully  vivid  account  of  his  hardy  and 
primitive  life  as  a  boy,  and  of  his  early  struggles  after  a  life  of  culture. 
A  letter  to  M.  Fabre  is  given  in  Life  and  Letters,  III.,  p.  220,  in 
which  the  suggestion  is  made  of  rotating  the  insect  before  a  "  homing  " 
experiment  occurs. 

2  M.  Fabre  had  written  from  Serignan,  Vaucluse  :  "  Parmi  la  popu- 
lation des  paysans  de  mon  village,  I'habitude  est  de  faire  toumer  dans 
un  sac  le  chat  que  Ton  se  propose  de  porter  ailleurs,  et  dont  on  veut 
empecher  le  retour.     J'ignore  si  cette  pratique  obtient  du  succes." 

3  Admiral  Ferdinand  Petrovtch  von  Wrangell,  "  Le  Nord  de  la  Siberie, 
Voyage  parmi  les  Peuplades  de  la  Russie  asiatique,  etc."  Paris,  1843. 

25 


3^6  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  298  currents  of  the  earth,  you  would  leave  the  field  of  investiga- 
tion quite  open.  I  suppose  that  even  those  who  still  believe 
that  each  species  was  separately  created  would  admit  that 
certain  animals  possess  some  sense  by  which  they  perceive 
direction,  and  which  they  use  instinctively.  On  mentioning 
the  subject  to  my  son  George,  who  is  a  mathematician  and 
knows  something  about  magnetism,  he  suggested  making  a 
very  thin  needle  into  a  magnet ;  then  breaking  it  into  very 
short  pieces,  which  would  still  be  magnetic,  and  fastening  one 
of  these  pieces  with  some  cement  on  the  thorax  of  the  insect 
to  be  experimented  on. 

He  believes  that  such  a  little  magnet,  from  its  close 
proximity  to  the  nervous  system  of  the  insect,  would  affect 
it  more  than  would  the  terrestrial  currents. 

I  have  received  your  essay  on  Halictus}  which  I  am  sure 
that  I  shall  read  with  much  interest. 


Letter  299  To  T.  H.  Huxley. 

On  April  9th,  1880,  Mr.  Huxley  lectured  at  the  Royal  Institution  on 
"The  Coming  of  Age  of  the  Origin  of  Species."  The  lecture  was 
published  in  Nature  and  in  Huxley's  Collected  Essays,  Vol.  II.,  p.  227. 
Darwin's  letter  to  Huxley  on  the  subject  is  given  in  Life  and  Letters, 
III.,  p.  240;  in  Huxley's  reply  of  May  10th  {Life  and  Letters  of  T.  H. 
Huxley,  II.,  p.  12)  he  writes  :  "  I  hope  you  do  not  imagine  because  I  had 
nothing  to  say  about  '  Natural  Selection'  that  I  am  at  all  weak  of  faith 
on  that  article.  .  .  .  But  the  first  thing  seems  to  me  to  be  to  drive  the 
fact  of  evolution  into  people's  heads  ;  when  that  is  once  safe,  the  rest  will 
come  easy." 

Down,  May  nth,   1880. 

I  had  no  intention  to  make  you  write  to  me,  or  expectation 
of  your  doing  so  ;  but  your  note  has  been  so  far  "cheerier"2 
to  me  than  mine  could  have  been  to  you,  that  I  must  and 
will  write  again.  I  saw  your  motive  for  not  alluding  to 
Natural  Selection,  and  quite  agreed  in  my  mind  in  its  wisdom. 
But  at  the  same  time  it  occurred  to  me  that  you  might  be 
giving  it  up,  and  that  anyhow  you  could  not  safely  allude  to 
it  without  various  "  provisos  "  too  long  to  give  in  a  lecture. 

1  "Sur  les  Mceurs  et  la  Partht^nogcse  des  Halictes"  {Ann.  Sc.  Nat., 
IX.,  1879-80). 

2  "You  are  the  cheeriest  letter-writer  I  know":  Huxley  to  Darwin. 
See  Huxley's  Life,  II.,  p.  12. 


1870— 1882]  NATURAL     SELECTION  387 

If  I  think  continuously  on  some  half-dozen  structures  of  Letter  299 
which  we  can  at  present  see  no  use,  I  can  persuade  myself 
that  Natural  Selection  is  of  quite  subordinate  importance. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  I  reflect  on  the  innumerable  struc- 
tures, especially  in  plants,  which  twenty  years  ago  would  have 
been  called  simply  "  morphological  "  and  useless,  and  which 
are  now  known  to  be  highly  important,  I  can  persuade  myself 
that  every  structure  may  have  been  developed  through 
Natural  Selection.  It  is  really  curious  how  many  out  of  a 
list  of  structures  which  Bronn  enumerated,  as  not  possibly  due 
to  Natural  Selection  because  of  no  functional  importance,  can 
now  be  shown  to  be  highly  important.  Lobed  leaves  was,  I 
believe,  one  case,  and  only  two  or  three  days  ago  Frank 
showed  me  how  they  act  in  a  manner  quite  sufficiently  im- 
portant to  account  for  the  lobing  of  any  large  leaf.  I  am 
particularly  delighted  at  what  you  say  about  domestic  dogs, 
jackals,  and  wolves,  because  from  mere  indirect  evidence  I 
arrived  in  Varieties  of  Domestic  Animals  at  exactly  the  same 
conclusion  x  with  respect  to  the  domestic  dogs  of  Europe  and 
North  America.  See  how  important  in  another  way  this 
conclusion  is ;  for  no  one  can  doubt  that  large  and  small  dogs 
are  perfectly  fertile  together,  and  produce  fertile  mongrels  ; 
and  how  well  this  supports  the  Pallasian  doctrine 2  that  domes- 
tication eliminates  the  sterility  almost  universal  between  forms 
slowly  developed  in  a  state  of  nature. 

I  humbly  beg  your  pardon  for  bothering  you  with  so  long 
a  note  ;  but  it  is  your  own  fault. 

Plants  are  splendid  for  making  one  believe  in  Natural 
Selection,  as  will  and  consciousness  are  excluded.  I  have 
lately  been  experimenting  on  such  a  curious  structure  for 
bursting  open  the  seed-coats  :  I  declare  one  might  as  well 
say  that  a  pair  of  scissors  or  nutcrackers  had  been  developed 
through  external  conditions  as  the  structure  in  question.3 

1  Mr.  Darwin's  view  was  that  domestic  dogs  descend  from  more  than 
one  wild  species. 

2  See  Letter  80. 

3  The  peg  or  heel  in  Cucurbila  :  see  Power  of  Movement  in  Plants 
p.  102. 


388  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  300  To  T.   H.  Huxley. 

Down,  Nov.  5th,   18S0. 

On  reading  over  your  excellent  review  J  with  the  sentence 
quoted  from  Sir  Wyvflle  Thomson,  it  seemed  to  me  advisable, 
considering  the  nature  of  the  publication,  to  notice  "  extreme 
variation "  and  another  point.  Now,  will  you  read  the 
enclosed,  and  if  you  approve,  post  it  soon.  If  you  disapprove, 
throw  it  in  the  fire,  and  thus  add  one  more  to  the  thousand 
kindnesses  which  you  have  done  me.  Do  not  write :  I  shall 
see  result  in  next  week's  Nature.  Please  observe  that  in  the 
foul  copy  I  had  added  a  final  sentence  which  I  did  not  at  first 
copy,  as  it  seemed  to  me  inferentially  too  contemptuous  ;  but 
I  have  now  pinned  it  to  the  back,  and  you  can  send  it  or  not, 
as  you  think  best,— that  is,  if  you  think  any  part  worth  send- 
ing. My  request  will  not  cost  you  much  trouble — i.e.  to  read 
two  pages,  for  I  know  that  you  can  decide  at  once.  I  heartily 
enjoyed  my  talk  with  you  on  Sunday  morning. 

p.S. If  my  manuscript  appears  too  flat,  too  contemptuous, 

too  spiteful,  or  too  anything,  I  earnestly  beseech  you  to  throw 
it  into  the  fire. 

Letter  301  C.  Darwin  to  the  Editor  of  Nature? 

Down,   Nov.  5th,   1880. 

Sir  Wyville  Thomson  and  Natural  Selection. 
I  am  sorry  to  find  that  Sir  Wyville  Thomson  does  not 
understand  the  principle  of  Natural  Selection,  as  explained  by 
Mr.  Wallace  and  myself.  If  he  had  done  so,  he  could  not 
have  written  the  following  sentence  in  the  Introduction  to  the 
Voyage  of  the  Challenger:  "The  character  of  the  abyssal 
fauna  refuses  to  give  the  least  support  to  the  theory  which 
refers  the  evolution  of  species  to  extreme  variation  guided 
only  by  Natural  Selection."  This  is  a  standard  of  criticism 
not  uncommonly  reached  by  theologians  and  metaphysicians, 
when  they  write  on  scientific  subjects,  but  is  something  new 
as  coming  from  a  naturalist.  Professor  Huxley  demurs  to  it 
in  the  last  number  of  Nature  ;  but  he  does  not  touch  on  the 

1  See  Nature,  Nov.  4th,  1880,  p.  1,  a  review  of  Vol.  I.  of  the  publica- 
tions of  the  Challenger,  to  which  Sir  Wyville  Thomson  contributed  a 
General  Introduction. 

J  Nature,  Nov.  nth,  1880,  p.  32. 


1870-1882]  WYVILLE     THOMSON  389 

expression  of  extreme  variation,  nor  on  that  of  evolution  Letter  301 
being  guided  only  by  Natural  Selection.  Can  Sir  Wyville 
Thomson  name  any  one  who  has  said  that  the  evolution  of 
species  depends  only  on  Natural  Selection  ?  As  far  as  con- 
cerns myself,  I  believe  that  no  one  has  brought  forward  so 
many  observations  on  the  effects  of  the  use  and  disuse  of 
parts,  as  I  have  done  in  my  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants 
under  Domestication  ;  and  these  observations  were  made  for 
this  special  object.  I  have  likewise  there  adduced  a  consider- 
able body  of  facts,  showing  the  direct  action  of  external 
conditions  on  organisms  ;  though  no  doubt  since  my  books 
were  published  much  has  been  learnt  on  this  head.  If  Sir 
Wyville  Thomson  were  to  visit  the  yard  of  a  breeder,  and 
saw  all  his  cattle  or  sheep  almost  absolutely  true — that  is, 
closely  similar,  he  would  exclaim  :  "  Sir,  I  see  here  no  extreme 
variation  ;  nor  can  I  find  any  support  to  the  belief  that  you 
have  followed  the  principle  of  selection  in  the  breeding  of 
your  animals."  From  what  I  formerly  saw  of  breeders,  I  have 
no  doubt  that  the  man  thus  rebuked  would  have  smiled  and 
said  not  a  word.  If  he  had  afterwards  told  the  story  to  other 
breeders,  I  greatly  fear  that  they  would  have  used  emphatic 
but  irreverent  language  about  naturalists. 

The  following  is  the  passage  omitted  by  the  advice  of  Huxley  :  see  his 
Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  14  : — 

"  Perhaps  it  would  have  been  wiser  on  my  part  to  have 
remained  quite  silent,  like  the  breeder ;  for,  as  Prof.  Sedgwick 
remarked  many  years  ago,  in  reference  to  the  poor  old  Dean 
of  York,  who  was  never  weary  of  inveighing  against  geolo- 
gists, a  man  who  talks  about  what  he  does  not  in  the  least 
understand,  is  invulnerable." 

To  G.  J.  Romanes.1  Letter  302 

Down,  Jan.   ist,   1881. 

I  send  the  MS.,  but  as  far  as  I  can  judge  by  just  skimming 
it,  it  will  be  of  no  use  to  you.  It  seems  to  bear  on 
transitional  forms.  I  feel  sure  that  I  have  other  and  better 
cases,  but   I   cannot  remember  where  to  look. 

I  should  have  written  to  you  in  a  few  days  on  the  following 

1  Part  of  this  letter  has  been  published  in  Mr.  C.  Barber's  note  on 
"  Graft-Hybrids  of  the  Sugar-Cane,"  in  The  Sugar-Cane,  Nov.  1S96. 


39°  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  302  case.  The  Baron  de  Villa  Franca  wrote  to  me  from  Brazil 
about  two  years  ago,  describing  new  varieties  of  sugar-cane 
which  he  had  raised  by  planting  two  old  varieties  in  apposi- 
tion. I  believe  (but  my  memory  is  very  faulty)  that  I  wrote 
that  I  could  not  believe  in  such  a  result,  and  attributed  the 
new  varieties  to  the  soil,  etc.  I  believe  that  I  did  not  under- 
stand what  he  meant  by  apposition.  Yesterday  a  packet  of 
MS.  arrived  from  the  Brazilian  Legation,  with  a  letter  in 
French  from  Dr.  Glass,  Director  of  the  Botanic  Gardens, 
describing  fully  how  he  first  attempted  grafting  varieties  of 
sugar-cane  in  various  ways,  and  always  failed,  and  then  split 
stems  of  two  varieties,  bound  them  together  and  planted 
them,  and  then  raised  some  new  and  very  valuable  varieties, 
which,  like  crossed  plants,  seem  to  grow  with  extra  vigour, 
are  constant,  and  apparently  partake  of  the  character  of  the 
two  varieties.  The  Baron  also  sends  me  an  attested  copy 
from  a  number  of  Brazilian  cultivators  of  the  success  of  the 
plan  of  raising  new  varieties.  I  am  not  sure  whether  the 
Brazilian  Legation  wishes  me  to  return  the  document,  but  if 
I  do  not  hear  in  three  or  four  days  that  they  must  be  returned, 
they  shall  be  sent  to  you,  for  they  seem  to  me  well  deserving 
your  consideration. 

Perhaps  if  I  had  been  contented  with  my  hyacinth  bulbs 
being  merely  bound  together  without  any  true  adhesion  or 
rather  growth  together,  I  should  have  succeeded  like  the  old 
Dutchman. 

There  is  a  deal  of  superfluous  verbiage  in  the  documents,  but 
I  have  marked  with  pencil  where  the  important  part  begins. 
The  attestations  are  in  duplicate.  Now,  after  reading  them 
will  you  give  me  your  opinion  whether  the  main  parts  are 
worthy  of  publication  in  Nature:  I  am  inclined  to  think  so, 
and  it  is  good  to  encourage  science  in  out-of-the-way  parts  of 
the  world. 

Keep  this  note  till  you  receive  the  documents  or  hear 
from  me.  I  wonder  whether  two  varieties  of  wheat  could 
be  similarly  treated  ?  No,  1  suppose  not — from  the  want  of 
lateral  buds.  I  was  extremely  interested  by  your  abstract  on 
suicide. 


1870-18S2]         CONDITIONS     OF     EXISTENCE  391 

To  K.  Semper.1  Letter  303 

Down,  Feb.  6th,   1881. 

Owing  to  all  sorts  of  work,  I  have  only  just  now  finished 
reading  your  Nat.  Conditions  of  Existence?  Although  a  book 
of  small  size,  it  contains  an  astonishing  amount  of  matter,  and 
I  have  been  particularly  struck  with  the  originality  with  which 
you  treat  so  many  subjects,  and  at  your  scrupulous  accuracy. 
In  far  the  greater  number  of  points  I  quite  follow  you  in  your 
conclusions,  but  I  differ  on  some,  and  I  suppose  that  no  two 
men  in  the  world  would  fully  agree  on  so  many  different 
subjects.  I  have  been  interested  on  so  many  points,  I  can 
hardly  say  on  which  most.  Perhaps  as  much  on  Geographical 
Distribution  as  on  any  other,  especially  in  relation  to  M. 
Wagner.  (No  !  no  !  about  parasites  interested  me  even  more.) 
How  strange  that  Wagner  should  have  thought  that  I  meant 
by  struggle  for  existence,  struggle  for  food.  It  is  curious  that 
he  should  not  have  thought  of  the  endless  adaptations  for  the 
dispersal  of  seeds  and  the  fertilisation  of  flowers. 

Again  I  was  much  interested  about  Branchipus  and 
Artemia?  When  I  read  imperfectly  some  years  ago  the 
original  paper  I  could  not  avoid  thinking  that  some  special 
explanation  would  hereafter  be  found  for  so  curious  a  case. 
I  speculated  whether  a  species  very  liable  to  repeated  and 
great  changes  of  conditions,  might  not  acquire  a  fluctuating 
condition  ready  to  be  adapted  to  either  conditions.  With 
respect  to  Arctic  animals  being  white  (p.  116  of  your  book)  it 
might  perhaps  be  worth  your  looking  at  what  I  say  from 
Pallas'  and  my  own  observations  in  the  Descent  of  Man  (later 
editions)  Ch.  VIII.,  p.  229,  and  Ch.  XVIII,  p.  542. 

I  quite  agree  with  what  I  gather  to  be  your  judgment, 
viz,    that   the    direct    action    of   the    conditions    of   life   on 

1  Karl  Semper  (1832-93),  Professor  of  Zoology  at  Wiirzburg.  He  is 
known  for  his  book  of  travels  in  the  Philippine  and  Pelew  Islands,  for 
his  work  in  comparative  embryology,  and  for  the  work  mentioned  in  the 
above  letter.     See  an  obituary  noticein  Nature,  July  20th,  1893,  p.  271. 

2  Semper's  Natural  Conditions  of  Existence  as  they  affect  Animal  Life 
(Internat.  Sci.  Series),  1881. 

3  The  reference  is  to  Schmankewitsch's  experiments,  p.  158  :  he  kept 
Artemia  salina  in  salt-water,  gradually  diluted  with  fresh-water  until  it 
became  practically  free  from  salt  ;  the  crustaceans  gradually  changed  in 
the  course  of  generations,  until  they  acquired  the  characters  of  the  genus 
Branchipus. 


392  E  VOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  303  organisms,  or  the  cause  of  their  variability,  is  the  most 
important  of  all  subjects  for  the  future.  For  some  few  years 
I  have  been  thinking  of  commencing  a  set  of  experiments  on 
plants,  for  they  almost  invariably  vary  when  cultivated. 
I  fancy  that  I  see  my  way  with  the  aid  of  continued  self- 
fertilisation.  But  I  am  too  old,  and  have  not  strength  enough. 
Nevertheless  the  hope  occasionally  revives. 

Finally  let  me  thank  you  for  the  very  kind  manner  in 
which  you  often  refer  to  my  works,  and  for  the  even  still 
kinder  manner  in   which  you  disagree  with  me. 

With  cordial  thanks  for  the  pleasure  and  instruction  which 
I  have  derived  from  your  book,  etc. 

Letter  304  To  Count  Saporta. 

Down,   Feb.   13th,   1881. 

I  received  a  week  or  two  ago  the  work  which  you  and 
Prof.  Marion  have  been  so  kind  as  to  send  me.1  When  it 
arrived  I  was  much  engaged,  and  this  must  be  my  excuse  for 
not  having  sooner  thanked  you  for  it,  and  it  will  likewise 
account  for  my  having  as  yet  read  only  the  preface. 

But  I  now  look  forward  with  great  pleasure  to  reading  the 
whole  immediately.  If  I  then  have  any  remarks  worth 
sending,  which  is  not  very  probable,  I  will  write  again.  I  am 
greatly  pleased  to  see  how  boldly  you  express  your  belief  in 
evolution,  in  the  preface.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that 
some  of  your  countrymen  have  been  a  little  timid  in  pub- 
lishing their  belief  on  this  head,  and  have  thus  failed  in  aiding 
a  good  cause. 

Letter  305  To  R.  G.  Whiteman. 

Down,  May  5th,  1881. 
In  the  first  edition  of  the  Origin,  after  the  sentence  ending 
with    the    words  "...  insects    in    the    water,"    I    added    the 
following  sentence  : — 

"  Even  in  so  extreme  a  case  as  this,  if  the  supply  of  insects 
were  constant,  and  if  better  adapted  competitors  did  not 
already  exist  in  the  country,  I  can  sec  no  difficulty  in  a  race 
of  bears  being  rendered  by  Natural  Selection  more  and  more 
aquatic  in  their  structures  and  habits,  with  larger  and  larger 

'  Probably  IJ  Evolution  du  Rlgne  vvgt'tal,  I.  Cryptogames,  Saporta  & 
Marion,  Paris,  1881. 


1870— 1882]  HYATT  393 

mouths,    till    a   creature   was    produced    as    monstrous   as   a  Letter  305 
whale."  l 

This  sentence  was  omitted  in  the  subsequent  editions, 
owing  to  the  advice  of  Prof.  Owen,  as  it  was  liable  to  be 
misinterpreted  ;  but  I  have  always  regretted  that  I  followed 
this  advice,  for  I  still  think  the  view  quite  reasonable. 

To   A.    Hyatt.  Let'er  306 

Down,  May  8th,  18S1. 
I  am  much  obliged  for  your  kind  gift  of  "The  Genesis, 
etc."  2,  which  I  shall  be  glad  to  read,  as  the  case  has  always 
seemed  to  me  a  very  curious  one.  It  is  all  the  kinder  in  you 
to  send  me  this  book,  as  I  am  aware  that  you  think  that  I 
have  done  nothing  to  advance  the  good  cause  of  the  Descent- 
theory.3 

We  have  ventured  to  quote  the  passage  from  Prof.  Hyatt's  reply,  dated 
May  23rd,  1881  :— 

"  You  would  think  I  was  insincere,  if  I  wrote  you  what  I  really  fait 
with  regard  to  what  you  have  done  for  the  theory  of  Descent.  Perhaps 
this  essay  will  lead  you  to  a  more  correct  view  than  you  now  have  of  my 
estimate,  if  I  can  be  said  to  have  any  claim  to  make  an  estimate  of  your 
work  in  this  direction.  You  will  not  take  offence,  however,  if  I  tell  you 
that  your  strongest  supporters  can  hardly  give  you  greater  esteem  and 
honour.  I  have  striven  to  get  a  just  idea  of  your  theory,  but  no  doubt 
have  failed  to  convey  this  in  my  publications  as  it  ought  to  be  done." 

We  find  other  equally  strong  and  genuine  expressions  of  respect  in 
Prof.  Hyatt's  letters. 

To  Lord  Farrer.1  Letter  307 

Mr.  Graham's  book,  the  Creed  of  Science,  is  referred  to  in  Life  and 
Letters,  I.,  p.  315,  where  an  interesting  letter  to  the  author  is  printed. 

1  See  Letters  no  and  120. 

2  "  The  Genesis  of  the  Tertiary  Species  of  Planorbis?  in  the  Boston 
Soc.  Nat.  Hist.  Anniversary  Mem.,  1880. 

3  The  above  caused  me  to  write  a  letter  expressing  a  feeling  of  regret 
and  humiliation,  which  I  hope  is  still  preserved,  for  certainly  such  a 
feeling,  caused  undoubtedly  by  my  writings,  which  dealt  too  exclusively 
with  disagreements  upon  special  points,  needed  a  strong  denial.  I  have 
used  the  Darwinian  theory  in  many  cases,  especially  in  explaining  the 
preservation  of  differences  ;  and  have  denied  its  application  only  in  the 
preservation  of  fixed  and  hereditary  characteristics,  which  have  become 
essentially  homologous  similarities.     (Note  by  Prof.  Hyatt.) 

4  Thomas  Henry  Farrer  (1819-99)  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Balliol 
College,  Oxford.      He    was  called   to   the    Bar,   but   gave   up   practice 


394  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

With  regard  to  chance,  Darwin  wrote  :  "  You  have  expressed  my  inward 
conviction,  though  far  more  clearly  and  vividly  than  I  could  have  done, 
that  the  universe  is  not  the  result  of  chance." 

Down,  August  28th,   1881. 
Letter  307         j  ]iave  been  much  interested  by  your  letter,  and  am  glad 
that  you  like  Mr.  Graham's  book.1  .  .  . 

Everything  which  I  read  now  soon  goes  out  of  my  head, 
and  I  had  forgotten  that  he  implies  that  my  views  explain 
the  universe  ;  but  it  is  a  most  monstrous  exaggeration.  The 
more  one  thinks  the  more  one  feels  the  hopeless  immensity 
of  man's  ignorance.  Though  it  does  make  one  proud  to  see 
what  science  has  achieved  during  the  last  half-century.  This 
has  been  brought  vividly  before  my  mind  by  having  just  read 
most  of  the  proofs  of  Lubbock's  Address  for  York,2  in  which 
he  will  attempt  to  review  the  progress  of  all  branches  of 
science  for  the  last  fifty  years. 

for  the  public  service,  where  he  became  Permanent  Secretary  of  the 
Board  of  Trade.  According  to  the  Times,  Oct.  13th,  1899,  "for  nearly 
forty  years  he  was  synonymous  with  the  Board  in  the  opinion  of  all 
who  were  brought  into  close  relation  with  it."  He  was  made  a  baronet  in 
1883  ;  he  retired  from  his  post  a  few  years  later,  and  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  in  1893.  His  friendship  with  Mr.  Darwin  was  of  many  years' 
standing,  and  opportunities  of  meeting  were  more  frequent  in  the  last 
ten  years  of  Mr.  Darwin's  life,  owing  to  Lord  Farrer's  marriage  with 
Miss  Wedgwood,  a  niece  of  Mrs.  Darwin's,  and  the  subsequent  marriage 
of  his  son  Horace  with  Miss  Fairer.  His  keen  love  of  science  is  attested 
by  the  letters  given  in  the  present  volume.  He  published  several  ex- 
cellent papers  on  the  fertilisation  of  flowers  in  the  Ann.  and  Mag.  of 
Natural  History,  and  in  Nature,  between  1868  and  1874. 

In  politics  he  was  a  Radical — a  strong  supporter  of  free  trade  :  on 
this  last  subject,  as  well  as  on  bimetallism,  he  was  frequently  engaged 
in  public  controversy.  He  loyally  carried  out  many  changes  in  the 
legislature  which,  as  an  individualist,  he  would  in  his  private  capacity 
have  strenuously  opposed. 

In  the  Speaker,  Oct.  21st,  1899,  Lord  Welby  heads  his  article  on 
Lord  Farrer  with  a  few  words  of  personal  appreciation  : — 

"  In  Lord  Fairer  has  passed  away  a  most  interesting  personality. 
A  great  civil  servant ;  in  his  later  years  a  public  man  of  courage  and 
lofty  ideal ;  in  private  life  a  staunch  friend,  abounding  as  a  companion 
in  humour  and  ripe  knowledge.  Age  had  not  dimmed  the  geniality  of 
his  disposition,  or  an  intellect  lively  and  eager  as  that  of  a  boy — lovable 
above  all  in  the  transparent  simplicity  of  his  character." 

1  In  Lord  Farrer's  letter  of  August  27th  he  refers  to  the  old  difficulty, 
in  relation  to  design,  of  the  existence  of  evil. 

-  Lord  Avebury  was  President  of  the  British  Association  in  1881. 


i87o— 1882]  DESIGN  395 

I  entirely  agree  with  what  you  say  about "  chance,"  except  Letter  307 
in  relation  to  the  variations  of  organic  beings  having  been 
designed  ;  and  I  imagine  that  Mr.  Graham  must  have  used 
"chance"  in  relation  only  to  purpose  in  the  origination  of 
species.  This  is  the  only  way  I  have  used  the  word  chance, 
as  I  have  attempted  to  explain  in  the  last  two  pages  of  my 
Variation  under  Domestication. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  consider  the  whole  universe,  the 
mind  refuses  to  look  at  it  as  the  outcome  of  chance — that  is, 
without  design  or  purpose.  The  whole  question  seems  to  me 
insoluble,  for  I  cannot  put  much  or  any  faith  in  the  so-called 
intuitions  of  the  human  mind,  which  have  been  developed,  as 
I  cannot  doubt,  from  such  a  mind  as  animals  possess  ;  and 
what  would  their  convictions  or  intuitions  be  worth  ?  There 
are  a  good  many  points  on  which  I  cannot  quite  follow  Mr. 
Graham. 

With  respect  to  your  last  discussion,  I  dare  say  it  contains 
very  much  truth  ;  but  I  cannot  see,  as  far  as  happiness  is 
concerned,  that  it  can  apply  to  the  infinite  sufferings  of 
animals — not  only  those  of  the  body,  but  those  of  the  mind — 
as  when  a  mother  loses  her  offspring  or  a  male  his  female.  If 
the  view  does  not  apply  to  animals,  will  it  suffice  for  man  ? 
But  you  may  well  complain  of  this  long  and  badly-expressed 
note  in  my  dreadfully  bad  handwriting. 

The  death  of  my  brother  Erasmus  is  a  very  heavy  loss  to 
all  of  us  in  this  family.  He  was  so  kind-hearted  and  affec- 
tionate. Nor  have  I  ever  known  any  one  more  pleasant.  It 
was  always  a  very  great  pleasure  to  talk  with  him  on  any 
subject  whatever,  and  this  I  shall  never  do  again.  The 
clearness  of  his  mind  always  seemed  to  me  admirable.  He 
was  not,  I  think,  a  happy  man,  and  for  many  years  did  not 
value  life,  though  never  complaining.  I  am  so  glad  that  he 
escaped  very  severe  suffering  during  his  last  few  days.  I 
shall  never  see  such  a  man  again. 

Forgive  me  for  scribbling  this  way,  my  dear  Farrer. 


To  G.  J.  Romanes. 

Romanes  had  reviewed  Roux's  Struggle  of  Parts  in  the  Organism  in 
Nature,  Sept.  20th,  1881,  p.  505.  This  led  to  an  attack  by  the  Duke 
of  Argyll  (Oct.  20th,  p.  581),  followed  by  a  reply  by  Romanes 
(Oct.   27th,  p.   604),   a  rejoinder   by  the    Duke   (Nov.    3rd,    p.    6),  and 


Letter  30S 


396  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

finally  by  the  letter  of  Romanes  (Nov.  ioth,  p.  29)  to  which  Darwin 
refers.  The  Duke's  "flourish"  is  at  p.  7 :  "I  wish  Mr.  Darwin's 
disciples  would  imitate  a  little  of  the  dignified  reticence  of  their 
master.  He  walks  with  a  patient  and  a  stately  step  along  the  paths 
of  conscientious  observation,  etc.,  etc." 

Down,  Nov.   1 2th,   1S81. 

Letter  308  I  must  write  to  say  how  very  much  I  admire  your  letter 
in  the  last  Nature.  I  subscribe  to  every  word  that  you  say, 
and  it  could  not  be  expressed  more  clearly  or  vigorously. 
After  the  Duke's  last  letter  and  flourish  about  me  I  thought  it 
paltry  not  to  say  that  I  agreed  with  what  you  had  said.  But 
after  writing  two  folio  pages  I  find  I  could  not  say  what  I 
wished  to  say  without  taking  up  too  much  space  ;  and  what 
I  had  written  did  not  please  me  at  all,  so  I  tore  it  up,  and 
now  by  all  the  gods  I  rejoice  that  I  did  so,  for  you  have 
put  the  case  incomparably  better  than  I  had  done  or 
could  do. 

Moreover,  I  hate  controversy,  and  it  wastes  much  time,  at 
least  with  a  man  who,  like  myself,  can  work  for  only  a  short 
time  in  a  day.  How  in  the  world  you  get  through  all  your 
work  astonishes  me. 

Now  do  not  make  me  feel  guilty  by  answering  this  letter, 
and  losing  some  of  your  time. 

You  ought  not  to  swear  at  Roux's  book,  which  has  led 
you  into  this  controversy,  for  I  am  sure  that  your  last  letter 
was  well  worth  writing — not  that  it  will  produce  any  effect  on 
the  Duke. 

Letter  309  To  J.  Jenner  Weir. 

On  Dec.  27th,  1881,  Mr.  Jenner  Weir  wrote  to  Mr.  Darwin  :  "After 
some  hesitation,  in  lieu  of  a  Christmas  card,  I  venture  to  give  you  the 
result  of  some  observations  on  mules  made  in  Spain  during  the  last  two 
years.  .  .  .  It  is  a  fact  that  the  sire  has  the  prepotency  in  the  offspring, 
as  has  been  observed  by  most  writers  on  that  subject,  including  yourself. 
The  mule  is  more  ass-like,  and  the  hinny  more  horse-like,  both  in 
the  respective  lengths  of  the  ears  and  the  shape  of  the  tail  ;  but  one 
point  I  have  observed  which  I  do  not  remember  to  have  met  with,  and 
that  is  that  the  coat  of  the  mule  resembles  that  of  its  dam  the  mare,  and 
that  of  the  hinny  its  dam  the  ass,  so  that  in  this  respect  the  prepotency 
of  the  sexes  is  reversed."  The  hermaphroditism  in  lepidoptera,  referred 
to  below,  is  said  by  Mr.  Weir  to  occur  notably  in  the  case  of  the  hybrids 
of  Smerinthus  populi-ocellatus. 


1870— 1882]  WEISMANN  397 

Down,  Dec.  29th,  1881.  Letter  309 
I  thank  you  for  your  "  Christmas  card,"  and  heartily 
return  your  good  wishes.  What  you  say  about  the  coats  of 
mules  is  new  to  me,  as  is  the  statement  about  hermaphro- 
ditism in  hybrid  moths.  This  latter  fact  seems  to  me  par- 
ticularly curious  ;  and  to  make  a  very  wild  hypothesis, 
I  should  be  inclined  to  account  for  it  by  reversion  to  the 
primordial  condition  of  the  two  sexes  being  united,  for  I 
think  it  certain   that   hybridism  does  lead  to  reversion. 

I    keep  fairly  well,  but  have  not  much  strength,  and  feel 
very  old. 


To  R.   Meldola.  Letter  310 

Down,   Feb.  2nd,   1882. 

I  am  very  sorry  that  I  can  add  nothing  to  my  very 
brief  notice,  without  reading  again  Weismann's  work  and 
getting  up  the  whole  subject  by  reading  my  own  and 
other  books,  and  for  so  much  labour  I  have  not  strength. 
I  have  now  been  working  at  other  subjects  for  some  years, 
and  when  a  man  grows  as  old  as  I  am,  it  is  a  great  wrench 
to  his  brain  to  go  back  to  old  and  half-forgotten  subjects. 
You  would  not  readily  believe  how  often  I  am  asked 
questions  of  all  kinds,  and  quite  lately  I  have  had  to  give 
up  much  time  to  do  a  work,  not  at  all  concerning  myself, 
but  which  I  did  not  like  to  refuse.  I  must,  however, 
somewhere  draw  the  line,  or  my  life  will  be  a  misery 
to  me. 

I  have  read  your  preface,1  and  it  seems  to  me  excellent. 
I  am  sorry  in  many  ways,  including  the  honour  of  England 
as  a  scientific  country,  that  your  translation  has  as  yet 
sold  badly.  Does  the  publisher  or  do  you  lose  by  it  ?  If 
the  publisher,  though  I  shall  be  sorry  for  him,  yet  it  is  in 
the  way  of  business ;  but  if  you  yourself  lose  by  it,  I 
earnestly  beg  you  to  allow  me  to  subscribe  a  trifle,  viz., 
ten  guineas,  towards  the  expense  of  this  work,  which  you 
have   undertaken   on    public  grounds. 


1  Studies  iii  the  Theory  of  Descent.  By  A.  Weismann.  Translated 
and  Edited  by  Raphael  Meldola  ;  with  a  Prefatory  Notice  by  C.  Darwin 
and  a  Translator's  Preface.     See  Letter  291. 


398  EVOLUTION  [Chap.  V 

Letter  311  To  W.  Horsfall. 

Down,  Feb.  8th,  18S2. 

In  the  succession  of  the  older  Formations  the  species 
and  genera  of  trilobitcs  do  change,  and  then  they  all  die 
out.  To  any  one  who  believes  that  geologists  know  the 
dawn  of  life  {i.e.,  formations  contemporaneous  with  the 
first  appearance  of  living  creatures  on  the  earth)  no  doubt 
the  sudden  appearance  of  perfect  trilobitcs  and  other 
organisms  in  the  oldest  known  life-bearing  strata  would 
be  fatal  to  evolution.  But  I  for  one,  and  many  others, 
utterly  reject  any  such  belief.  Already  three  or  four 
piles  of  unconformable  strata  are  known  beneath  the 
Cambrian  ;  and  these  are  generally  in  a  crystalline  condition, 
and  may  once  have  been  charged  with  organic  remains. 

With  regard  to  animals  and  plants,  the  locomotive 
spores  of  some  algae,  furnished  with  cilia,  would  have 
been  ranked  with  animals  if  it  had  not  been  known  that 
they  developed   into  algae. 

Letter  312  To  John  Collier.1 

Down,  Feb.  1 6th,  1SS2. 
I  must  thank  you  for  the  gift  of  your  Art  Primer, 
which  I  have  read  with  much  pleasure.  Parts  were  too 
technical  for  me  who  could  never  draw  a  line,  but  I  was 
greatly  interested  by  the  whole  of  the  first  part.  I  wish 
that  you  could  explain  why  certain  curved  lines  and 
symmetrical  figures  give  pleasure.  But  will  not  your 
brother  artists  scorn  you  for  showing  yourself  so  good  an 
evolutionist?  Perhaps  they  will  say  that  allowance  must 
be  made  for  him,  as  he  has  allied  himself  to  so  dreadful 
a  man  as  Huxley.  This  reminds  me  that  I  have  just 
been  reading  the  last  volume  of  essays.  By  good  luck 
I  had  not  read  that  on  Priestley,2  and  it  strikes  me  as 
the  most  splendid  essay  which  I  ever  read.  That  on 
automatism 3    is    wonderfully  interesting  :    more  is  the  pity, 

1  The  Honourable  John  Collier,  Royal  Academician,  son-in-law  to 
Professor  Huxley. 

3  Science  a  fid  Culture,  and  other  Essays:  London,  1881.  The  fifth 
Essay  is  on  Joseph  Priestley  (p.  94). 

3  Essay  IX.  (p.  199)  is  entitled  "  On  the  Hypothesis  that  Animals 
are   Automata,  and  its  history." 


1870-1882]  ANIMAL     AUTOMATA 


399 


say  I,  for  if  I  were  as  well  armed  as  Huxley  I  would  Letter  31 
challenge  him  to  a  duel  on  this  subject.  But  I  am  a  deal 
too  wise  to  do  anything  of  the  kind,  for  he  would  run  me 
through  the  body  half  a  dozen  times  with  his  sharp  and 
polished  rapier  before  I  knew  where  I  was.  I  did  not 
intend  to  have  scribbled  all  this  nonsense,  but  only  to 
have  thanked  you  for  your  present. 

Everybody  whom  I  have  seen  and  who  has  seen  your 
picture  of  me  is  delighted  with  it.  I  shall  be  proud  some 
day  to  see  myself  suspended  at  the   Linnean   Society.1 

1  The   portrait  painted   by  Mr.  Collier  hangs  in  the   meeting-room 
of  the  Linnean  Society. 


CHAPTER   VI 

GEOGRAPHICAL  DISTRIBUTION 
1843— 1882 

Letter  313  To  J.  D.  Hooker 

Down,  Tuesday  [Dec.    I2th,   1843]. 

I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you  for  you;  interesting  letter. 
I  have  long  been  very  anxious,  even  for  as  short  a  sketch  as 
you  have  kindly  sent  me  of  the  botanical  geography  of  the 
southern  hemisphere.  I  shall  be  most  curious  to  see  your 
results  in  detail.  From  my  entire  ignorance  of  Botany,  I  am 
sorry  to  say  that  I  cannot  answer  any  of  the  questions  which 
you  ask  me.  I  think  I  mention  in  my  Journal  that  I  found 
my  old  friend  the  southern  beech  (I  cannot  say  positively 
which  species),  on  the  mountain-top,  in  southern  parts  of 
Chiloe  and  at  level  of  sea  in  lat.  450,  in  Chonos  Archipelago. 
Would  not  the  southern  end  of  Chiloe  make  a  good  division 
for  you  ?  I  presume,  from  the  collection  of  Brydges  and 
Anderson,  Chiloe  is  pretty  well  known,  and  southward  begins 
a  terra  incognita.  I  collected  a  few  plants  amongst  the 
Chonos  Islands.  The  beech  being  found  here  and  peat  being 
found  here,  and  general  appearance  of  landscape,  connects 
the  Chonos  Islands  and  T.  del  Fuego.  I  saw  the  Alerce  ' 
on  mountains  of  Chiloe  (on  the  mainland  it  grows  to  an 
enormous  size,  and  I  always  believed  Alerce  and  Araucaria 
imbricata  to  be  identical),  but  I  am  ashamed  to  say  I  abso- 
lutely forget  all  about  its  appearance.     I  saw  some  Juniper- 

1  "  Alerse  "  is  the  local  name  of  a  South  American  timber,  described 
in  Capt.  King's  Voyages  of  the  " Adventure"  and  " Beagle"  p.  281, 
and  rather  doubtfully  identified  with  Thuja  tetra^ona,  Hook.  {Flora 
Antarctica,  p.  350). 

400 


1843— i88a]  GALAPAGOS     PLANTS  4OI 

like  bush  in  T.  del  Fuego,  but  can  tell  you  no  more  about  Letter  313 
it,  as  I  presume  that  you  have  seen  Capt.  King's  collection 
in  Mr.  Brown's  possession,  provisionally  for  the  British 
Museum.  I  fear  you  will  be  much  disappointed  in  my  few 
plants  :  an  ignorant  person  cannot  collect  ;  and  I,  moreover, 
lost  one,  the  first,  and  best  set  of  the  Alpine  plants.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  hope  the  Galapagos  plants  l  (judging  from 
Henslow's  remarks)  will  turn  out  more  interesting  than  you 
expect.  Pray  be  careful  to  observe,  if  I  ever  mark  the 
individual  islands  of  the  Galapagos  Islands,  for  the  reasons 
you  will  see  in  my  Journal.  Menzies  and  Gumming  were 
there,  and  there  are  some  plants  (I  think  Mr.  Bentham  told 
me)  at  the  Horticultural  Society  and  at  the  British  Museum. 
I  believe  I  collected  no  plants  at  Ascension,  thinking  it 
well  known. 

Is  not  the  similarity  of  plants  of  Kerguelen  Land  and 
southern  S.  America  very  curious  ?  Is  there  any  instance  in 
the  northern  hemisphere  of  plants  being  similar  at  such  great 
distances  ?  With  thanks  for  your  letter  and  for  your  having 
undertaken  my  small  collection  of  plants, 
Believe  me,  my  dear  Sir, 

Yours  very  truly, 

C.  Darwin. 

Do  remember  my  prayer,  and  write  as  well  for  botanical 
ignoramuses  as  for  great  botanists.  There  is  a  paper  of 
Carmichael 2  on  Tristan  d'Acunha,  which  from  the  want  of 
general  remarks  and  comparison,  I  found  [torn  out]  to  me 
a  dead  letter. — I  presume  you  will  include  this  island  in  your 
views  of  the  southern  hemisphere. 

PS. — I  have  been  looking  at  my  poor  miserable  attempt 
at  botanical-landscapc-remarks,  and  I  see  that  I  state  that 
the  species  of  beech  which  is  least  common  in  T.  del  Fuego 
is  common  in  the  forest  of  Central  Chiloe.  But  I  will  enclose 
for  you  this  one  page  of  my  rough  journal. 


1  See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  pp.  20,  21,  for  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker's  notes  on 
the  beginning  of  his  friendship  with  Mr.  Darwin,  and  for  the  latter's 
letter  on  the  Galapagos  plants  being  placed  in  Hooker's  hands. 

2  "  Some  Account  of  the  Island  of  Tristan  da  Cunha  and  of  its  Natural 
Productions."— Linn.  Soc.  Trans.,  XII.,  1818,  p.  483. 

26 


402  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRI I!  U  T 1 0  N         [Chap.  VI 

L^"  3'4  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,   March  31st  (1844). 

I  have  been  a  shameful  time  in  returning  your  documents, 
but  I  have  been  very  busy  scientifically,  and  unscientifically  in 
planting.  I  have  been  exceedingly  interested  in  the  details 
about  the  Galapagos  Islands.  I  need  not  say  that  I  collected 
blindly,  and  did  not  attempt  to  make  complete  series,  but 
just  took  everything  in  flower  blindly.  The  flora  of  the 
summits  and  bases  of  the  islands  appear  wholly  different ;  it 
may  aid  you  in  observing  whether  the  different  islands  have 
representative  species  filling  the  same  places  in  the  economy 
of  nature,  to  know  that  I  collected  plants  from  the  lower  and 
dry  region  in  all  the  islands,  i.e.,  in  Chatham,  Charles,  James, 
and  Albemarle  (the  least  on  the  latter) ;  and  that  I  was  able 
to  ascend  into  the  high  and  damp  region  only  in  James  and 
Charles  Islands  ;  and  in  the  former  I  think  I  got  every  plant 
then  in  flower.  Please  bear  this  in  mind  in  comparing  the 
representative  species.  (You  know  that  Henslow  has  described 
a  new  Opuntia  from  the  Galapagos.)  Your  observations  on 
the  distribution  of  large  mundane  genera  have  interested  me 
much  ;  but  that  was  not  the  precise  point  which  I  was 
curious  to  ascertain  ;  it  has  no  necessary  relation  to  size  of 
genus  (though  perhaps  your  statements  will  show  that  it  has). 
It  was  merely  this  :  suppose  a  genus  with  ten  or  more  species, 
inhabiting  the  ten  main  botanical  regions,  should  you  expect 
that  all  or  most  of  these  ten  species  would  have  wide  ranges 
{i.e.  were  found  in  most  parts)  in  their  respective  countries?1 
To  give  an  example,  the  genus  Felts  is  found  in  every  country 
except  Australia,  and  the  individual  species  generally  range 

1  This  point  is  discussed  in  a  letter  in  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II.,  p.  25, 
but  not,  we  think  in  the  Origin  ;  for  letters  on  large  genera  containing 
many  varieties  see  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  102-7,  also  in  the  Origin, 
Ed.  I.,  p.  53,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  44.  In  a  letter  of  April  5th,  1844,  Sir  J.  D. 
Hooker  gave  his  opinion  :  "  On  the  whole  I  believe  that  many  individual 
representative  species  of  large  genera  have  wide  ranges,  but  I  do  not 
consider  the  fact  as  one  of  great  value,  because  the  proportion  of 
such  species  having  a  wide  range  is  not  large  compared  with  other 
representative  species  of  the  same  genus  whose  limits  are  confined." 

It  may  be  noted  that  in  large  genera  the  species  often  have  small 
ranges  {Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  45),  and  large  genera  are  more  commonly 
wide-ranging  than  the  reverse. 


1843—1882]  RANGES     OF     GENERA  403 

over  thousands  of  miles  in  their  respective  countries  ;  on  the  Letter  314 
other  hand,  no  genus  of  monkey  ranges  over  so  large  a  part 
of  the  world,  and  the  individual  species  in  their  respective 
countries  seldom  range  over  wide  spaces.  I  suspect  (but  am 
not  sure)  that  in  the  genus  Mus  (the  most  mundane  genus  of 
all  mammifers)  the  individual  species  have  not  wide  ranges, 
which  is  opposed  to  my  query. 

I  fancy,  from  a  paper  by  Don,  that  some  genera  of  grasses 
(i.e.  Juncus  or  Juncacere)  are  widely  diffused  over  the  world, 
and  certainly  many  of  their  species  have  very  wide  ranges — 
in  short,  it  seems  that  my  question  is  whether  there  is  any 
relation  between  the  ranges  of  genera  and  of  individual 
species,  without  any  relation  to  the  size  of  the  genera.  It 
is  evident  a  genus  might  be  widely  diffused  in  two  ways :  1st, 
by  many  different  species,  each  with  restricted  ranges ;  and 
2nd,  by  many  or  few  species  with  wide  ranges.  Any  light 
which  you  could  throw  on  this  I  should  be  very  much  obliged 
for.  Thank  you  most  kindly,  also,  for  your  offer  in  a  former 
letter  to  consider  any  other  points  ;  and  at  some  future  day 
I  shall  be  most  grateful  for  a  little  assistance,  but  I  will  not 
be  unmerciful. 

Swainson  has  remarked  (and  Westwood  contradicted) 
that  typical  genera  have  wide  ranges  :  Waterhouse  (without 
knowing  these  previous  remarkers)  made  to  me  the  same 
observation  :  I  feel  a  laudable  doubt  and  disinclination  to 
believe  any  statement  of  Swainson  ;  but  now  Waterhouse 
remarks  it,  I  am  curious  on  the  point.  There  is,  however, 
so  much  vague  in  the  meaning  of  "  typical  forms,"  and  no 
little  ambiguity  in  the  mere  assertion  of  "  wide  ranges  "  (for 
zoologists  seldom  go  into  strict  and  disagreeable  arithmetic, 
like  you  botanists  so  wisely  do)  that  I  feel  very  doubtful, 
though  some  considerations  tempt  me  to  believe  in  this 
remark.  Here  again,  if  you  can  throw  any  light,  I  shall  be 
much  obliged.  After  your  kind  remarks  I  will  not  apologise 
for  boring  you  with  my  vague  queries  and  remarks. 

To  J.  D.   Hooker.  Letter  315 

Down,   Dec.   25th  [1S44]. 
Happy  Christmas  to  you. 

The  following  letter  refers  to  notes  by  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  which  we 
have  not  seen.     Though  we  are  therefore  unable  to  make  clear  many 


404  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

points  referred  to,  the  letter  seems  to  us  on  the  whole  so  interesting  that 
it  is  printed  with  the  omission  of  only  one  unimportant  sentence. 

The  subjects  dealt  with  in  the  letter  are  those  which  were  occupying 
Hooker's  attention  in  relation  to  his  Flora  Antarctica  (1844). 

Letter  315  I  must  thank  you  once  again  for  all  your  documents,  which 
have  interested  me  very  greatly  and  surprised  me.  I  found  it 
very  difficult  to  charge  my  head  with  all  your  tabulated  results, 
but  this  I  perfectly  well  know  is  in  main  part  due  to  that  head 
not  being  a  botanical  one,  aided  by  the  tables  being  in  MS.  ; 
I  think,  however,  to  an  ignoramus,  they  might  be  made 
clearer  ;  but  pray  mind,  that  this  is  very  different  from  saying 
that  I  think  botanists  ought  to  arrange  their  highest  results 
for  non-botanists  to  understand  easily.  I  will  tell  you  how, 
for  my  individual  self,  I  should  like  to  see  the  results  worked 
out,  and  then  you  can  judge,  whether  this  be  advisable  for  the 
botanical  world. 

Looking  at  the  globe,  the  Auckland  and  Campbell  I.,  New 
Zealand,  and  Van  Diemen's  Land  so  evidently  are  geogra- 
phically related,  that  I  should  wish,  before  any  comparison 
was  made  with  far  more  distant  countries,  to  understand  their 
floras,  in  relation  to  each  other  ;  and  the  southern  ones  to  the 
northern  temperate  hemisphere,  which  I  presume  is  to  every 
one  an  almost  involuntary  standard  of  comparison.  To 
understand  the  relation  of  the  floras  of  these  islands,  I  should 
like  to  see  the  group  divided  into  a  northern  and  southern 
half,  and  to  know  how  many  species  exist  in  the  latter — 

(1)  belonging  to  genera  confined  to  Australia,  Van  Diemen's, 

Land  and  north  New  Zealand. 

(2)  „  „         „      found    only   on    the    mountains   of 

Australia,  Van  Diemen's  Land, 
and  north  New  Zealand. 

(3)  »  ,,         „      of  distribution    in    many    parts    of 

the    world    {i.e.,    which    tell    no 
particular  story). 

(4)  »  »         ,,      found  in  the   northern  hemisphere 

and  not  in  the  tropics  ;  or  only 
on  mountains  in  the  tropics. 

I  daresay  all  this  (as  far  as  present  materials  serve)  could 
be  extracted  from  your  tables,  as  they  stand  ;  but  to  any  one 
not  familiar  with  the  names  of  plants,  this  would  be  difficult. 


iS43— '882]  FLORA     ANTARCTICA  405 

I   felt   particularly   the  want   of  not   knowing    which  of  the  Letter  315 
genera  are  found  in  the  lowland  tropics,  in  understanding  the 
relation  of  the  Antarctic  with  the  Arctic  floras. 

If  the  Fuegian  flora  was  treated  in  the  analogous  way 
(and  this  would  incidentally  show  how  far  the  Cordillera  are 
a  high-road  of  genera),  I  should  then  be  prepared  far  more 
easily  and  satisfactorily  to  understand  the  relations  of  Fuegia 
with  the  Auckland  Islands,  and  consequently  with  the 
mountains  of  Van  Diemen's  Land.  Moreover,  the  marvellous 
facts  of  their  intimate  botanical  relation  (between  Fuegia  and 
the  Auckland  Islands,  etc.)  would  stand  out  more  prominently, 
after  the  Auckland  Islands  had  been  first  treated  of  under  the 
purely  geographical  relation  of  position.  A  triple  division 
such  as  yours  would  lead  me  to  suppose  that  the  three  places 
were  somewhat  equally  distant,  and  not  so  greatly  different 
in  size  :  the  relation  of  Van  Diemen's  Land  seems  so  com- 
paratively small,  and  that  relation  being  in  its  alpine  plants, 
makes  me  feel  that  it  ought  only  to  be  treated  of  as  a  sub- 
division of  the  large  group,  including  Auckland,  Campbell, 
New  Zealand.  .  .  . 

I  think  a  list  of  the  genera,  common  to  Fuegia  on  the  one 
hand  and  on  the  other  to  Campbell,  etc.,  and  to  the  mountains 
of  Van  Diemen's  Land  or  New  Zealand  (but  not  found  in  the 
lowland  temperate,  and  southern  tropical  parts  of  South 
America  and  Australia,  or  New  Zealand),  would  prominently 
bring  out,  at  the  same  time,  the  relation  between  these 
Antarctic  points  one  with  another,  and  with  the  northern  or 
Arctic  regions. 

In  Article  III.  is  it  meant  to  be  expressed,  or  might  it  not 
be  understood  by  this  article,  that  the  similarity  of  the  distant 
points  in  the  Antarctic  regions  was  as  close  as  between  distant 
points  in  the  Arctic  regions?  I  gather  this  is  not  so.  You 
speak  of  the  southern  points  of  America  and  Australia,  etc., 
being  "  materially  approximated,"  and  this  closer  proximity 
being  correlative  with  a  greater  similarity  of  their  plants  : 
I  find  on  the  globe,  that  Van  Diemen's  Land  and  Fuegia  are 
only  about  one-fifth  nearer  than  the  whole  distance  between 
Port  Jackson  and  Concepcion  in  Chile  ;  and  again,  that 
Campbell  Island  and  Fuegia  are  only  one-fifth  nearer  than 
the  east  point  of  North  New  Zealand  and  Concepcion.  Now 
do  you  think   in  such  immense   distances,    both  over  open 


406  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [CHAP.  VI 

Letter  315  oceans,  that  one-fifth  less  distance,  say  4,000  miles  instead 
of  5,000,  can  explain  or  throw  much  light  on  a  material 
difference  in  the  degree  of  similarity  in  the  floras  of  the  two 
regions  ? 

I  trust  you  will  work  out  the  New  Zealand  flora,  as  you 
have  commenced  at  end  of  letter :  is  it  not  quite  an  original 
plan  ?  and  is  it  not  very  surprising  that  New  Zealand,  so  much 
nearer  to  Australia  than  South  America,  should  have  an  inter- 
mediate flora  ?  I  had  fancied  that  nearly  all  the  species  there 
were  peculiar  to  it.  I  cannot  but  think  you  make  one 
gratuitous  difficulty  in  ascertaining  whether  New  Zealand 
ought  to  be  classed  by  itself,  or  with  Australia  or  South 
America — namely,  when  you  seem  (bottom  of  p.  7  of  your 
letter)  to  say  that  genera  in  common  indicate  only  that  the 
external  circumstances  for  their  life  are  suitable  and  similar.1 
Surely,  cannot  an  overwhelming  mass  of  facts  be  brought 
against  such  a  proposition  ?  Distant  parts  of  Australia  possess 
quite  distinct  species  of  marsupials,  but  surely  this  fact  of 
their  having  the  same  marsupial  genera  is  the  strongest  tie 
and  plainest  mark  of  an  original  (so-called)  creative  affinity 
over  the  whole  of  Australia  ;  no  one,  now,  will  (or  ought)  to 
say  that  the  different  parts  of  Australia  have  something  in 
their  external  conditions  in  common,  causing  them  to  be  pre- 
eminently suitable  to  marsupials  ;  and  so  on  in  a  thousand 
instances.  Though  each  species,  and  consequently  genus, 
must  be  adapted  to  its  country,  surely  adaptation  is  manifestly 
not  the  governing  law  in  geographical  distribution.  Is  this 
not  so  ?  and  if  I  understand  you  rightly,  you  lessen  your  own 
means  of  comparison — attributing  the  presence  of  the  same 
genera  to  similarity  of  conditions. 

You  will  groan  over  my  very  full  compliance  with  your 
request  to  write  all  I  could  on  your  tables,  and  I  have  done  it 
with  a  vengeance  :  I  can  hardly  say  how  valuable  I  must  think 
your  results  will  be,  when  worked  out,  as  far  as  the  present 
knowledge  and  collections  serve. 

1  On  Dec.  30th,  1S44,  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  replied,  "  Nothing  was 
further  from  my  intention  than  to  have  written  anything  which  would  lead 
one  to  suppose  that  genera  common  to  two  places  indicate  a  similarity  in 
the  external  circumstances  under  which  they  are  developed,  though  I  see 
I  have  given  you  excellent  grounds  for  supposing  that  such  were  my 
opinions." 


1843— 1882]  FLORA     ANTARCTICA  407 

Now    for   some    miscellaneous    remarks    on    your    letter  :  Letter  315 
thanks   for   the   offer   to   let  me  see  specimens  of  boulders 
from  Cockburn  Island  ;  but  I  care  only  for  boulders,  as  an 
indication  of  former  climate:  perhaps  Ross  will    give  some 
information.  .  .  . 

Watson's  paper  on  the  Azores 1  has  surprised  me  much  ; 
do  you  not  think  it  odd,  the  fewness  of  peculiar  species,  and 
their  rarity  on  the  alpine  heights?  I  wish  he  had  tabulated 
his  results ;  could  you  not  suggest  to  him  to  draw  up  a  paper 
of  such  results,  comparing  these  Islands  with  Madeira  ?  surely 
does  not  Madeira  abound  with  peculiar  forms  ? 

A  discussion  on  the  relations  of  the  floras,  especially  the 
alpine  ones,  of  Azores,  Madeira,  and  Canary  Islands,  would 
be,  I  should  think,  of  general  interest.  How  curious,  the 
several  doubtful  species,  which  are  referred  to  by  Watson,  at 
the  end  of  his  paper ;  just  as  happens  with  birds  at  the 
Galapagos.  .  .  .  Any  time  that  you  can  put  me  in  the  way 
of  reading  about  alpine  floras,  I  shall  feel  it  as  the  greatest 
kindness.  I  grieve  there  is  no  better  authority  for  Bourbon, 
than  that  stupid  Bory  :  I  presume  his  remark  that  plants,  on 
isolated  volcanic  islands  are  polymorphous  {i.e.,  I  suppose, 
variable?)  is  quite  gratuitous.  Farewell,  my  dear  Hooker. 
This  letter  is  infamously  unclear,  and  I  fear  can  be  of  no  use, 
except  giving  you  the  impression  of  a  botanical  ignoramus. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  316 

Down,  March  19th  [1845]. 
...  I  was  very  glad  to  hear  Humboldt's  views  on  migrations 
and  double  creations.  It  is  very  presumptuous,  but  I  feel 
sure  that  though  one  cannot  prove  extensive  migration,  the 
leading  considerations,  proper  to  the  subject,  are  omitted, 
and  I  will  venture  to  say  even  by  Humboldt.  I  should  like 
some  time  to  put  the  case,  like  a  lawyer,  for  your  considera- 
tion, in  the  point  of  view  under  which,  I  think,  it  ought 
to  be  viewed.  The  conclusion  which  I  come  to  is,  that  we 
cannot  pretend,  with  our  present  knowledge,  to  put  any 
limit  to  the  possible,  and  even  probable,  migration  of  plants. 
If  you  can  show  that  many  of  the  Fuegian  plants,  common 
to    Europe,   are   found    in    intermediate   points,  it  will   be    a 

1  H.  C.  Watson,  London  Journal  of  Botany,  1843-44. 


408  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  316  grand  argument  in  favour  of  the  actuality  of  migration  ;  but 
not  finding  them  will  not,  in  my  eyes,  much  diminish  the 
probability  of  their  having  thus  migrated.  My  pen  always 
runs  away,  in  writing  to  you  ;  and  a  most  unsteady,  vilely 
bad  pace  it  goes.  What  would  I  not  give  to  write  simple 
English,  without  having  to  rewrite  and  rewrite  every  sentence. 


Letter  317  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Friday  [June   29th,   1845]. 

I  have  been  an  ungrateful  dog  for  not  having  answered 
your  letter  sooner,  but  I  have  been  so  hard  at  work  correct- 
ing proofs,1  together  with  some  unwellness,  that  1  have  not 
had  one  quarter  of  an  hour  to  spare.  I  finally  corrected 
the  first  third  of  the  old  volume,  which  will  appear  on 
July  1st.  I  hope  and  think  I  have  somewhat  improved 
it.  Very  many  thanks  for  your  remarks  ;  some  of  them 
came  too  late  to  make  me  put  some  of  my  remarks  more 
cautiously.  I  feel,  however,  still  inclined  to  abide  by  my 
evaporation  notion  to  account  for  the  clouds  of  steam,  which 
rise  from  the  wooded  valleys  after  rain.  Again,  I  am  so 
obstinate  that  I  should  require  very  good  evidence  to  make 
me  believe  that  there  are  two  species  of  Polyborus'1  in  the 
Falkland  Islands.  Do  the  Gauchos  there  admit  it  ?  Much 
as  I  talked  to  them,  they  never  alluded  to  such  a  fact.  In 
the  Zoology  I  have  discussed  the  sexual  and  immature 
plumage,  which  differ  much. 

I  return  the  enclosed  agreeable  letter  with  many  thanks. 
I  am  extremely  glad  of  the  plants  collected  at  St.  Paul's, 
and  shall  be  particularly  curious  whenever  they  arrive  to  hear 
what  they  are.  I  dined  the  other  day  at  Sir  J.  Lubbock's, 
and  met  R.  Brown,  and  we  had  much  laudatory  talk  about 
you.  He  spoke  very  nicely  about  your  motives  in  now 
going  to  Edinburgh.  He  did  not  seem  to  know,  and  was 
much  surprised  at  what  I  stated  (I  believe  correctly)  on 
the  close  relation  between  the  Kerguelen  and  T.  del  Fuego 
floras.  Forbes  is  doing  apparently  very  good  work  about 
the   introduction   and   distribution    of  plants.     He  has  fore- 

1  The  second  edition  of  the  Journal. 

3  Polyborus  Nova  Zelandia,   a    carrion    hawk    mentioned    as    very 
common  in  the  Falklands. 


1843— 1882]  E.     FORBES  409 

stalled  me  in  what  I  had  hoped  would  have  been  an  interest-  Letter  317 
ing   discussion — viz.,  on    the    relation    between     the    present 
alpine  and  Arctic   floras,  with  connection  to  the  last  change 
of  climate  from  Arctic  to  temperate,  when  the  then  Arctic 
lowland   plants  must  have   been   driven   up    the   mountains.1 

I  am  much  pleased  to  hear  of  the  pleasant  reception 
you  received  at  Edinburgh.2  I  hope  your  impressions  will 
continue  agreeable  ;  my  associations  with  auld  Reekie  are 
very  friendly.  Do  you  ever  see  Dr.  Coldstream?  If  you 
do,  would  you  give  him  my  kind  remembrances?  You  ask 
about  amber.  I  believe  all  the  species  are  extinct  {i.e.  with- 
out the  amber  has  been  doctored),  and  certainly  the  greater 
number  are.3 

If  you  have  any  other  corrections  ready,  will  you  send 
them  soon,  for  I  shall  go  to  press  with  second  Part  in  less 
than  a  week.  I  have  been  so  busy  that  I  have  not  yet 
begun  d'Urville,  and  have  read  only  first  chapter  of  Canary 
Islands  !  I  am  most  particularly  obliged  to  you  for  having 
lent  me  the  latter,  for  1  know  not  where  else  I  could  have  ever 
borrowed  it.  There  is  the  Kosmos  to  read,  and  Lyell's 
Travels  in  North  America.  It  is  awful  to  think  of  how  much 
there  is  to  read.  What  makes  H.  Watson  a  renegade  ?  I 
had  a  talk  with  Captain  Beaufort  the  other  day,  and  he 
charged  me  to  keep  a  book  and  enter  anything  which 
occurred  to  me,  which  deserved  examination  or  collection 
in  any  part  of  the  world,  and  he  would  sooner  or  later  get 
it  in  the  instructions  to  some  ship.  If  anything  occurs  to 
you  let  me  hear,  for  in  the  course  of  a  month  or  two  I 
must  write  out  something.  I  mean  to  urge  collections  of  all 
kinds  on  any  isolated  islands.  I  suspect  that  there  are  several 
in  the  northern  half  of  the  Pacific,  which  have  never  been 
visited  by  a  collector.     This  is  a  dull,  untidy  letter.     Farewell. 

1  Forbes'  Essay  "  On  the  Connexion  between  the  Distribution  of  the 
Existing  Fauna  and  Flora  of  the  British  Isles  and  the  Geological  Changes 
which  have  affected  their  Area,"  was  published  in  1846.  See  note  2, 
Letter  20. 

-  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  was  a  candidate  for  the  Chair  of  Botany  at  Edin- 
burgh.    See  Life  and  Letters,  I.,  pp.  335,  342. 

3  For  an  account  of  plants  in  amber  see  Goeppert  and  Berendt, 
Der  Bernstein  und  die  in  itnn  befindlichen  Pflanzenreste  der  Vorwelt, 
Berlin,  1845  ;  Goeppert,  Coniferen  des  Bernstein,  Danzig,  1883  ; 
Conwentz,  Monographic  der  Baltischeti  Bemsteinbdume,  Danzig,  1890. 


4IO  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  317  As  you  care  so  much  for  insular  floras,  are  you  aware 
that  I  collected  all  in  flower  on  the  Abrolhos  Islands?  but 
they  are  very  near  the  coast  of  Brazil.  Nevertheless,  I  think 
they  ought  to  be  just  looked  at,  under  a  geographical  point 
of  view. 

Letter  318  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Nov.  [1845]. 
I  have  just  got  as  far  as  Lycopodium  in  your  Flora, 
and,  in  truth,  cannot  say  enough  how  much  I  have  been 
interested  in  all  your  scattered  remarks.  I  am  delighted  to 
have  in  print  many  of  the  statements  which  you  made  in 
your  letters  to  me,  when  we  were  discussing  some  of  the 
geographical  points.  I  can  never  cease  marvelling  at  the 
similarity  of  the  Antarctic  floras :  it  is  wonderful.  I  hope 
you  will  tabulate  all  your  results,  and  put  prominently  what 
you  allude  to  (and  what  is  pre-eminently  wanted  by  non- 
botanists  like  myself),  which  of  the  genera  are,  and  which 
not,  found  in  the  lowland  or  in  the  highland  Tropics,  as  far 
as  known.  Out  of  the  very  many  new  observations  to  me, 
nothing  has  surprised  me  more  than  the  absence  of  Alpine 
floras  in  the  S[outh]  Islands.1  It  strikes  me  as  most  inexplic- 
able. Do  you  feel  sure  about  the  similar  absence  in  the  Sand- 
wich group?  Is  it  not  opposed  quite  to  the  case  of  Teneriffe 
and  Madeira,  and  Mediterranean  Islands  ?  I  had  fancied 
that  T.  del  Fuego  had  possessed  a  large  alpine  flora  !  I 
should  much  like  to  know  whether  the  climate  of  north 
New  Zealand  is  much  more  insular  than  Tasmania.  I  should 
doubt  it  from  general  appearance  of  places,  and  yet  I  pre- 
sume the  flora  of  the  former  is  far  more  scanty  than  of 
Tasmania.  Do  tell  me  what  you  think  on  this  point.  I 
have  also  been  particularly  interested  by  all  your  remarks 
on  variation,  affinities,  etc.  :  in  short,  your  book  has  been  to 

1  See  Flora  Antarctic,  I.,  p.  79,  where  the  author  says  that  "in  the 
South  ....  on  ascending  the  mountains,  few  or  no  new  forms  occur." 
With  regard  to  the  Sandwich  Islands,  Sir  Joseph  wrote  (p.  75)  that 
"  though  the  volcanic  islands  of  the  Sandwich  group  attain  a  greater 
elevation  than  this  [10,000  feet],  there  is  no  such  development  of  new 
species  at  the  upper  level."  More  recent  statements  to  the  same  effect 
occur  in  Grisebach,  Vegetation  der Erde,  Vol.  II.,  p.  530.  See  also  Wallace, 
Island  Life,  p.  307. 


1S43— 1882]  E.     FORBES  411 

me  a  most  valuable  one,  and  I  must  have  purchased  it  had  Letter  318 
you  not  most  kindly  given  it,  and  so  rendered  it  even  far 
more  valuable  to  me.  When  you  compare  a  species  to 
another,  you  sometimes  do  not  mention  the  station  of  the 
latter  (it  being,  I  presume,  well  known),  but  to  non-botanists 
such  words  of  explanation  would  add  greatly  to  the  interest 
— not  that  non-botanists  have  any  claim  at  all  for  such 
explanations  in  professedly  botanical  works.  There  is  one 
expression  which  you  botanists  often  use  (though,  I  think, 
not  you  individually  often),  which  puts  me  in  a  passion — 
viz.,  calling  polleniferous  flowers  "  sterile,"  as  non-seed- 
bearing.1  Are  the  plates  from  your  own  drawings  ?  They 
strike  me  as  excellent.  So  now  you  have  had  my  presump- 
tuous commendations  on   your  great  work. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  319 

Down,  Friday  [1845-6]. 

It  is  quite  curious  how  our  opinions  agree  about  Forbes' 
views.2  I  was  very  glad  to  have  your  last  letter,  which  was 
even  more  valuable  to  me  than  most  of  yours  are,  and  that  is 
saying,  I  assure  you,  a  great  deal.  I  had  written  to  Forbes 
to  object  about  the  Azores3  on  the  same  grounds  as  you  had, 
and  he  made  some  answer,  which  partially  satisfied  me,  but 
really  I  am  so  stupid  I  cannot  remember  it.  He  insisted 
strongly  on  the  fewness  of  the  species  absolutely  peculiar  to 
the  Azores — most  of  the  non-European  species  being  common 
to  Madeira.  1  had  thought  that  a  good  sprinkling  were 
absolutely  peculiar.  Till  I  saw  him  last  Wednesday  I  thought 
he  had  not  a  leg  to  stand  on  in  his  geology  about  his  post- 
Miocene  land  ;  and  his  reasons,  upon  reflection,  seem  rather 
weak :  the  main  one  is  that  there  are  no  deposits  (more 
recent  than  the  Miocene  age)  on  the  Miocene  strata  of  Malta, 
etc.,  but  I  feel  pretty  sure  that  this  cannot  be  trusted  as 
evidence  that  Malta  must  have  been  above  water  during  all 
the  post-Miocene  period.     He  had  one  other  reason,  to  my 


1  See  Letter  16,  p.  48. 

2  See  Letter  20. 

3  Edward  Forbes  supposed  that  the  Azores,  the  Madeiras,  and  Canaries 
"  are  the  last  remaining  fragments  "  of  a  continent  which  once  connected 
them  with  Western  Europe  and  Northern  Spain.  Lyelts  Princifi/cs, 
Ed.  XL,  Vol.  II.,  p.  410.     See  Forbes,  op.  cit. 


412  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  319  mind  still   less  trustworthy.     I   had  also  written  to  Forbes, 
before  your  letter,  objecting  to  the  Sargassum}  but  apparently 
on  wrong  grounds,  for  I  could  see  no  reason,  on  the  common 
view  of  absolute  creations,  why  one  Focus  should  not  have 
been  created  for  the  ocean,  as  well  as  several  Confervae  for  the 
same  end.     It  is  really  a  pity  that  Forbes  is  quite  so  specula- 
tive :  he  will  injure  his  reputation,  anyhow,  on  the  Continent  ; 
and  thus  will  do   less  good.      I    find   this  is  the  opinion   of 
Falconer,  who  was  with  us  on  Sunday,  and  was  extremely 
agreeable.     It  is  wonderful  how  much  heterogeneous  informa- 
tion he  has  about  all   sorts  of  things.      I   the  more   regret 
Forbes   cannot    more    satisfactorily    prove    his    views,   as     I 
heartily  wish  they  were  established,  and  to  a  limited  extent 
I  fully  believe  they  are  true  ;  but  his  boldness  is  astounding. 
Do  I  understand  your  letter  right,  that  West  Africa2  and  Java 
belong  to  the  same  botanical  region — i.e.,  that  they  have  many 
non-littoral  species  in  common?     If  so,  it  is  a  sickening  fact : 
think  of  the  distance  with  the  Indian  Ocean  interposed  !     Do 
some  time  answer  mc  this.     With  respect  to  polymorphism, 
which  you  have  been  so  very  kind  as  to  give  me  so  much 
information  on,  I  am  quite  convinced  it  must  be  given  up  in  the 
sense  you  have  discussed  it  in  ;  but  from  such  cases  as  the 
Galapagos  birds  and  from  hypothetical  notions  on  variation, 
I  should  be  very  glad  to  know  whether  it  must  be  given  up 
in  a  slightly  different   point  of  view  ;    that  is,   whether  the 
peculiar    insular    species    are    generally   well    and    strongly 
distinguishable  from  the  species  on  the  nearest  continent  (when 
there  is  a  continent  near)  ;  the  Galapagos,  Canary  Islands,  and 
Madeira  ought  to  answer  this.     I  should  have  hypothetically 
expected  that  a  good  many  species   would    have  been  fine 
ones,  like  some  of  the  Galapagos  birds,  and  still  more  so  on 
the  different  islands  of  such  groups. 

I  am  going  to  ask  you  some  questions,  but  I  should  really 
sometimes  almost  be  glad  if  you  did  not  answer  me  for  a  long 
time,  or  not  at  all,  for  in  honest  truth  I  am  often  ashamed  at, 
and  marvel  at,  your  kindness  in   writing  such  long  letters  to 

1  Edward  Forbes  supposed  that  the  Sargassum  or  Gulf-weed  repre- 
sents the  littoral  sea-weeds  of  a  now  submerged  continent.  Mem.  Geol. 
Survey  Great  Britain,  Vol.  I.,  1846,  p.  349-  See  Lyell's  Principles,  II., 
p.  396,  Ed.  xi. 

»  This  is  of  course  a  misunderstanding. 


1843—1882]  VARIATION  413 

me.  So  I  beg  you  to  mind,  never  to  write  to  me  when  it  Letter  319 
bores  you.  Do  you  know  "  Elements  de  Teratologic  (on 
monsters,  I  believe)  Vegetale,  par  A.  Moquin  Tandon  "  ?  J  Is  it 
a  good  book,  and  will  it  treat  on  hereditary  malconformations 
or  varieties?  I  have  almost  finished  the  tremendous  task  of 
850  pages  of  A.  St.  Hilaire's  Lectures,2  which  you  set  me,  and 
very  glad  I  am  that  you  told  me  to  read  it,  for  I  have  been 
much  interested  with  parts.  Certain  expressions  which  run 
through  the  whole  work  put  me  in  a  passion  :  thus  I  take, 
at  hazard,  "  la  plante  n  etait  pas  tout  a  fait  Assez  affaiblie 
pour  produire  de  veritables  carpelles."  Every  organ  or  part 
concerned  in  reproduction — that  highest  end  of  all  lower 
organisms — is,  according  to  this  man,  produced  by  a  lesser 
or  greater  degree  of  "  affaiblissement  "  ;  and  if  that  is  not  an 
affaiblissement  of  language,  I  don't  know  what  is.  I  have  used 
an  expression  here,  which  leads  me  to  ask  another  question  : 
on  what  sort  of  grounds  do  botanists  make  one  family  of 
plants  higher  than  another?  I  can  see  that  the  simplest 
cryptogamic  are  lowest,  and  I  suppose,  from  their  relations, 
the  monocotyledenous  come  next ;  but  how  in  the  different 
families  of  the  dicotyledons  ?  The  point  seems  to  me  equally 
obscure  in  many  races  of  animals,  and  I  know  not  how  to  tell 
whether  a  bee  or  cicindela  is  highest.3  I  see  Aug.  Hilaire 
uses  a  multiplicity  of  parts — several  circles  of  stamens,  etc. — as 
evidence  of  the  highness  of  the  Ranunculaceas  ;  now  Owen  has 
truly,  as  I  believe,  used  the  same  argument  to  show  the 
lowness  of  some  animals,  and  has  established  the  proposition, 
that  the  fewer  the  number  of  any  organ,  as  legs  or  wings  or 
teeth,  by  which  the  same  end  is  gained,  the  higher  the  animal. 
One  other  question.  Hilaire  says  (p.  572)  that  "chez  une 
foule  de  plantes  e'est  dans  le  bouton,"  that  impregnation  takes 
place.  He  instances  only  Goodcnia,4-  and  Falconer  cannot 
recollect  any  cases.  Do  you  know  any  of  this  "foule"  of 
plants?  From  reasons,  little  better  than  hypothetical,  I 
greatly  misdoubt  the  accuracy  of  this,  presumptuous  as  it  is  ; 
that  plants  shed  their  pollen  in  the  bud  is,  of  course,  quite 
a  different   story.     Can   you    illuminate  me?     Henslow  will 

1  Paris,  1 84 1. 

2  Leqons  de  Hot  unique,  1841. 

3  On  use  of  terms  "high"  and  "low"  see  Letters  36  and  70. 
1  For  letters  on  this  point,  see  Index  s.v.  Goodenia. 


4H  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  319  send  the  Galapagos  scraps  to  you.  I  direct  this  to  Kcw,  as  I 
suppose,  after  your  sister's  marriage  (on  which  I  beg  to  send 
you  my  congratulations),  you  will  return  home. 

There  are  great  fears  that  Falconer  will  have  to  go  out  to 
India — this  will  be  a  grievous  loss  to  Palaeontology. 

Letter  320  To  J.  D.  I  looker. 

Down,  April   10th  [1846]. 

I  was  much  pleased  to  see  and  sign  your  certificate  for  the 
Geological  Society];  we  shall  thus  occasionally,  I  hope,  meet.1 

I  have  been  an  ungrateful  dog  not  to  have  thanked  you 
before  this  for  the  cake  and  books.  The  children  and  their 
betters  pronounced  the  former  excellent,  and  Annie  wanted 
to  know  whether  it  was  the  gentleman  "what  played  with 
us  so."  I  wish  we  were  at  a  more  reasonable  distance,  that 
Emma  and  myself  could  have  called  on  Lady  Hooker  with 
our  congratulations  on  this  occasion.  It  was  very  good  of 
you  to  put  in  both  numbers  of  the  Hart.  Journal.  I  think 
Dean  Herbert's  article  well  worth  reading.  I  have  been  so 
extravagant  as  to  order  M[oquin]  Tandon,2  for  though  I  have 
not  found,  as  yet,  anything  particularly  novel  or  striking,  yet  ■ 
I  found  that  I  wished  to  score  a  good  many  passages  so  as  to 
re-read  them  at  some  future  time,  and  hence  have  ordered  the 
book.  Consequently  I  hope  soon  to  send  back  your  books. 
I  have  sent  off  the  Ascension  plants  through  Bunsen  to 
Ehrenberg. 

There  was  much  in  your  last  long  letter  which  interested 
me  much  ;  and  I  am  particularly  glad  that  you  are  going  to 
attend  to  polymorphism  in  our  last  and  incorrect  sense  in 
your  works ;  I  see  that  it  must  be  most  difficult  to  take  any 
sort  of  constant  limit  for  the  amount  of  possible  variation. 
How  heartily  I  do  wish  that  all  your  works  were  out  and 
complete  ;  so  that  I  could  quietly  think  over  them.  I  fear 
the  Pacific  Islands  must  be  far  distant  in  futurity.  I  fear, 
indeed,  that  Forbes  is  going  rather  too  quickly  ahead  ;  but 
we  shall  soon  see  all  his  grounds,  as  I  hear  he  is  now  correct- 
ing the  press  on  this  subject ;  he  has  plenty  of  people  who 
attack  him  ;   I  see  Falconer  never  loses  a  chance,  and  it  is 

1  Sir  Joseph  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Geological  Society  in  1846. 
3  Probably  Elements  de  Teratologic  Vegetale:  Paris,  1841. 


i843— 1882]  MORPHOLOGY 


415 


wonderful  how  well  Forbes  stands  it.     What  a  very  striking  Letter  320 
fact  is  the  botanical  relation  between  Africa  and  Java  ;  as 
you  now  state  it,  I  am  pleased  rather  than  disgusted,  for  it 
accords  capitally  with  the  distribution  of  the  mammifers  1 :  only 
that  I  judge  from  your  letters  that  the  Cape  differs  even  more 
markedly  than   I   had  thought,  from  the  rest  of  Africa,  and 
much  more  than  the  mammifers  do.     I  am  surprised  to  find 
how  well    mammifers   and    plants    seem   to  accord    in    their 
general  distribution.     With  respect  to  my  strong  objection  to 
Aug.  St.  Hilaire's  language  on  affaiblissement?  it  is  perhaps 
hardly  rational,  and  yet  he  confesses  that  some  of  the  most 
vigorous  plants  in  nature  have  some  of  their  organs  struck 
with  this  weakness — he  does  not  pretend,  of  course,  that  they 
were  ever  otherwise  in  former  generations — or  that  a  more 
vigorously  growing  plant  produces  organs  less  weakened,  and 
thus  fails  in  producing  its  typical  structure.     In  a  plant  in  a 
state  of  nature,  does  cutting  off  the  sap  tend  to  produce  flower- 
buds  ?     I  know  it  does  in  trees  in  orchards.     Owen  has  been 
doing  some  grand  work  in  the  morphology  of  the  vertebrata  : 
your  arm  and  hand  are  parts  of  your  head,  or  rather  the 
processes  {i.e.  modified  ribs)  of  the  occipital  vertebra  !     He 
gave  me  a  grand  lecture  on  a  cod's  head.     By  the  way,  would 
it  not  strike  you  as  monstrous,  if  in  speaking  of  the  minute 
and  lessening  jaws,  palpi,  etc.,  of  an  insect  or  crustacean,  any 
one  were  to  say  they  were  produced  by  the  affaiblissement  of 
the  less  important  but  larger  organs  of  locomotion.     I  see 
from  your  letter  (though  I  do  not  suppose  it  is  worth  referring 
to  the  subject)  that  I  could  not  have  expressed  what  I  meant 
when  I  allowed  you  to  infer  that  Owen's  rule  of  single  organs 
being  of  a  higher  order  than  multiple  organs  applied  only  to 
locomotive,  etc.;  it  applies  to  every  the  most  important  organ. 
I  do  not  doubt  that  he  would  say  the  placentata  having  single 
wombs,  whilst  the  marsupiata  have  double  ones,  is  an  instance 
of  this  law.     I  believe,  however,  in  most  instances  where  one 
organ,  as  a  nervous  centre  or  heart,  takes  the  places  of  several, 

1  See  Wallace,  Geogr.  Distribution,  Vol.  I.,  p.  263,  on  the  "special 
Oriental  or  even  Malayan  element "  in  the  West  African  mammals  and 
birds. 

2  This  refers  to  his  Lcqons  de  Botanique  (Morphologic  Vi'getale), 
1841.  Saint-Hilaire  often  explains  morphological  differences  as  due  to 
differences  in  vigour.     See  p.  413. 


416  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  320  it  rises  in  complexity  ;  but  it  strikes  me  as  really  odd,  seeing 
in  this  instance  eminent  botanists  and  zoologists  starting  from 
reverse  grounds.  Pray  kindly  bear  in  mind  about  impregna- 
tion in  bud  :  I  have  never  (for  some  years  having  been  on  the 
look-out)  heard  of  an  instance :  I  have  long  wished  to  know 
how  it  was  in  Subularia,  or  some  such  name,  which  grows 
on  the  bottom  of  Scotch  lakes,  and  likewise  in  a  grassy 
plant,  which  lives  in  brackish  water,  I  quite  forget  name, 
near  Thames ;  elder  botanists  doubted  whether  it  was  a 
Phanerogam.  When  we  meet  I  will  tell  you  why  I  doubt  this 
bud-impregnation. 

We  are  at  present  in  a  state  of  utmost  confusion,  as  we 
have  pulled  all  our  offices  down  and  are  going  to  rebuild  and 
alter  them.  I  am  personally  in  a  state  of  utmost  confusion 
also,  for  my  cruel  wife  has  persuaded  me  to  leave  off  snuff  for 
a  month  ;  and  I  am  most  lethargic,  stupid,  and  melancholy  in 
consequence. 

Farewell,  my  dear  Hooker.     Ever  yours. 

r  „     ,„,  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Letter  321  J 

Down,  April  19th  [1855]. 

Thank  you  for  your  list  of  R.S.  candidates,  which  will  be 
very  useful  to  me. 

I  have  thought  a  good  deal  about  my  salting  experiments,1 
and  really  think  they  are  worth  pursuing  to  a  certain  extent  ; 
but  I  hardly  see  the  use  (at  least,  the  use  equivalent  to  the 
enormous  labour)  of  trying  the  experiment  on  the  immense 
scale  suggested  by  you.  I  should  think  a  few  seeds  of  the 
leading  orders,  or  a  few  seeds  of  each  of  the  classes  mentioned 
by  you,  with  albumen  of  different  kinds  would  suffice  to  show 
the  possibility  of  considerable  sea-transportal.  To  tell  whether 
any  particular  insular  flora  had  thus  been  transported  would 
require  that  each  species  should  be  examined.  Will  you  look 
through  these  printed  lists,  and  if  you  can,  mark  with  red  cross 
such  as  you  would  suggest  ?     In  truth,  I  fear  I  impose  far  more 

1  For  an  account  of  Darwin's  experiments  on  the  effect  of  salt  water  on 
the  germination  of  seeds,  see  Life  and  Letters,  II,  p.  54.  In  April  he  wrote 
to  the  Gardeners'  Chronicle  asking  for  information,  and  his  results  were 
published  in  the  same  journal,  May  26th  and  Nov.  24th,  1855  ;  also  in 
the  Linn.  Soc.  Journal,  1857. 


1843— 1882]  FLOATING    SEEDS  417 

on  your  great  kindness,  my  dear  Hooker,  than  I  have  any  Letter  321 
claim  ;  but  you  offered  this,  for  I  never  thought  of  asking  you 
for  more  than  a  suggestion.  I  do  not  think  I  could  manage 
more  than  forty  or  fifty  kinds  at  a  time,  for  the  water,  I  find, 
must  be  renewed  every  other  day,  as  it  gets  to  smell  horribly  : 
and  I  do  not  think  your  plan  good  of  little  packets  of  cambric, 
as  this  entangles  so  much  air.  I  shall  keep  the  great  receptacle 
with  salt  water  with  the  forty  or  fifty  little  bottles,  partly  open, 
immersed  in  it,  in  the  cellar  for  uniform  temperature.  I  must 
plant  out  of  doors,  as  I  have  no  greenhouse. 

I  told  you  I  had  inserted  notice  in  the  Gardeners'  Chronicle, 
and  to-day  I  have  heard  from  Berkeley  that  he  has  already 
sent  an  assortment  of  seeds  to  Margate  for  some  friend  to  put 
in  salt  water  ;  so  I  suppose  he  thinks  the  experiment  worth 
trying,  as  he  has  thus  so  very  promptly  taken  it  into  his  own 
hands.1 

Reading  this  over,  it  sounds  as  if  I  were  offended  ! ! !  which 
I  need  not  say  is  not  so.2 

I  may  just  mention  that  the  seeds  mentioned  in  my  former 
note  have  all  germinated  after  fourteen  days'  immersion, 
except  the  cabbages  all  dead,  and  the  radishes  have  had  their 
germination  delayed  and  several  I  think  dead  ;  cress  still  all 
most  vigorous.  French  spinach,  oats,  barley,  canary-seed, 
borage,  beet  have  germinated  after  seven  days'  immersion. 

It  is  quite  surprising  that  the  radishes  should  have  grown, 
for  the  salt  water  was  putrid  to  an  extent  which  I  could  not 
have  thought  credible  had  I  not  smelt  it  myself,  as  was  the 
water  with  the  cabbage-seed. 

To  J.  D.   Hooker. 

Down,  June  10th  [1855]. 

If  being  thoroughly  interested  with  your  letters  makes  me 
worthy  of  them,  I  am  very  worthy. 

1  have  raised  some  seedling  Sensitive  Plants,  but  if  you 
can  readily  spare  me  a  moderately  sized  plant,  I  shall  be 
glad  of  it. 

You  encourage  me  so,  that  I  will  slowly  go  on  salting- 
seeds.     I  have  not,  I  see,  explained  myself,  to  let  you  suppose 

1  Rev.   M.  J.  Berkeley  published  on  the   subject  in  the  Gardener? 
Chronicle,  Sept.  1st,  1855. 

2  Added  afterwards  between  the  lines. 

27 


& 


418  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  322  that  1  objected  to  such  cases  as  the  former  union  of  England 
and  the  Continent  ;  I  look  at  this  case  as  proved  by  animals, 
etc.,  etc.  ;  and,  indeed,  it  would  be  an  astounding  fact  if  the 
land  had  kept  so  steady  as  that  they  had  not  been  united, 
with  Snowdon  elevated  1,300  feet  in  recent  times,  etc.,  etc. 

It  is  only  against  the  former  union  with  the  oceanic 
volcanic  islands  that  I  am  vehement.1  What  a  perplexing  case 
New  Zealand  does  seem:  is  not  the  absence  of  Leguminosas, 
etc.,  etc.,/«//j'  as  much  opposed  to  continental  connexion  as  to 
any  other  theory  ?  What  a  curious  fact  you  state  about 
distribution  and  lowness  going  together. 

The  presence  of  a  frog  in  New  Zealand  seems  to  me  a 
strongish  fact  for  continental  connexion,  for  I  assume  that 
sea  water  would  kill  spawn,  but  I  shall  try.  The  spawn,  I  find, 
will  live  about  ten  days  out  of  water,  but  I  do  not  think  it 
could  possibly  stick   to  a  bird. 

\\  hat  you  say  about  no  one  realising  creation  strikes  me 
as  very  true  ;  but  I  think  and  hope  that  there  is  nearly  as 
much  difference  between  trying  to  find  out  whether  species  of 
a  genus  have  had  a  common  ancestor  and  concerning  oneself 
with  the  first  origin  of  life,  as  between  making  out  the  laws 
of  chemical  attraction  and  the  first  origin  of  matter. 

I  thought  that  Gray's  letter  had  come  open  to  you,  and 
that  you  had  read  it :  you  will  see  what  I  asked — viz.,  for 
habitats  of  the  alpine  plants,  but  I  presume  there  will  be 
nothing  new  to  you.  Please  return  both.  How  pleasantly 
Gray  takes  my  request,  and  I  think  I  shall  have  done  a  good 
turn  if  I  make  him  write  a  paper  on  geographical  distribution 
of  plants  of  United  States. 

I  have  written  him  a  very  long  letter,  telling  him  some  of 
the  points  about  which  I  should  feel  curious.  But  on  my  life 
it  is  sublimely  ridiculous,  my  making  suggestions  to  such 
a  man. 

I  cannot  help  thinking  that  what  you  say  about  low 
plants  being  widely  distributed  and  standing  injurious  con- 
ditions better  than  higher  ones  (but  is  not  this  most  difficult 
to  show?)  is  equally  favourable  to  sea-transport,  to  continental 
connexions,  and  all  other  means.  Pray  do  not  suppose  that 
I  fancy  that  if  I  could  show  that  nearly  all  seeds  could  stand 
an  almost  indefinite  period  of  immersion  in  sea-water,  that  I 

1  See  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  72,  74,  80,  109. 


i843—  JS82]  FLOATING    SEEDS  419 

have   done    more  than  one  extremely   small  step   in    solving  Letter  322 
the  problem  of  distribution,   for   I   can   quite  appreciate  the 
importance  of  the  fact  you  point  out  ;  and  then  the  directions 
of  currents  in  past  and  present  times  have  to  be  considered  !  1 

I  shall  be  very  curious  to  hear  Berkeley's  results  in  the 
salting  line. 

With  respect  to  geological  changes,  I  ought  to  be  one 
of  the  last  men  to  undervalue  them  after  my  map  of  coral 
islands,  and  after  what  I  have  seen  of  elevation  on  coast  of 
America.  Farewell.  I  hope  my  letters  do  not  bother  you. 
Again,  and  for  the  last  time,  I  say  that  I  should  be  extremely 
vexed  if  ever  you  write  to  me  against  the  grain  or  when  tired. 

To  J.   S.    Henslow.  Letter  323 

Down,  July  2nd  [1855]. 

Very  many  thanks  for  all  you  have  done,  and  so  very 
kindly  promise  to  do  for  me. 

Will  you  make  a  present  to  each  of  the  little  girls  (if  not 
too  big  and  grandiose)  of  6d.  (for  which  I  send  stamps),  who 
are  going  to  collect  seeds  for  me  :  viz.,  Lychnis,  white,  red,  and 
flesh-colour  (if  such  occur). 

.  .  .  Will  you  be  so  kind  as  to  look  at  them  before  sent, 
just  to  see  positively  that  they  are  correct,  for  remember  how 
ignorant  botanically  I  am. 

Do  you  see  the  Gardeners'  Chronicle,  and  did  you  notice 
some  little  experiments  of  mine  on  salting  seeds  ?  Celery  and 
onion  seed  have  come  up  after  eighty-five  days'  immersion  in 
the  salt  water,  which  seems  to  me  surprising,  and  I  think 
throws  some  light  on  the  wide  dispersion  of  certain  plants. 
Now,  it  has  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be  an  interesting 
way  of  testing  the  probability  of  sea-transportal  of  seeds,  to 
make  a  list  of  all  the  European  plants  found  in  the  Azores — 
a  very  oceanic  archipelago — collect  the  seeds,  and  try  if  they 
would  stand  a  pretty  long  immersion.  Do  you  think  the 
most  able  of  your  little  girls  would  like  to  collect  for  me  a 
packet  of  seeds  of  such  Azorean  plants  as  grow  near  Hitcham, 
I  paying,  say  3^.  for  each  packet  :  it  would  put  a  few  shillings 
into  their  pockets,  and  would  be  an  enormous  advantage  to 
me,  for  I  grudge  the  time  to  collect  the  seeds,  more  especially 
as  I  have  to  learn  the  plants  !  The  experiment  seems  to 
me  worth  trying  :  what  do  you  think  ?     Should  you  object 


420  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  323  offering  for  me  this  reward  or  payment  to  your  little  girls  ? 
You  would  have  to  select  the  most  conscientious  ones,  that  I 
might  not  get  wrong  seeds.  I  have  just  been  comparing  the 
lists,  and  I  suspect  you  would  not  have  very  many  of  the 
Azorean  plants.     You  have,  however, 

Ranunculus  repens, 

„  parviflorus, 

Papaver  r/icras,  ? 

„        dubium,  ? 
Chelidonium  majus,  ? 
Fumaria  officinalis.  ? 

All  these  are  Azorean  plants. 

With  respect  to  cultivating  plants,  I  mean  to  begin  on 
very  few,  for  I  may  find  it  too  troublesome.  I  have  already 
had  for  some  months  primroses  and  cowslips,  strongly 
manured  with  guano,  and  with  flowers  picked  off,  and  one 
cowslip  made  to  grow  in  shade;  and  nexi  spring  I  shall 
collect  seed. 

I  think  you  have  quite  misunderstood  me  in  regard  to  my 
object  in  getting  you  to  mark  in  accompanying  list  with  (  x  ) 
all  the  "  close  species  " 1  i.e.,  such  as  you  do  not  think  to  be 
varieties,  but  which  nevertheless  are  very  closely  allied  ;  it 
has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  their  cultivation,  but  I 
cannot  tell  you  [my]  object,  as  it  might  unconsciously  influence 
you  in  marking  them.  Will  you  draw  your  pencil  right 
through  all  the  names  of  those  (few)  species,  of  which  you 
may  know  nothing.  Afterwards,  when  done,  I  will  tell  you 
my  object — not  that  it  is  worth  telling,  though  I  myself  am 
very  curious  on  the  subject.  I  know  and  can  perceive  that 
the  definition  of  "  close  species  "  is  very  vague,  and  therefore 
I  should  not  care  for  the  list  being  marked  by  any  one,  except 
by  such  as  yourself. 

Forgive  this  long  letter.  I  thank  you  heartily  for  all 
your  assistance. 

My  dear  old  Master, 

Yours  affectionately, 

C.  Darwin. 

Perhaps  id.  would  be  hardly  enough,  and  if  the  number  of 
kinds  does  not  turn  out  very  great  it  shall  be  6d.  per  packet. 

1  See  Letter  279,  p.  368. 


1843—1882]  CLOSE    SPECIES  421 

Asa  Gray  to  C.  Darwin.1  Letter  324 

Harvard  University,  Cambridge,  U.S.,  June  30th,  1855. 

Your  long  letter  of  the  8th  inst.  is  full  of  interest  to  me, 
and  I  shall  follow  out  your  hints  as  far  as  I  can.  I  rejoice 
in  furnishing  facts  to  others  to  work  up  in  their  bearing  on 
general  questions,  and  feel  it  the  more  my  duty  to  do  so 
inasmuch  as  from  preoccupation  of  mind  and  time  and  want 
of  experience  I  am  unable  to  contribute  direct  original  in- 
vestigations of  the  sort  to  the  advancement  of  science. 

Your  request  at  the  close  of  your  letter,  which  you  have 
such  needless  hesitation  in  making,  is  just  the  sort  of  one 
which  it  is  easy  for  me  to  reply  to,  as  it  lies  directly  in  my 
way.  It  would  probably  pass  out  of  my  mind,  however,  at 
the  time  you  propose,  so  I  will  attend  to  it  at  once,  to  fill  up 
the  intervals  of  time  left  me  while  attending  to  one  or  two 
pupils.  So  I  take  some  unbound  sheets  of  a  copy  of  the 
Manual,  and  mark  off  the  "  close  species  "  by  connecting 
them  with  a  bracket. 

Those  thus  connected,  some  of  them,  I  should  in  revision 
unite  under  one,  many  more  Dr.  Hooker  would  unite,  and 
for  the  rest  it  would  not  be  extraordinary  if,  in  any  case,  the 
discovery  of  intermediate  forms  compelled  their  union. 

As  I  have  noted  on  the  blank  page  of  the  sheets  I  send 
you  (through  Sir  William  Hooker),  I  suppose  that  if  we 
extended  the  area,  say  to  that  of  our  flora  of  North  America, 
we  should  find  that  the  proportion  of  "  close  species  "  to  the 
whole  flora  increased  considerably.  But  here  I  speak  at  a 
venture.     Some  day   I  will  test  it  for  a  few  families. 

If  you  take  for  comparison  with  what  I  send  you,  the 
British  Flora,  or  Koch's  Flora  Germanica,  or  Godron's  Flora 
of  France,  and  mark  the  "  close  species  "  on  the  same  principle, 
you  will  doubtless  find  a  much  greater  number.  Of  course 
you  will  not  infer  from  this  that  the  two  floras  differ  in  this 
respect  ;  since  the  difference  is  probably  owing  to  the  facts 
that  (1)  there  have  not  been  so  many  observers  here  bent  upon 
detecting  differences  ;  and  (2)  our  species,  thanks  mostly  to 
Dr.  Torrey  and  myself,  have  been  more  thoroughly  castigated. 
What  stands  for  one  species  in  the  Manual  would  figure  in 

1   In  reply  to  Darwin's  letter,  June  8th,  1S55,  given  in  Life  and  I  ettcrs, 
II.,  p.  61. 


422  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  324  almost  any  European  flora  as  two,  three,  or  more,  in  a  very 
considerable  number  of  cases. 

In  boldly  reducing  nominal  species  J.  Hooker  is  doing  a 
good  work  ;  but  his  vocation — like  that  of  any  other  reformer 
— exposes  him  to  temptations  and  dangers. 

Because  you  have  shown  that  a  and  b  arc  so  connected  by 
intermediate  forms  that  we  cannot  do  otherwise  than  regard 
them  as  variations  of  one  species,  we  may  not  conclude  that  c 
and  d,  differing  much  in  the  same  way  and  to  the  same  degree, 
are  of  one  species,  before  an  equal  amount  of  evidence  is  actually 
obtained.  That  is,  when  two  sets  of  individuals  exhibit  any 
grave  differences,  the  burden  of  proof  of  their  common  origin 
lies  with  the  person  who  takes  that  view ;  and  each  case  must 
be  decided  on  its  own  evidence,  and  not  on  analogy,  if  our 
conclusions  in  this  way  are  to  be  of  real  value.  Of  course  we 
must  often  jump  at  conclusions  from  imperfect  evidence.  I 
should  like  to  write  an  essay  on  species  some  day ;  but  before 
I  should  have  time  to  do  it,  in  my  plodding  way,  I  hope  you 
or  Hooker  will  do  it,  and  much  better  far.  I  am  most  glad 
to  be  in  conference  with  Hooker  and  yourself  on  these 
matters,  and  I  think  we  may,  or  rather  you  may,  in  a  few 
years  settle  the  question  as  to  whether  Agassiz's  or  Hooker's 
views  are  correct ;  they  are  certainly  widely  different. 

Apropos  to  this,  many  thanks  for  the  paper  containing 
your  experiments  on  seeds  exposed  to  sea  water.  Why  has 
nobody  thought  of  trying  the  experiment  before,  instead  of 
taking  it  for  granted  that  salt  water  kills  seeds?  I  shall  have 
it  nearly  all  reprinted  in  Silliman's  Journal  as  a  nut  for 
Agassiz  to  crack. 

Letter  325  To  Asa  Gray. 

Down,  May  2nd  [1856?] 
I  have  received  your  very  kind  note  of  April  8th.  In 
truth  it  is  preposterous  in  me  to  give  you  hints  ;  but  it  will 
give  me  real  pleasure  to  write  to  you  just  as  I  talk  to  Hooker, 
who  says  my  questions  are  sometimes  suggestive  owing  to  my 
comparing  the  ranges,  etc.,  in  different  kingdoms  of  Nature. 
I  will  make  no  further  apologies  about  my  presumption  ;  but 
will  just  tell  you  (though  I  am  certain  there  will  be  veiy  little 
new  in  what  I  suggest  and  ask)  the  points  on  which  I  am  very 
anxious  to  hear  about.     I  forget  whether  you  include  Arctic 


1843—1882]  N.    AMERICAN     FLORA  423 

America,  but  if  so,  for  comparison  with  other  parts  of  world,  Letter  325 
I  would  exclude  the  Arctic  and  Alpine- Arctic,  as  belonging  to 
a  quite  distinct  category.  When  excluding  the  naturalised, 
I  think  De  Candolle  must  be  right  in  advising  the  exclusion 
(giving  list)  of  plants  exclusively  found  in  cultivated  land,  even 
when  it  is  not  known  that  they  have  been  introduced  by  man. 
I  would  give  list  of  temperate  plants  (if  any)  found  in  Eastern 
Asia,  China,  and  Japan,  and  not  elsewhere.  Nothing  would 
eive  me  a  better  idea  of  the  flora  of  United  States  than  the 
proportion  of  its  genera  to  all  the  genera  which  are  confined 
to  America  ;  and  the  proportion  of  genera  confined  to  America 
and  Eastern  Asia  with  Japan  ;  the  remaining  genera  would 
be  common  to  America  and  Europe  and  the  rest  of  world  ;  I 
presume  it  would  be  impossible  to  show  any  especial  affinity 
in  genera,  if  ever  so  few,  between  America  and  Western 
Europe.  America  might  be  related  to  Eastern  Asia  (always 
excluding  Arctic  forms)  by  a  genus  having  the  same  species 
confined  to  these  two  regions  ;  or  it  might  be  related  by  the 
genus  having  different  species,  the  genus  itself  not  being  found 
elsewhere.  The  relation  of  the  genera  (excluding  identical 
species)  seems  to  me  a  most  important  element  in  geographical 
distribution  often  ignored,  and  I  presume  of  more  difficult 
application  in  plants  than  in  animals,  owing  to  the  wider 
ranges  of  plants  ;  but  I  find  in  New  Zealand  (from  Hooker) 
that  the  consideration  of  genera  with  representative  species 
tells  the  story  of  relationship  even  plainer  than  the  identity  of 
the  species  with  the  different  parts  of  the  world.  I  should 
like  to  see  the  genera  of  the  United  States,  say  500  (exclud- 
ing Arctic  and  Alpine)  divided  into  three  classes,  with  the 
proportions  given  thus  : — 

375$  American  genera ; 

fgs  Old  World  genera,  but  not  having  any  identical 

species  in  common  ; 
If!"   Old  World    genera,  but  having  some  identical 

species  in  common  ; 

Supposing  that  these  200  genera  included  600  U.S.  plants, 
then  the  600  would  be  the  denominator  to  the  fraction  of 
the  species  common  to  the  Old  World.  But  I  am  running 
on  at  a  foolish  length. 

There  is  an  interesting  discussion  in  De  Candolle  (about 


424  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION        [Chap.  VI 

Letter  325  pp.  503-514)  on  the  relation  of  the  size  of  families  to  the 
average  range  of  the  individual  species  ;  I  cannot  but  think, 
from  some  facts  which  I  collected  long  before  De  Candolle 
appeared,  that  he  is  on  wrong  scent  in  having  taken 
families  (owing  to  their  including  too  great  a  diversity  in  the 
constitution  of  the  species),  but  that  if  he  had  taken  genera, 
he  would  have  found  that  the  individual  species  in  large 
genera  range  over  a  greater  area  than  do  the  species  in 
small  genera  :  I  think  if  you  have  materials  that  this  would 
be  well  worth  working  out,  for  it  is  a  very  singular  relation. 

With  respect  to  naturalised  plants :  are  any  social  with 
you,  which  are  not  so  in  their  parent  country?  I  am  surprised 
that  the  importance  of  this  has  not  more  struck  De  Candolle. 
Of  these  naturalised  plants  are  any  or  many  more  variable  in 
your  opinion  than  the  average  of  your  United  States  plants  ? 
I  am  aware  how  very  vague  this  must  be  ;  but  De  Candolle 
has  stated  that  the  naturalised  plants  do  not  present  varieties; 
but  being  very  variable  and  presenting  distinct  varieties  seems 
to  me  rather  a  different  case  :  if  you  would  kindly  take  the 
trouble  to  answer  this  question  I  should  be  very  much  obliged, 
whether  or  no  you  will  enter  on  such  points  in  your  essay. 

With  respect  to  such  plants,  which  have  their  southern 
limits  within  your  area,  are  the  individuals  ever  or  often 
stunted  in  their  growth  or  unhealthy  ?  I  have  in  vain 
endeavoured  to  find  any  botanist  who  has  observed  this 
point ;  but  I  have  seen  some  remarks  by  Barton  on  the 
trees  in  United  States.  Trees  seem  in  this  respect  to 
behave  rather  differently  from  other  plants. 

It  would  be  a  very  curious  point,  but  I  fear  you  would 
think  it  out  of  your  essay,  to  compare  the  list  of  European 
plants  in  Tierra  del  Fuego  (in  Hooker)  with  those  in  North 
America ;  for,  without  multiple  creation,  I  think  we  must 
admit  that  all  now  in  T.  del  Fuego  must  have  travelled 
through  North  America,  and  so  far  they  do  concern  you. 

The  discussion  on  social  plants  (vague  as  the  terms  and 
facts  are)  in  De  Candolle  strikes  me  as  the  best  which  I  have 
ever  seen  :  two  points  strike  me  as  eminently  remarkable  in 
them  ;  that  they  should  ever  be  social  close  to  their  extreme 
limits  ;  and  secondly,  that  species  having  an  extremely  con- 
fined range,  yet  should  be  social  where  they  do  occur :  I 
should  be  infinitely  obliged  for  any  cases  either  by  letter  or 


,943—1882]  SOCIAL    PLANTS  425 

publicly  on  these  heads,  more  especially  in  regard  to  a  species  Letter  325 
remaining  or  ceasing  to  be  social  on  the  confines  of  its  range. 

There  is  one  other  point  on  which  I  individually  should 
be  extremely  much  obliged,  if  you  could  spare  the  time  to 
think  a  little  bit  and  inform  me  :  viz.,  whether  there  are  any 
cases  of  the  same  species  being  more  variable  in  United 
States  than  in  other  countries  in  which  it  is  found,  or  in 
different  parts  of  the  United  States  ?  Wahlenberg  says 
generally  that  the  same  species  in  going  south  become  more 
variable  than  in  extreme  north.  Even  still  more  am  I  anxious 
to  know  whether  any  of  the  genera,  which  have  most  of  their 
species  horribly  variable  (as  Rubus  or  Hieracium  are)  in 
Europe,  or  other  parts  of  the  world,  are  less  variable  in  the 
United  States  ;  or,  the  reverse  case,  whether  you  have  any 
odious  genera  with  you  which  are  less  odious  in  other 
countries?  Any  information  on  this  head  would  be  a  real 
kindness  to  me. 

I  suppose  your  flora  is  too  great  ;  but  a  simple  list  in  close 
columns  in  small  type  of  all  the  species,  genera,  and  families, 
each  consecutively  numbered,  has  always  struck  me  as  most 
useful  ;  and  Hooker  regrets  that  he  did  not  give  such  list  in 
introduction  to  New  Zealand  and  other  Flora.  I  am  sure  I 
have  given  you  a  larger  dose  of  questions  than  you  bargained 
for,  and  I  have  kept  my  word  and  treated  you  just  as  I  do 
Hooker.  Nevertheless,  if  anything  occurs  to  me  during  the 
next  two  months,  I  will  write  freely,  believing  that  you  will 
forgive  me  and  not  think  me  very  presumptuous. 

How  well  De  Candolle  shows  the  necessity  of  comparing 
nearly  equal  areas  for  proportion  of  families  ! 

I  have  re-read  this  letter,  and  it  is  really  not  worth 
sending,  except  for  my  own  sake.  I  see  I  forgot,  in  be- 
ginning, to  state  that  it  appeared  to  me  that  the  six  heads 
of  your  Essay  included  almost  every  point  which  could  be 
desired,  and  therefore  that   I   had  little  to  say. 

To   }.  D.  Hooker.  ,   ,,        , 

■>  Letter   326 

On  July  5th,   1856,  Darwin  wrote  to  Sir  J.   D.   Hooker: 

"  I  am  going  mad  and  am  in  despair  over  your  confounded  Antarctic 
island  flora.  Will  you  read  over  the  Tristan  list,  and  see  if  my  remarks 
on  it  are  at  all  accurate.  I  cannot  make  out  why  you  consider  the 
vegetation  so  Fuegian." 


426  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chai\  VI 

Down,  8th  [July,   1S56]. 

Letter  326  I  do  hope  that  this  note  may  arrive  in  time  to  save  you 
trouble  in  one  respect.  I  am  perfectly  ashamed  of  myself, 
for  I  find  in  introduction  to  Flora  of  Fuegia1  a  short  dis- 
cussion on  Tristan  plants,  which  though  scored  [i.e.  marked 
in  pencil]  I  had  quite  forgotten  at  the  time,  and  had  thought 
only  of  looking  into  introduction  to  New  Zealand  Flora.  It 
was  very  stupid  of  me.  In  my  sketch  I  am  forced  to  pick  out 
the  most  striking  cases  of  species  which  favour  the  multiple 
creation  doctrine,  without  indeed  great  continental  extensions 
are  admitted.  Of  the  many  wonderful  cases  in  your  books, 
the  one  which  strikes  me  most  is  that  list  of  species,  which 
you  made  for  me,  common  to  New  Zealand  and  America,  and 
confined  to  southern  hemisphere  ;  and  in  this  list  those 
common  to  Chile  and  New  Zealand  seem  to  me  the  most 
wondrous.  I  have  copied  these  out  and  enclosed  them.  Now 
I  will  promise  to  ask  no  more  questions,  if  you  will  tell  me 
a  little  about  these.  What  I  want  to  know  is,  whether  any 
or  many  of  them  are  mountain  plants  of  Chile,  so  as  to  bring 
them  in  some  degree  (like  the  Chonos  plants)  under  the  same 
category  with  the  Fuegian  plants  ?  I  see  that  all  the  genera 
(Edwardsia  even  having  Sandwich  Island  and  Indian  species) 
are  wide-ranging  genera,  except  Myosunts,  which  seems  extra 
wonderful.  Do  any  of  these  genera  cling  to  seaside  ?  Are 
the  other  species  of  these  genera  wide  rangers  ?  Do  be  a 
good  Christian  and  not  hate  me. 

I  began  last  night  to  re-read  your  Galapagos  paper,  and 
to  my  taste  it  is  quite  admirable :  I  see  in  it  some  of  the 
points  which  I  thought  best  in  A.  De  Candolle  !  Such  is  my 
memory. 

Lycll  will  not  express  any  opinion  on  continental  ex- 
tensions.2 


1  Flora  Antarctica,  p.  216.  "Though  only  1,000  miles  distant  from 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  3,000  from  the  Strait  of  Magalhaens,  the 
botany  of  this  island  [Tristan  d'Acunha]  is  far  more  intimately  allied  to 
that  of  Fuegia  than  Africa."  Hooker  goes  on  to  say  that  only  Phylica 
and  Pelargonium  are  Cape  forms,  while  seven  species,  or  one-quarter  of 
the  flora,  "  are  either  natives  of  Fuegia  or  typical  of  South  American 
botany,  and  the  ferns  and  Lycopodia  exhibit  a  still  stronger  affinity." 

3  See  Letters  47,  48. 


1843— 1882]  CONTINENTAL    EXTENSION  427 

To  C.  Lyell.  Letter  327 

Down,  July  8th  [1856]. 

Very  many  thanks  for  your  two  notes,  and  especially  for 
Maury's  map  :  also  for  books  which  you  are  going  to  lend  me. 

I  am  sorry  you  cannot  give  any  verdict  on  continental 
extensions  ;  and  I  infer  that  you  think  my  argument  of  not 
much  weight  against  such  extensions  ;  I  know  I  wish  I 
could  believe.1 

I  have  been  having  a  good  look  at  Maury  (which  I  once 
before  looked  at),  and  in  respect  to  Madeira  &  Co.  I  must 
say,  that  the  chart  seems  to  me  against  land-extension 
explaining  the  introduction  of  organic  beings.  Madeira,  the 
Canaries  and  Azores  are  so  tied  together,  that  I  should  have 
thought  they  ought  to  have  been  connected  by  some  bank,  if 
changes  of  level  had  been  connected  with  their  organic  relation. 
The  Azores  ought,  too,  to  have  shown  more  connection  with 
America.  I  had  sometimes  speculated  whether  icebergs  could 
account  for  the  greater  number  of  European  plants  and  their 
more  northern  character  on  the  Azores,  compared  with 
Madeira  ;  but  it  seems  dangerous  until  boulders  are  found 
there.2 

One  of  the  more  curious  points  in  Maury  is,  as  it  strikes 
me,  in  the  little  change  which  about  9,000  feet  of  sudden 
elevation  would  make  in  the  continent  visible,  and  what  a 
prodigious  change  9,000  feet  subsidence  would  make  !  Is  the 
difference  due  to  denudation  during  elevation  ?  Certainly 
12,000  feet  elevation  would  make  a  prodigious  change.  I  have 
just  been  quoting  you  in  my  essay  on  ice  carrying  seeds  in 
the  southern  hemisphere,  but  this  will  not  do  in  all  the  cases. 
I  have  had  a  week  of  such  hard  labour  in  getting  up  the 
relations  of  all  the  Antarctic  flora  from  Hooker's  admirable 
works.  Oddly  enough,  I  have  just  finished  in  great  detail, 
giving    evidence    of  coolness  in  tropical   regions   during  the 

1  This  paragraph  is  published  in  the  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  78  ;  it 
refers  to  a  letter  (June  25th,  1856,  Life  and  Utters,  II.,  p.  74)  giving 
Darwin's  arguments  against  the  doctrine  of  "Continental  Extension." 
See  Letters  47,  48. 

3  See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  112,  for  a  letter  (April  26th,  1858)  in 
which  Darwin  exults  over  the  discovery  of  boulders  on  the  Azores  and 
the  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy,  which  he  was  characteristically  half 
inclined  to  ascribe  to  Lycll. 


428  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTR I  BUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  327  Glacial  epoch,  and  the  consequent  migration  of  organisms 
through  the  tropics.  There  are  a  good  many  difficulties,  but 
upon  the  whole  it  explains  much.  This  has  been  a  favourite 
notion  with  me,  almost  since  I  wrote  on  erratic  boulders  of 
the  south.  It  harmonises  with  the  modification  of  species  ; 
and  without  admitting  this  awful  postulate,  the  Glacial  epoch 
in  the  south  and  tropics  does  not  work  in  well.  About 
Atlantis,  I  doubt  whether  the  Canary  Islands  are  as  much 
more  related  to  the  continent  as  they  ought  to  be,  if  formerly 
connected  by  continuous  land. 

Hooker,  with  whom  I  have  formerly  discussed  the  notion 
of  the  world  or  great  belts  of  it  having  been  cooler,  though  he 
at  first  saw  great  difficulties  (and  difficulties  there  are  great 
enough),  I  think  is  much  inclined  to  adopt  the  idea.  With 
modification  of  specific  forms  it  explains  some  wondrous  odd 
facts  in  distribution. 

But  I  shall  never  stop  if  I  get  on  this  subject,  on  which  I 
have  been  at  work,  sometimes  in  triumph,  sometimes  in 
despair,  for  the  last  month. 

Letter  328  Asa  Gray  to  C.  Darwin. 

Received  August  20th,   1856. 

I  enclose  you  a  proof  of  the  last  page,  that  you  may  see 
what  our  flora  amounts  to.  The  genera  of  the  Cryptogams 
(Ferns  down  to  Hepatica;)  arc  illustrated  in  fourteen  crowded 
plates.  So  that  the  volume  has  become  rather  formidable  as 
a  class-book,  which  it  is  intended  for. 

I  have  revised  the  last  proofs  to-day.  The  publishers  will 
bring  it  out  some  time  in  August.  Meanwhile,  I  am  going  to 
have  a  little  holiday,  which  I  have  earned,  little  as  I  can  spare 
the  time  for  it.  And  my  wife  and  I  start  on  Friday  to  visit 
my  mother  and  friends  in  West  New  York,  and  on  our  way 
back  I  will  look  in  upon  the  scientific  meeting  at  Albany  on 
the  20th  inst,  or  later,  just  to  meet  some  old  friends  there. 

Why  could  not  you  come  over,  on  the  urgent  invitation 
given  to  European  savans — and  free  passage  provided  back 
and  forth  in  the  steamers?  Yet  1  believe  nobody  is  coming. 
Will  you  not  come  next  year,  if  a  special  invitation  is  sent 
you  on  the  same  terms  ? 

Boott  lately  sent  me  your  photograph,  which  (though  not 
a  very  perfect  one)  I  am  well  pleased  to  have.  .  .  . 


1843— 1882]  N.    AMERICAN    FLORA  429 

But  there  is  another  question  in  your  last  letter — one  Letter  328 
about  which  a  person  can  only  give  an  impression — and 
my  impression  is  that,  speaking  of  plants  of  a  well-known 
flora,  what  we  call  intermediate  varieties  are  generally  less 
numerous  in  individuals  than  the  two  states  which  they 
connect.  That  this  would  be  the  case  in  a  flora  where  things 
are  put  as  they  naturally  should  be,  I  do  not  much  doubt  ;  and 
the  wider  are  your  views  about  species  (say,  for  instance,  with 
Dr  Hooker's  very  latitudinarian  notions)  the  more  plainly 
would  this  appear.  But  practically  two  things  stand  hugely 
in  the  way  of  any  application  of  the  fact  or  principle,  if  such 
it  be.  I.  Our  choice  of  what  to  take  as  the  typical  forms 
very  often  is  not  free.  We  take,  e.g.,  for  one  of  them  the 
particular  form  of  which  Linnaeus,  say,  happened  to  have  a 
specimen  sent  him,  and  on  which  [he]  established  the  species  ; 
and  I  know  more  than  one  case  in  which  that  is  a  rare  form 
of  a  common  species  ;  the  other  variety  will  perhaps  be  the 
opposite  extreme — whether  the  most  common  or  not,  or  will 
be  what  L.  or  [illegible]  described  as  a  2nd  species.  Here 
various  intermediate  forms  may  be  the  most  abundant. 
2.  It  is  just  the  same  thing  now,  in  respect  to  specimens 
coming  in  from  our  new  western  country.  The  form  which 
first  comes,  and  is  described  and  named,  determines  the 
specific  character,  and  this  long  sticks  as  the  type,  though 
in  fact  it  may  be  far  from  the  most  common  form.  Yet  of 
plants  very  well  known  in  all  their  aspects,  I  can  think  of 
several  of  which  we  recognise  two  leading  forms,  and  rarely 
see  anything  really  intermediate,  such  as  our  Mentha  borealis, 
its  hairy  and  its  smooth  varieties. 

Your  former  query  about  the  variability  of  naturalised 
plants  as  compared  with  others  of  same  genera,  I  had  not 
forgotten,  but  have  taken  no  steps  to  answer.  I  was  going 
hereafter  to  take  up  our  list  of  naturalised  plants  and  consider 
them — it  did  not  fall  into  my  plan  to  do  it  yet.  Off-hand  I 
can  only  say  that  it  does  not  strike  me  that  our  introduced 
plants  generally  are  more  variable,  nor  as  variable,  perhaps, 
as  the  indigenous.  But  this  is  a  mere  guess.  When  you 
get  my  sheets  of  first  part  of  article  in  Sillitnan's  Journal, 
remember  that  I  shall  be  most  glad  of  free  critical  comments  ; 
and  the  earlier  I  get  them  the  greater  use  they  will  be  to 
me.  .  .  . 


430  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  328  One  more  favour.  Do  not,  I  pray  you,  speak  of  your 
letters  troubling  me.  I  should  be  sorry  indeed  to  have  you 
stop,  or  write  more  rarely,  even  though  mortified  to  find  that 
I  can  so  seldom  give  you  the  information  you  might  reason- 
ably expect. 

Letter  329  To  Asa  Gray. 

Down,  August  24th  [1856]. 

I  am  much  obliged  for  your  letter,  which  has  been  very 
interesting  to  me.  Your  "indefinite"  answers  are  perhaps 
not  the  least  valuable  part  ;  for  Botany  has  been  followed  in 
so  much  more  a  philosophical  spirit  than  Zoology,  that  I 
scarcely  ever  like  to  trust  any  general  remark  in  Zoology 
without  I  find  that  botanists  concur.  Thus,  with  respect  to 
intermediate  varieties  being  rare,  I  found  it  put,  as  I  suspected, 
much  too  strongly  (without  the  limitations  and  doubts  which 
you  point  out)  by  a  very  good  naturalist,  Mr.  Wollaston,  in 
regard  to  insects  ;  and  if  it  could  be  established  as  true  it 
would,  I  think,  be  a  curious  point.  Your  answer  in  regard  to 
the  introduced  plants  not  being  particularly  variable,  agrees 
with  an  answer  which  Mr.  H.  C.  Watson  has  sent  me  in 
regard  to  British  agrarian  plants,  or  such  (whether  or  no 
naturalised)  [as]  are  now  found  only  in  cultivated  land.  It 
seems  to  me  very  odd,  without  any  theoretical  notions  of 
any  kind,  that  such  plants  should  not  be  variable ;  but  the 
evidence  seems  against  it. 

Very  sincere  thanks  for  your  kind  invitation  to  the  United 
States  :  in  truth  there  is  nothing  which  I  should  enjoy  more  ; 
but  my  health  is  not,  and  will,  I  suppose,  never  be  strong 
enough,  except  for  the  quietest  routine  life  in  the  country. 
I  shall  be  particularly  glad  of  the  sheets  of  your  paper  on 
geographical  distribution  ;  but  it  really  is  unlikely  in  the 
highest  degree  that  I  could  make  any  suggestions. 

With  respect  to  my  remark  that  I  supposed  that  there 
were  but  few  plants  common  to  Europe  and  the  United  States, 
not  ranging  to  the  Arctic  regions  ;  it  was  founded  on  vague 
grounds,  and  partly  on  range  of  animals.  But  I  took 
H.  C.  Watson's  remarks  (1835)  and  in  the  table  at  the  end  I 
found  that  out  of  499  plants  believed  to  be  common  to  the 
Old  and  New  World,  only  1 10  did  not  range  on  either  side  of 
the  Atlantic  up  to    the  Arctic  region.     And   on   writing   to 


1843—1882]  SOCIAL    PLANTS  43 1 

Mr.  Watson  to  ask  whether  he  knew  of  any  plants  not  ranging  Letter  -29 
northward  of  Britain  (say  550)  which  were  in  common,  he 
writes  to  me  that  he  imagines  there  are  very  few  ;  with 
Mr.  Syme's  assistance  he  found  some  20  to  25  species  thus 
circumstanced,  but  many  of  them,  from  one  cause  or  other,  he 
considered  doubtful.  As  examples,  he  specifies  to  me,  with 
doubt,  Chn'sosplenium  oppositifolium ;  Is>iardia  palustris  ; 
Astragalus  hypoglottis  ;  Thlaspi  alpestre ;  Arcnaria  vcnia  ; 
LytJirum  hyssopifolium. 

I  hope  that  you  will  be  inclined  to  work  out  for  your  next 
paper,  what  number,  of  your  321  in  common,  do  not  range  to 
Arctic  regions.  Such  plants  seem  exposed  to  such  much 
greater  difficulties  in  diffusion.  Very  many  thanks  for  all 
your  kindness  and  answers  to  my  questions. 

P.S. — If  anything  should  occur  to  you  on  variability  of 
naturalised  or  agrarian  plants,  I  hope  that  you  will  be  so 
kind  as  to  let  me  hear,  as  it  is  a  point  which  interests  me 
greatly. 

Asa  Gray  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  330 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  Sept.  23rd,   1856. 

Dr.  Engelmann,  of  St.  Louis,  Missouri,  who  knew  Euro- 
pean botany  well  before  he  came  here,  and  has  been  an 
acute  observer  generally  for  twenty  years  or  more  in  this 
country,  in  reply  to  your  question  I  put  to  him,  promptly 
said  introduced  plants  are  not  particularly  variable — are  not 
so  variable  as  the  indigenous  plants  generally,  perhaps. 

The  difficulty  of  answering  your  questions,  as  to  whether 
there  are  any  plants  social  here  which  are  not  so  in  the  Old 
World,  is  that  I  know  so  little  about  European  plants  in 
nature.  The  following  is  all  I  have  to  contribute.  Lately,  I 
took  Engelmann  and  Agassiz  on  a  botanical  excursion  over 
half  a  dozen  miles  of  one  of  our  seaboard  counties  ;  when  they 
both  remarked  that  they  never  saw  in  Europe  altogether 
half  so  much  barberry  as  in  that  trip.  Through  all  this 
district  B.  vulgaris  may  be  said  to  have  become  a  truly  social 
plant  in  neglected  fields  and  copses,  and  even  penetrating 
into  rather  close  old  woods.  I  always  supposed  that  birds 
diffused  the  seeds.  But  I  am  not  clear  that  many  of  them 
touch  the  berries.     At  least,  these  hang  on  the  bushes  over 


432  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chai>.  VI 

Letter  330  winter  in  the  greatest  abundance.  Perhaps  the  barberry 
belongs  to  a  warmer  country  than  north  of  Europe,  and 
finds  itself  more  at  home  in  our  sunny  summers.  Yet  out 
of  New  England  it  seems  not  to  spread  at  all. 

Maruta  Cotula,  Jidc  Engclmann,  is  a  scattered  and  rather 
scarce  plant  in  Germany.  Here,  from  Boston  to  St.  Louis, 
it  covers  the  roadsides,  and  is  one  of  our  most  social  plants. 
But  this  plant  is  doubtless  a  native  of  a  hotter  country  than 
North  Germany. 

St.  John's-wort  (Hypericum  perforatum)  is  an  intrusive  weed 
in  all  hilly  pastures,  etc.,  and  may  fairly  be  called  a  social  plant. 
In  Germany  it  is  not  so  found,  fide  Engelmann. 

Verbascum  Tliapsus  is  diffused  over  all  the  country,  is 
vastly  more  common  here  than  in  Germany,  fide  Engelmann. 

I  suppose  Erodium  cicutarium  was  brought  to  America 
with  cattle  from  Spain  :  it  seems  to  be  widely  spread  over 
South  America  out  of  the  Tropics.  In  Atlantic  U.S.  it 
is  very  scarce  and  local.  But  it  fills  California  and  the 
interior  of  Oregon  quite  back  to  the  west  slope  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  Fremont  mentions  it  as  the  first  spring 
food  for  his  cattle  when  he  reached  the  western  side  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains.  And  hardly  anybody  will  believe 
me  when  I  declare  it  an  introduced  plant.  I  daresay  it  is 
equally  abundant  in  Spain.     I  doubt  if  it  is  more  so. 

Engelmann  and  I  have  been  noting  the  species  truly 
indigenous  here  which,  becoming  rudcral  or  campestral,  are 
increasing  in  the  number  of  individuals  instead  of  diminishing 
as  the  country  becomes  more  settled  and  forests  removed. 
The  list  of  our  wild  plants  which  have  become  true  weeds 
is  larger  than  I  had  supposed,  and  these  have  probably 
all  of  them  increased  their  geographical  range— at  least, 
have  multiplied  in  numbers  in  the  Northern  States  since 
settlements. 

Some  time  ago  I  sent  a  copy  of  the  first  part  of  my 
little  essay  on  the  statistics  1  of  our  Northern  States  plants 
to  Triibner  &  Co.,  1 2,  Paternoster  Row,  to  be  thence  posted 
to  you.  It  may  have  been  delayed  or  failed,  so  I  post 
another  from  here. 

This  is  only  a  beginning.     Range  of  species  in  latitude 

1  "  Statistics  of  the  Flora  of  the  Northern  U.S."  (Sillimarts  Journal, 
XXII.  and  XXIII.). 


1843— 1882]  N.    AMERICAN     FLORA  433 

must  next  be  tabulated — disjoined  species  catalogued  (i.e.  Letter  330 
those  occurring  in  remote  and  entirely  separated  areas — 
e.g.  Phryma,  Monotropa  uniflora,  etc.) — then  some  of  the 
curious  questions  you  have  suggested — the  degree  of  con- 
sanguinity between  the  related  species  of  our  country  and 
other  countries,  and  the  comparative  range  of  species  in 
large  and  small  genera,  etc.,  etc.  Now,  is  it  worth  while  to 
go  on  at  this  length  of  detail?  There  is  no  knowing  how 
much  space  it  may  cover.  Yet,  after  all,  facts  in  all  their 
fullness  is  what  is  wanted,  and  those  not  gathered  to  support 
(or  even  to  test)  any  foregone  conclusions.  It  will  be  prosy, 
but  it  may  be  useful. 

Then  I  have  no  time  properly  to  revise  MSS.  and  correct 
oversights.  To  my  vexation,  in  my  short  list  of  our  alpine 
species  I  have  left  out,  in  some  unaccountable  manner, 
two  of  the  most  characteristic — viz.,  Cassiope  hypnoides  and 
Lozseleuria  procumbois.     Please  add  them  on   p.   28. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  about  our  introduced  plants. 
But  now,  and  for  some  time  to  come,  I  must  be  thinking  of 
quite  different  matters.  I  mean  to  continue  this  essay  in 
the  January  number — for  which  my  MSS.  must  be  ready 
about  the   1st  of  November. 

I  have  not  yet  attempted  to  count  them  up ;  but  of 
course  I  am  prepared  to  believe  that  fully  three-fourths  of 
our  species  common  to  Europe  will  [be]  found  to  range 
northward  to  the  Arctic  regions.  I  merely  meant  that  I  had 
in  mind  a  number  that  do  not  ;  I  think  the  number  will  not 
be  very  small  ;  and  I  thought  you  were  under  the  impression 
that  very  few  absolutely  did  not  so  extend  northwards.  The 
most  striking  case  I  know  is  that  of  Convallaria  inajalis,  in 
the  mountains  [of]  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  and  not 
northward.     I  believe  I  mentioned  this  to  you  before. 

To  Asa  Gray.  Letter  331 

Down,  Oct.  12th  [1S56]. 
I  received  yesterday  your  most  kind  letter  of  the  23rd 
and  your  "  Statistics,"  and  two  days  previously  another  copy. 
I  thank  you  cordially  for  them.  Botanists  write,  of  course, 
for  botanists  ;  but,  as  far  as  the  opinion  of  an  "  outsider " 
goes,  I  think  your  paper  admirable.  I  have  read  carefully  a 
good  many  papers  and  works  on  geographical  distribution, 

28 


434  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION        [Chap.  VI 

Letter  331  and  I  know  of  only  one  essay  (viz.  Hooker's  "  New  Zealand") 
that  makes  any  approach  to  the  clearness  with  which  your 
paper  makes  a  non-botanist  appreciate  the  character  of  the 
flora  of  a  country.  It  is  wonderfully  condensed  (what  labour 
it  must  have  required  !).  You  ask  whether  such  details  are 
worth  giving  :  in  my  opinion,  there  is  literally  not  one  word 
too  much. 

I  thank  you  sincerely  for  the  information  about  "  social " 
and  "  varying  plants,"  and  likewise  for  giving  me  some  idea 
about  the  proportion  {i.e.  £th)  of  European  plants  which  you 
think  do  not  range  to  the  extreme  North.  This  proportion 
is  very  much  greater  than  I  had  anticipated,  from  what  I 
picked  up  in  conversation,  etc. 

To  return  to  your  "  Statistics."  I  dare  say  you  will  give 
how  many  genera  (and  orders)  your  260  introduced  plants 
belong  to.  I  see  they  include  113  genera  non-indigenous. 
As  you  have  probably  a  list  of  the  introduced  plants,  would 
it  be  asking  too  great  a  favour  to  send  me,  per  Hooker  or 
otherwise,  just  the  total  number  of  genera  and  orders  to 
which  the  introduced  plants  belong.  I  am  much  interested 
in  this,  and  have  found  De  Candolle's  remarks  on  this  subject 
very  instructive. 

Nothing  has  surprised  me  more  than  the  greater  generic 
and  specific  affinity  with  East  Asia  than  with  West  America. 
Can  you  tell  me  (and  I  will  promise  to  inflict  no  other 
question)  whether  climate  explains  this  greater  affinity?  or 
is  it  one  of  the  many  utterly  inexplicable  problems  in 
botanical  geography?  Is  East  Asia  nearly  as  well  known 
as  West  America?  so  that  does  the  state  of  knowledge 
allow  a  pretty  fair  comparison  ?  I  presume  it  would  be 
impossible,  but  I  think  it  would  make  in  one  point  your 
tables  of  generic  ranges  more  clear  (admirably  clear  as  they 
seem  to  me)  if  you  could  show,  even  roughly,  what  pro- 
portion of  the  genera  in  common  to  Europe  (ie.  nearly  half) 
are  very  general  or  mundane  rangers.  As  your  results  now 
stand,  at  the  first  glance  the  affinity  seems  so  very  strong  to 
Europe,  owing,  as  I  presume,  to  nearly  half  of  the  genera 
including  very  many  genera  common  to  the  world  or 
large  portions  of  it.  Europe  is  thus  unfairly  exalted.  Is 
this  not  so?  If  we  had  the  number  of  genera  strictly,  or 
nearly    strictly    European,    one    could    compare   better   with 


1843-1882]  N.    AMERICAN     FLORA  435 

Asia  and  Southern   America,  etc.     But  I  dare  say  this  is  a  Letter  331 
Utopian  wish,  owing  to  difficulty  of  saying  what  genera  to 
call    mundane  ;  nor   have    I    my  ideas    at    all    clear    on    the 
subject,  and   I   have  expressed  them   even   less  clearly  than 
I   have  them. 

I  am  so  very  glad  that  you  intend  to  work  out  the  north 
range  of  the  321  European  species;  for  it  seems  to  me  the 
by  far  most  important  element  in  their  distribution. 

And  I  am  equally  glad  that  you  intend  to  work  out 
range  of  species  in  regard  to  size  of  genera — i.e.  number  of 
species  in  genus.  I  have  been  attempting  to  do  this  in  a 
very  few  cases,  but  it  is  folly  for  any  one  but  a  botanist  to 
attempt  it.  I  must  think  that  De  Candolle  has  fallen  into 
error  in  attempting  to  do  this  for  orders  instead  of  for 
genera — for  reasons  with  which   I   will  not  trouble  you. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  332 

The  "  verdict "  referred  to  in  the  following  letter  was  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker's 
opinion  on  Darwin's  MS.  on  geographical  distribution.  The  first 
paragraph  has  been  already  published  in  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  86. 

Down,   Nov.  4th  [1856]. 

I  thank  you  more  cordially  than  you  will  think  probable 
for  your  note.  Your  verdict  has  been  a  great  relief.  On 
my  honour  I  had  no  idea  whether  or  not  you  would  say 
it  was  (and  I  knew  you  would  say  it  very  kindly)  so  bad, 
that  you  would  have  begged  me  to  have  burnt  the  whole. 
To  my  own  mind  my  MS.  relieved  me  of  some  few  diffi- 
culties, and  the  difficulties  seemed  to  me  pretty  fairly  stated  ; 
but  I  had  become  so  bewildered  with  conflicting  facts — 
evidence,  reasoning  and  opinions — that  I  felt  to  myself  that 
I  had  lost  all  judgment.  Your  general  verdict  is  incom- 
parably  more   favourable   than   I    had  anticipated. 

Very  many  thanks  for  your  invitation.  I  had  made 
up  my  mind,  on  my  poor  wife's  account,  not  to  come  up 
to  next  Phil.  Club  ;  but  I  am  so  much  tempted  by  your 
invitation,  and  my  poor  dear  wife  is  so  good-natured  about 
it,  that  I  think  I  shall  not  resist — i.e.,  if  she  does  not  get 
worse.  I  would  come  to  dinner  at  about  same  time  as 
before,  if  that  would  suit  you,  and  1  do  not  hear  to  the 
contrary  ;  and  would  go  away  by  the  early  train — i.e.,  about 


436  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  332  9  o'clock.  I  find  my  present  work  tries  me  a  good  deal, 
and  sets  my  heart  palpitating,  so  I  must  be  careful.  But 
I  should  so  much  like  to  see  Henslow,  and  likewise  meet 
Lindley  if  the  fates  will  permit.  You  will  see  whether  there 
will  be  time  for  any  criticism  in  detail  on  my  MS.  before 
dinner :  not  that  I  am  in  the  least  hurry,  for  it  will  be  months 
before  I  come  again  to  Geograph.  Distrib.  ;  only  I  am  afraid 
of  your  forgetting  any  remarks. 

I  do  not  know  whether  my  very  trifling  observations  on 
means  of  distribution  are  worth  your  reading,  but  it  amuses 
me  to  tell  them. 

The  seeds  which  the  eagle  had  in  [its]  stomach  for 
eighteen  hours  looked  so  fresh  that  I  would  have  bet  five 
to  one  that  they  would  all  have  grown  ;  but  some  kinds 
were  all  killed,  and  two  oats,  one  canary -seed,  one  clover,  and 
one  beet  alone  came  up  !  Now  I  should  have  not  cared 
swearing  that  the  beet  would  not  have  been  killed,  and  I 
should  have  fully  expected  that  the  clover  would  have  been. 
These  seeds,  however,  were  kept  for  three  days  in  moist 
pellets,  damp  with  gastric  juice,  after  being  ejected,  which 
would  have  helped  to  have  injured   them. 

Lately  I  have  been  looking,  during  a  few  walks,  at  excre- 
ment of  small  birds.  I  have  found  six  kinds  of  seeds,  which 
is  more  than  I  expected.  Lastly,  I  have  had  a  partridge 
with  twenty-two  grains  of  dry  earth  on  one  foot,  and  to  my 
surprise  a  pebble  as  big  as  a  tare  seed  ;  and  I  now  under- 
stand how  this  is  possible,  for  the  bird  scratches  itself,  [and 
the]  little  plumous  feathers  make  a  sort  of  very  tenacious 
plaister.  Think  of  the  millions  of  migratory  quails,1  and  it 
would  be  strange  if  some  plants  have  not  been  transported 
across  good  arms  of  the  sea. 

Talking  of  this,  I  have  just  read  your  curious  Raoul 
Island  paper.2  This  looks  more  like  a  case  of  continuous 
land,  or  perhaps  of  several  intervening,  now  lost,  islands 
than  any  (according  to  my  heterodox  notions)  I  have  yet 
seen.  The  concordance  of  the  vegetation  seems  so  complete 
with   New  Zealand,  and  with   that   land  alone. 

I   have  read  Salter's  paper  and   can    hardly  stomach   it. 

1  See  Origin,  Ed.  I.,  p.  363,  where  the  millions  of  migrating  quails 
occur  again. 

-  Linn.  Soc.  Journal,  I.,  1857. 


1843-1882]  DISPERSAL    OF    SEEDS  437 

I    wonder    whether   the    lighters    were    ever    used    to   carry  Letter  332 
grain  and  hay  to  ships.1 

Adios,  my  dear  Hooker.  I  thank  you  most  honestly  for 
your  assistance — assistance,  by  the  way,  now  spread  over 
some  dozen  years. 

P.S. — Wednesday.  I  see  from  my  wife's  expression  that 
she  does  not  really  much  like  my  going,  and  therefore  I 
must  give  up,  of  course,  this  pleasure. 

If  you  should  have  anything  to  discuss  about  my  MS., 
I  see  that  I  could  get  to  you  by  about  12,  and  then  could 
return  by  the  2.19  o'clock  train,  and  be  home  by  5.30  o'clock, 
and  thus  I  should  get  two  hours'  talk.  But  it  would  be  a 
considerable  exertion  for  me,  and  I  would  not  undertake 
it  for  mere  pleasure's  sake,  but  would  very  gladly  for  my 
book's  sake. 

J.  D.   Hooker  to  C.   Darwin.  Letter  333 

Nov.  9th,    1S56. 

I  have  finished  the  reading  of  your  MS.,  and  have  been 
very  much  delighted  and  instructed.  Your  case  is  a  most 
strong  one,  and  gives  me  a  much  higher  idea  of  change 
than  I  had  previously  entertained  ;  and  though,  as  you  know, 
never  very  stubborn  about  unalterability  of  specific  type,  I 
never   felt  so   shaky  about   species   before. 

The  first  half  you  will  be  able  to  put  more  clearly  when 
you  polish  up.  I  have  in  several  cases  made  pencil  altera- 
tions in  details  as  to  words,  etc.,  to  enable  myself  to  follow 
better, — some  of  it  is  rather  stiff  reading.  I  have  a  page 
or  two  of  notes  for  discussion,  many  of  which  were  answered, 
as  I  got  further  on  with  the  MS.,  more  or  less  fully.  Your 
doctrine  of  the  cooling  of  the  Tropics  is  a  startling  one, 
when  carried  to  the  length  of  supporting  plants  of  cold 
temperate  regions  ;  and  I  must  confess  that,  much  as  I 
should  like  it,  I  can  hardly  stomach  keeping  the  tropical 
genera  alive  in  so  very  cool  a  greenhouse  [pencil  note  by 
C.  D.,  "  Not   so    very  cool,  but   northern   ones   could    range 

1  Salter,  Linn.  Soc.  Journal,  I.,  1857,  p.  140,  "On  the  Vitality  of  Seeds 
after  prolonged  Immersion  in  the  Sea.''  It  appears  that  in  1843  the  mud 
was  scraped  from  the  bottom  of  the  channels  in  Poole  Harbour,  and 
carried  to  shore  in  barges.  On  this  mud  a  vegetation  differing  from 
that  of  the  surrounding  shore  sprang  up. 


438  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  333  further  south  if  nut  opposed  "].  Still  I  must  confess  that 
all  your  arguments  pro  may  be  much  stronger  put  than 
you  have. 

I  am  more  reconciled  to  iceberg  transport  than  I  was, 
the  more  especially  as  I  will  give  you  any  length  of  time 
to  keep  vitality  in  ice,  and,  more  than  that,  will  let  you 
transport  roots  that  way  also. 

The  above  letter  was  pinned  to  the  following  note  by  Mr.  Darwin. 

In  answer  to  this  show  from  similarity  of  American, 
and  European  and  Alpine-Arctic  plants,  that  they  have 
travelled  enormously  without   any  change. 

As  sub-arctic,  temperate  and  tropical  are  all  slowly  march- 
ing toward  the  equator,  the  tropical  will  be  first  checked 
and  distressed,  similarly 1  the  temperate  will  invade  .  .  .  ; 
after  the  temperate  can  [not]  advance  or  do  not  wish  to 
advance  further  the  arctics  will  be  checked  and  will  invade. 
The  temperates  will  have  been  far  longer  in  Tropics  than 
sub-arctics.  The  sub-arctics  will  first  have  to  cross  temperate 
[zone]  and  then  Tropics.  They  would  penetrate  among 
strangers,  just  like  the  many  naturalised  plants  brought  by 
man,  from  some  unknown  advantage.  But  more,  for  nearly 
all  have  chance  of  doing  so. 


'& 


The  point  of  view  is  more  clearly  given  in  the  following  letters. 

Letter  334  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Nov.  15th  [1856J. 
I  shall  not  consider  all  your  notes  on  my  MS.  for  some 
weeks,  till  I  have  done  with  crossing  ;  but  I  have  not  been 
able  to  stop  myself  meditating  on  your  powerful  objection  to 
the  mundane  cold  period,2  viz.  that  Mti/ry-iold  more  of  the 
warm-temperate  species  ought  to  have  crossed  the  Tropics 
than  of  the  sub-arctic  forms.  I  really  think  that  to  those 
who  deny  the  modification  of  species  this  would  absolutely 
disprove  my  theory.  But  according  to  the  notions  which  I 
am  testing — viz.  that  species  do  become  changed,  and  that 
time  is  a  most  important  element  (which  I  think  I  shall  be 


1  Almost  illegible. 
s  See  Letter  49. 


1843— 1882]  ARCTIC    ALPINE    PLANTS  439 

able  to  show  very  clearly  in  this  case) — in  such  change,  I  Letter  334 
think,  the  result  would  be  as  follows.  Some  of  the  warm- 
temperate  forms  would  penetrate  the  Tropics  long  before 
the  sub-arctic,  and  some  might  get  across  the  equator  long 
before  the  sub-arctic  forms  could  do  so  {i.e.  always  supposing 
that  the  cold  came  on  slowly),  and  therefore  these  must  have 
been  exposed  to  new  associates  and  new  conditions  much 
longer  than  the  sub-arctic.  Hence  I  should  infer  that  we 
ought  to  have  in  the  warm-temperate  S.  hemisphere  more 
representative  or  modified  forms,  and  fewer  identical  species 
than  in  comparing  the  colder  regions  of  the  N.  and  S.  I 
have  expressed  this  very  obscurely,  but  you  will  under- 
stand, I  think,  what  I  mean.  It  is  a  parallel  case  (but 
with  a  greater  difference)  to  the  species  of  the  mountains 
of  S.  Europe  compared  with  the  arctic  plants,  the  S. 
European  alpine  species  having  been  isolated  for  a  longer 
period  than  on  the  arctic  islands.  Whether  there  are  many 
tolerably  close  species  in  the  warm-temperate  lands  of  the 
S.  and  N.  I  know  not  ;  as  in  La  Plata,  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 
and  S.  Australia  compared  to  the  North,  I  know  not.  I 
presume  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  test  this,  but  perhaps 
you  will  keep  it  a  little  before  your  mind,  for  your  argu- 
ment strikes  me  as  by  far  the  most  serious  difficult}'  which 
has  occurred  to  me.  All  your  criticisms  and  approvals  are 
in  simple  truth  invaluable  to  me.  I  fancy  I  am  right  in 
speaking  in  this  note  of  the  species  in  common  to  N.  and  S. 
as  being  rather  sub-arctic  than  arctic. 

This  letter  does  not  require  any  answer.  I  have  written 
it  to  ease  myself,  and  to  get  you  just  to  bear  your  argument, 
under  the  modification  point  of  view,  in  mind.  I  have  had 
this  morning  a  most  cruel  stab  in  the  side  on  my  notion  of 
the  distribution  of  mammals  in  relation  to  soundings. 

J.   D.   Hooker  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  335 

Kew,  Sunday  [Nov.  1856]. 
I  write  only  to  say  that  I  entirely  appreciate  your  answer 
to  my  objection  on  the  score  of  the  comparative  rareness  of 
Northern  warm-temperate  forms  in  the  Southern  hemi- 
sphere. You  certainly  have  wriggled  (Hit  of  it  by  getting 
them  more  time  to  change,  but  as  you  must  admit  that  the 
distance    traversed    is    not    so    great    as    the   arctics    have  to 


44°  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  335  travel,  and  the  extremes  of  modifying  cause  not  so  great  as 
the  arctics  undergo,  the  result  should  be  considerably  modified 
thereby.  Thus  :  the  sub-arctics  have  (1)  to  travel  twice  as 
far,  (2)  taking  twice  the  time,  (3)  undergoing  many  more 
disturbing  influences. 

All  this  you  have  to  meet  by  giving  the  North  temperate 
forms  simply  more  time.  I  think  this  will  hardly  hold 
water. 

Letter  336  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Nov.  18th  [1856]. 

Many  thanks  for  your  note  received  this  morning  ;  and 
now  for  another  "  wriggle."  According  to  my  notions,  the 
sub-arctic  species  would  advance  in  a  body,  advancing  so  as 
to  keep  climate  nearly  the  same  ;  and  as  long  as  they  did  this 
I  do  not  believe  there  would  be  any  tendency  to  change,  but 
only  when  the  few  got  amongst  foreign  associates.  When 
the  tropical  species  retreated  as  far  as  they  could  to  the 
equator  they  would  halt,  and  then  the  confusion  would  spread 
back  in  the  line  of  march  from  the  far  north,  and  the  strongest 
would  struggle  forward,  etc.,  etc.  (But  I  am  getting  quite 
poetical  in  my  wriggles).  In  short,  I think  the  warm-temperates 
would  be  exposed  very  much  longer  to  those  causes  which  I 
believe  are  alone  efficient  in  producing  change  than  the 
sub-arctic  ;  but  I  must  think  more  over  this,  and  have  a  good 
wriggle.  I  cannot  quite  agree  with  your  proposition  that 
because  the  sub-arctic  have  to  travel  twice  as  far  they  would 
be  more  liable  to  change.  Look  at  the  two  journeys  which 
the  arctics  have  had  from  N.  to  S.  and  S.  to  N.,  with  no 
change,  as  may  be  inferred,  if  my  doctrine  is  correct,  from 
similarity  of  arctic  species  in  America  and  Europe  and  in 
the  Alps.  But  I  will  not  weary  you  ;  but  I  really  and  truly 
think  your  last  objection  is  not  so  strong  as  it  looks  at  first. 
You  never  make  an  objection  without  doing  me  much  good. 
Hurrah!  a  seed  has  just  germinated  after  2\\  hours  in  owl's 
stomach.  This,  according  to  ornithologists' calculation,  would 
carry  it  God  knows  how  many  miles  ;  but  I  think  an  owl 
really  might  go  in  storm  in  this  time  400  or  500  miles.    Adios. 

Owls  and  hawks  have  often  been  seen  in  mid-Atlantic. 

An  interesting  letter,  dated  Nov.  23rd,  1856,  occurs  in  the  Life  and 
Letters,  II.,  p.  86,  which  forms  part  of  this  discussion.     On  p.  87  the 


i843— 1882]  LAND    MOLLUSCS  441 

following  passage  occurs  :  "  I  shall  have  to  discuss  and  think  more  Letter  336 
about  your  difficulty  of  the  temperate  and  sub-arctic  forms  in  the  S. 
hemisphere  than  I  have  yet  done.  But  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  I 
am  right  (if  my  general  principles  are  right),  that  there  would  be  little 
tendency  to  the  formation  of  a  new  species  during  the  period  of  migra- 
tion, whether  shorter  or  longer,  though  considerable  variability  may  have 
supervened. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  337 

Down,  Dec.  10th  [1856]. 

It  is  a  most  tiresome  drawback  to  my  satisfaction  in 
writing  that,  though  I  leave  out  a  good  deal  and  try  to 
condense,  every  chapter  runs  to  such  an  inordinate  length. 
My  present  chapter  on  the  causes  of  fertility  and  sterility 
and  on  natural  crossing  has  actually  run  out  to  100  pages 
MS.,  and  yet  I  do  not  think  I  have  put  in  anything 
superfluous.   .  .   . 

I  have  for  the  last  fifteen  months  been  tormented  and 
haunted  by  land-molluxa,  which  occur  on  every  oceanic 
island  ;  and  I  thought  that  the  double  creationists  or  con- 
tinental extensionists  had  here  a  complete  victory.  The 
few  eggs  which  I  have  tried  both  sink  and  are  killed.  No 
one  doubts  that  salt  water  would  be  eminently  destructive  to 
them  ;  and  I  was  really  in  despair,  when  I  thought  I  would 
try  them  when  torpid  ;  and  this  day  I  have  taken  a  lot  out  of 
the  sea-water,  after  exactly  seven  days'  immersion.1  Some 
sink  and  some  swim  ;  and  in  both  cases  I  have  had  (as  yet) 
one  come  to  life  again,  which  has  quite  astonished  and 
delighted  me.  I  feel  as  if  a  thousand-pound  weight  was 
taken  off  my  back.     Adios,  my  dear,  kind  friend. 

I  must  tell  you  another  of  my  profound  experiments  ! 
[Frank]  said  to  me  :  "  Why  should  not  a  bird   be  killed  (by 

1  This  method  of  dispersal  is  not  given  in  the  Origin  ;  it  seems, 
therefore,  probable  that  further  experiments  upset  the  conclusion  drawn 
in  1856.  This  would  account  for  the  satisfaction  expressed  in  the 
following  year  at  the  discovery  of  another  method,  on  which  Darwin 
wrote  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker:  "The  distribution  of  fresh-water  molluscs 
has  been  a  horrid  incubus  to  me,  but  I  think  I  know  my  way  now. 
When  first  hatched  they  are  very  active,  and  I  have  had  thirty  or  forty 
crawl  on  a  dead  duck's  foot ;  and  they  cannot  be  jerked  oft",  and  will  live 
fifteen  or  even  twenty-four  hours  out  of  water"  {Life  mid  Letters,  II. 
p.  93).  The  published  account  of  these  experiments  is  in  the  Origin, 
Ed.  1.,  p.  385. 


442  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  337  hawk,  lightning,  apoplexy,  hail,  etc.)  with  seed  in  its  crop, 
and  it  would  swim  ?  "  No  sooner  said  than  done  :  a  pigeon 
has  floated  for  thirty  days  in  salt  water  with  seeds  in  its 
crop,  and  they  have  grown  splendidly ;  and  to  my  great 
surprise  even  tares  (Leguminosae,  so  generally  killed  by 
sea-water),  which  the  bird  had  naturally  eaten,  have  grown 
well.  You  will  say  gulls  and  dog-fish,  etc.,  would  eat  up  the 
carcase,  and  so  they  would  999  times  out  of  a  thousand, 
but  one  might  escape :  I  have  seen  dead  land-birds  in 
sea-drift. 


Letter  338  Asa  Gray  to  C.  Darwin.1 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  Feb.   i6tli,   1857. 

I  meant  to  have  replied  to  your  interesting  letter  of 
January  1st  long  before  this  time,  and  also  that  of  November 
24th,  which  I  doubt  if  I  have  ever  acknowledged.  But  after 
getting  my  school-book,  Lessons  in  Botany,  off  my  hands 
— it  taking  up  time  far  beyond  what  its  size  would  seem  to 
warrant—  1  had  to  fall  hard  at  work  upon  a  collection  of 
small  size  from  Japan — mostly  N.  Japan,  which  I  am  only  just 
done  with.  As  I  expected,  the  number  of  species  common  to 
N.  America  is  considerably  increased  in  this  collection,  as  also 
the  number  of  closely  representative  species  in  the  two,  and  a 
pretty  considerable  number  of  European  species  too.  I  have 
packed  off  my  MSS.  (though  I  hardly  know  what  will  become 
of  it),  or  I  would  refer  you  to  some  illustrations.  The  greater 
part  of  the  identical  species  (of  Japan  and  N.  America)  are  of 
those  extending  to  or  belonging  to  N.W.  coast  of  America, 
but  there  are  several  peculiar  to  Japan  and  E.  U.  States  : 
e.g.,  our  Viburnum  lantanoides  is  one  of  Thunbcrg's  species. 
De  Candolle's  remarkable  case  of  Phryma,  which  he  so  dwells 
upon,  turns  out,  as  Dr.  Hooker  said  it  would,  to  be  only  one 
out  of  a  great  many  cases  of  the  same  sort.  (Hooker  brought 
Monotropa  unifiora,  you  know,  from  the  Himalayas  ;  and  now, 
by  the  way,  I  have  it  from  almost  as  far  south,  i.e.,  from  St. 
F6e,  New  Granada).  .  .  . 

Well,  I  never  meant  to  draw  any  conclusions  at  all,  and 
am  very  sorry  that  the  only  one  I  was  beguiled  into  should 

1  In  reply  to  Darwin's  letter  given  in  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  88. 


1843-1882]  GLACIAL    PERIOD 


443 


"  rile  "  »  you,  as  you  say  it  does,— that  on  p.  7$  of  my  second  Letter  338 
article  :  for  if  it  troubles  you  it  is  not  likely  to  be  sound.  Of 
course  I  had  no  idea  of  laying  any  great  stress  upon  the  fact 
(at  first  view  so  unexpected  to  me)  that  one-third  of  our 
alpine  species  common  to  Europe  do  not  reach  the  Arctic 
circle  ;  but  the  remark  which  I  put  down  was  an  off-hand 
inference  from  what  you  geologists  seem  to  have  settled — viz., 
that  the  northern  regions  must  have  been  a  deal  cooler  than 
they  are  now — the  northern  limit  of  vegetation  therefore 
much  lower  than  now — about  the  epoch  when  it  would  seem 
probable  that  the  existing  species  of  our  plants  were  created. 
At  any  rate,  during  the  Glacial  period  there  could  have  been 
no  phaenogamous  plants  on  our  continent  anywhere  near  the 
polar  regions  ;  and  it  seems  a  good  rule  to  look  in  the  first 
place  for  the  cause  or  reason  of  what  now  is,  in  that  which 
immediately  preceded.  I  don't  see  that  Greenland  could 
help  us  much,  but  if  there  was  any  interchange  of  species 
between  N.  America  and  N.  Europe  in  those  times,  was  not 
the  communication  more  likely  to  be  in  lower  latitudes  than 
over  the  pole  ? 

If,  however,  you  say — as  you  may  have  very  good  reasons 
for  saying— that  the  existing  species  got  their  present  diffusion 
before  the  Glacial  epoch,  I  should  have  no  answer.  I  suppose 
you  must  needs  assume  very  great  antiquity  for  species  of 
plants  in  order  to  account  for  their  present  dispersion,  so  long 
as  we  cling— as  one  cannot  but  do — to  the  idea  of  the  single 
birthplace  of  species. 

I  am  curious  to  sec  whether,  as  you  suggest,  there  would 
be  found  a  harmony  or  close  similarity  between  the  geogra- 
phical range  in  this  country  of  the  species  common  to  Europe 
and  those  strictly  representative  or  strictly  congeneric  with 
European  species.  If  I  get  a  little  time  I  will  look  up  the 
facts:  though,  as  Dr.  Hooker  rightly  tells  me,  I  have  no 
business  to  be  running  after  side  game  of  any  sort,  while 
there  is  so  much  I  have  to  do — much  more  than  I  shall  ever 
do  probably— to  finish  undertakings  I  have  long  ago  begun. 

1  "One  of  your  conclusions  makes  me  groan,  viz.,  that  the  line  of 
connection  of  the  strictly  alpine  plants  is  through  Greenland.  I  should 
extremely  like  to  see  your  reasons  published  in  detail,  for  it  '  riles '  me 
(this  is  a  proper  expression,  is  it  not?)  dreadfully "  (Darwin  to  Gray, 
Jan.  1st,  1857,  Life  and  Letters,  II.  p.  89). 


444  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap. VI 

Letter  338  ...  As  to  your  P.S.  If  you  have  time  to  send  me  a 
longer  list  of  your  protean  genera,  I  will  say  if  they  seem  to 
be  protean  here.     Of  those  you  mention  : — 

Salix,  I  really  know  nothing  about. 

Rubus,  the  N.  American  species,  with  one  exception,  are 
very  clearly  marked  indeed. 

Mentha,  we  have  only  one  wild  species  ;  that  has  two 
pretty  well-marked  forms,  which  have  been  taken  for  species  ; 
one  smooth,  the  other  hairy. 

Saxifraga,  gives  no  trouble  here. 

Myosotis,  only  one  or  two  species  here,  and  those  very 
well  marked. 

Hieracium,  few  species,  but  pretty  well  marked. 

Rosa,  putting  down  a  set  of  nominal  species,  leaves  us 
four  ;  two  of  them  polymorphous,  but  easy  to  distinguish.  .  .  . 

Letter  339  To  J-  D-  Hooker. 

Down,  [1857  ?] 

One  must  judge  by  one's  own  light,  however  imperfect, 
and  as  I  have  found  no  other  book  '  so  useful  to  me,  I  am 
bound  to  feel  grateful  :  no  doubt  it  is  in  main  part  owing  to 
the  concentrated  light  of  the  noble  art  of  compilation.2  I  was 
aware  that  he  was  not  the  first  who  had  insisted  on  range  of 
Monocots.  (Was  not  R.  Brown  [with]  Flinders?),3  and  I 
fancy  I  only  used  expression  "  strongly  insisted  on," — but  it  is 
quite  unimportant. 

If  you  and  I  had  time  to  waste,  I  should  like  to  go  over  his 
[De  Candolle's]  book  and  point  out  the  several  subjects  in 
which  I  fancy  he  is  original.  His  remarks  on  the  relations 
of  naturalised  plants  will  be  very  useful  to  me  ;  on  the 
ranges  of  large  families  seemed  to  me  good,  though  I  believe 
he  has  made  a  great  blunder  in  taking  families  instead  of 
smaller  groups,  as  I  have  been  delighted  to  find  in  A.  Gray's 
last  paper.     But  it  is  no  use  going  on. 

I  do  so  wish  I  could  understand  clearly  why  you  do  not 
at    all   believe    in  accidental    means  of  dispersion   of  plants. 

'  A.  de  Candolle's  Geographic  Botanique,  1855. 
1  See  Letter  49,  p.  95. 

3  M.    Flinders'    Voyage  to    Terra  Australis  in    1801-3,  in  H.M.S. 
Investigator ;  with  Botanical  Appendix,  by  Robert  Brown,  London,  1814. 


1843—1882]  ACCIDENTAL    DISPERSION  445 

The  strongest  argument  which  I  can  remember  at  this  instant  Letter  339 
is  A.  de  C.j  that  very  widely  ranging  plants  are  found  as 
commonly  on  islands  as  over  continents.  It  is  really  pro- 
voking to  me  that  the  immense  contrast  in  proportion  of 
plants  in  New  Zealand  and  Australia  seems  to  me  a  strong 
argument  for  non-continuous  land  ;  and  this  does  not  seem 
to  weigh  in  the  least  with  you.  I  wish  I  could  put  myself  in 
your  frame  of  mind.  In  Madeira  I  find  in  Wollaston's  books 
a  parallel  case  with  your  New  Zealand  case — viz.,  the  striking 
absence  of  whole  genera  and  orders  now  common  in  Europe, 
and  (as  I  have  just  been  hunting  out)  common  in  Europe  in 
Miocene  periods.  Of  course  I  can  offer  no  explanation  why 
this  or  that  group  is  absent  ;  but  if  the  means  of  introduction 
have  been  accidental,  then  one  might  expect  odd  proportions 
and  absences.  When  we  meet,  do  try  and  make  me  see  more 
clearly  than  I  do,  your  reasons. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  340 

Down,  Nov.  14th  [1858]. 

I  am  heartily  glad  to  hear  that  my  Lyellian  :  notes  have 
been  of  the  slightest  use  to  you.  I  do  not  think  the  view 
is  exaggerated.  .  .  . 

Your  letter  and  lists  have  most  deeply  interested  me. 
First  for  less  important  point,  about  hermaphrodite  trees.2 
It  is  enough  to  knock  me  down,  yet  I  can  hardly  think  that 
British  N.  America  and  New  Zealand  should  all  have  been 
theoretically  right  by  chance.  Have  you  at  Kew  any 
Eucalyptus  or  Australian  Mimosa  which  sets  its  seeds  ?  if 
so,  would  it  be  very  troublesome  to  observe  when  pollen  is 
mature,  and  whether  pollen -tubes  enter  stigma  readily  imme- 
diately that  pollen  is  mature  or  some  little  time  afterwards  ? 
though  if  pollen  is  not  mature  for  some  little  time  after  flower 

1  The  Copley  Medal  was  given  to  Sir  Charles  Lyell  in  1858.  Mr. 
Darwin  supplied  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker,  who  was  on  the  Council  of  the  Royal 
Society,  with  notes  for  the  reasons  for  the  award.     See  Letter  69. 

2  See  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  89.  In  the  Origin,  Ed.  1.,  p.  100,  the 
author  quotes  Dr.  Hooker  to  the  effect  that  "the  rule  does  not  hold 
in  Australia,"  i.e.,  that  trees  are  not  more  generally  unisexual  than 
other  plants.  In  the  6th  ed.,  p.  79,  Darwin  adds,  "but  if  most  of  the 
Australian  trees  are  dichogamous,  the  same  result  would  follow  as  if 
they  bore  flowers  with  separated  sexes." 


446  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  340  op:ns,  the  stigma  might  be  ready  first,  though  according  to 
C.  C.  Sprengel  this  is  a  rarer  case.  I  wrote  to  Miiller  for 
chance  of  his  being  able  and  willing  to  observe  this. 

Your  fact  of  greater  number  of  European  plants  (N.B. — 
But  do  you  mean  greater  percentage  ?)  in  Australia  than  in 
S.  America  is  astounding  and  very  unpleasant  to  me  ;  for 
from  N.W.  America  (where  nearly  the  same  flora  exists  as  in 
Canada  ?)  to  T.  del  Fuego,  there  is  far  more  continuous  high 
land  than  from  Europe  to  Tasmania.  There  must  have,  I 
should  think,  existed  some  curious  barrier  on  American  High- 
Road  :  dryness  of  Peru,  excessive  damp  of  Panama,  or  some 
other  confounded  cause,  which  either  prevented  immigration 
or  has  since  destroyed  them.  You  say  I  may  ask  questions, 
and  so  I  have  on  enclosed  paper  ;  but  it  will  of  course  be  a 
very  different  thing  whether  you  will  think  them  worth  labour 
of  answering. 

May  I  keep  the  lists  now  returned  ?  otherwise  I  will  have 
them  copied. 

You  said  that  you  would  give  me  a  few  cases  of  Australian 
forms  and  identical  species  going  north  by  Malay  Archipelago 
mountains  to  Philippines  and  Japan  ;  but  if  these  are  given 
in  your  hitroductmi l  this  will  suffice  for  me. 

Your  lists  seem  to  me  wonderfully  interesting. 

According  to  my  theoretical  notions,  I  am  not  satisfied 
with  what  you  say  about  local  plants  in  S.W.  corner  of 
Australia,-  and  the  seeds  not  readily  germinating :  do  be 
cautious  on  this  ;  consider  lapse  of  time.  It  does  not  suit  my 
stomach  at  all.  It  is  like  Wollaston's  confined  land-snails  in 
Porto  Santo,  and  confined  to  same  spots  since  a  Tertiary 
period,  being  due  to  their  slow  crawling  powers  ;  and  yet  we 
know  that  other  shell-snails  have  stocked  a  whole  country 
within  a  very  few  years  with  the  same  breeding  powers,  and 
same  crawling  powers,  when  the  conditions  have  been  favour- 

1  See  Hooker's  Introductory  Essay,  p.  1. 

1  Sir  Joseph  replied  in  an  undated  letter  :  "  Thanks  for  your  hint.  I 
shall  be  very  cautious  how  I  mention  any  connection  between  the  varied 
flora  and  poor  soil  of  S.W.  Australia.  ...  It  is  not  by  the  way  only 
that  the  species  are  so  numerous,  but  that  these  and  the  genera  are  so 
confoundedly  well  marked.  You  have,  in  short,  an  incredible  number  of 
very  local,  well  marked  genera  and  species  crowded  into  that  corner  of 
Australia."     See  Introductory  Essay  to  tlie  Flora  of  Tasmania,  1859,  p.  li. 


1843—1882]  AUSTRALIAN     PLANTS  447 

able  to  the  life  of  the  introduced   species.     Hypothetically  Letter  340 

I  should  rather  look  at  the  case  as  owing  to but  as  my 

notions  are  not  very  simple  or  clear,  and  only  hypothetical, 
they  are  not  worth  inflicting  on  you. 

I  had  vowed  not  to  mention  my  everlasting  Abstract 1  to 
you  again,  for  I  am  sure  I  have  bothered  you  far  more  than 
enough  about  it  ;  but  as  you  allude  to  its  previous  publication 
I  may  say  that  I  have  chapters  on  Instinct  and  Hybridism  to 
abstract,  which  may  take  a  fortnight  each  ;  and  my  materials 
for  Palaeontology,  Geographical  Distribution  and  Affinities 
being  less  worked  up,  I  daresay  each  of  these  will  take  me 
three  weeks,  so  that  I  shall  not  have  done  at  soonest  till 
April,  and  then  my  Abstract  will  in  bulk  make  a  small 
volume.  I  never  give  more  than  one  or  two  instances,  and 
I  pass  over  briefly  all  difficulties,  and  yet  I  cannot  make  my 
Abstract  shorter,  to  be  satisfactory,  than  I  am  now  doing,  and 
yet  it  will  expand  to  small  volume. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  341 

Down,  [Nov.?]  27th  [1858]. 
What  you  say  about  the  Cape  flora's  direct  relation  to 
Australia  is  a  great  trouble  to  me.  Does  not  Abyssinia2  high- 
land, and  the  mountains  on  W.  coast  in  some  degree  connect 
the  extra-tropical  floras  of  Cape  and  Australia  ?  To  my 
mind  the  enormous  importance  of  the  Glacial  period  rises 
daily  stronger  and  stronger.     I   am  very  glad  to  hear  about 

1  The  Origin  of  Species  was  abbreviated  from  the  MS.  of  an  un- 
published book. 

-  In  a  letter  to  Darwin,  Dec.  21st  (?),  1858,  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  wrote  : 
"  Highlands  of  Abyssinia  will  not  help  you  to  connect  the  Cape  and 
Australian  temperate  floras  :  they  want  all  the  types  common  to  both, 
and,  worse  than  that,  India  notably  wants  them.  Proteacese,  Thymeleae, 
Haemodoraceae,  Acacia,  Rutaceas,  of  closely  allied  genera  (and  in  some 
cases  species),  are  jammed  up  in  S.W.  Australia,  and  C.B.S.  [Cape  of 
Good  Hope]  :  add  to  this  the  Epacridea>  (which  are  mere  §  of  Ericaceas) 
and  the  absence  or  rarity  of  Rosacea?,  etc.,  etc.,  and  you  have  an  amount 
[of]  similarity  in  the  floras  and  dissimilarity  to  that  of  Abyssinia  and  India 
in  the  same  features  that  does  demand  an  explanation  in  any  theoretical 
history  of  Southern  vegetation." 

Mr.  Darwin's  answer  (Dec.  24th)  to  this  letter  is  given  in  Life  and 
Letters,  II.,  p.  142.  He  says:  "With  respect  to  South-West  Australia 
and  the  Cape,  I  am  shut  up,  and  can  only  d— n  the  whole  case." 


448  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  341  S.E.  and  S.W.  Australia  :  I  suspected  after  my  letter  was 
gone  that  the  case  must  be  as  it  is.  You  know  of  course  that 
nearly  the  same  rule  holds  with  birds  and  mammals.  Several 
years  ago  I  reviewed  in  the  Annals  of  Natural  History1 
Waterhouse's  Mammalia,  and  speculated  that  these  two 
corners,  now  separated  by  gulf  and  low  land,  must  have 
existed  as  two  large  islands  ;  but  it  is  odd  that  productions 
have  not  become  more  mingled  ;  but  it  accords  with,  I  think, 
a  very  general  rule  in  the  spreading  of  organic  beings.  I 
agree  with  what  you  say  about  Lyell ;  he  learns  more  by 
word  of  mouth  than  by  reading. 

Henslow  has  just  gone,  and  has  left  me  in  a  fit  of  enthu- 
siastic admiration  of  his  character.  He  is  a  really  noble  and 
good  man. 

Letter  342  To  G.  Bentham.2 

Down,  Dec.   1st  [1858?]. 
I  thank  you  for  so  kindly  taking  the  trouble  of  writing 
to  me,  on  naturalised  plants.      I    did   not  know  of,  or  had 

1  Annuls  and  Mag.  of  Nat.  Hist.,  Vol.  XIX.,  1847,  pp.  53-56,  an 
unsigned  review  of  A  Natural  History  of  the  Mammalia,  by  G.  R. 
Waterhouse,  Vol.  I.  The  passage  referred  to  is  at  p.  55  :  "The  fact  of 
South  Australia  possessing  only  few  peculiar  species,  it  having  been 
apparently  colonised  from  the  eastern  and  western  coasts,  is  very  interest- 
ing ;  for  we  believe  that  Mr.  Robert  Brown  has  shown  that  nearly  the 
same  remark  is  applicable  to  the  plants  ;  and  Mr.  Gould  finds  that  most 
of  the  birds  from  these  opposite  shores,  though  closely  allied,  are  distinct. 
Considering  these  facts,  together  with  the  presence  in  South  Australia 
of  upraised  modern  Tertiary  deposits  and  of  extinct  volcanoes,  it  seems 
probable  that  the  eastern  and  western  shores  once  formed  two  islands, 
separated  from  each  other  by  a  shallow  sea,  with  their  inhabitants 
generically,  though  not  specifically,  related,  exactly  as  are  those  of  New 
Guinea  and  Northern  Australia,  and  that  within  a  geologically  recent 
period  a  series  of  upheavals  converted  the  intermediate  sea  into  those 
desert  plains  which  are  now  known  to  stretch  from  the  southern  coast  far 
northward,  and  which  then  became  colonised  from  the  regions  to  the  east 
and  west."  On  this  point  see  Hooker's  Introductory  Essay  to  the  Flora 
of  Tasmania,  p.  ci,  where  Jukes'  views  are  discussed.  For  an  interesting 
account  of  the  bearings  of  the  submergence  of  parts  of  Australia,  see 
Thiselton-Dyer,  R.  Geogr.  Soc.  four.,  XXII.,  No.  6. 

3  George  Bentham  (1800-83),  son  of  Sir  Samuel  Bentham,  and 
nephew  of  Jeremy,  the  celebrated  authority  on  jurisprudence.  Sir 
Samuel  Bentham  was  at  first  in  the  Russian  service,  and  afterwards  in 
that  of  his  own  country,  where  he  attained  the  rank  of  Inspector-General 


1843— 1882]  BENTHA  M  449 

forgotten,  the  clover  case.  How  I  wish  I  knew  what  plants  Letter  342 
the  clover  took  the  place  of;  but  that  would  require  more 
accurate  knowledge  of  any  one  piece  of  ground  than  I  suppose 
any  one  has.  In  the  case  of  trees  being  so  long-lived,  I  should 
think  it  would  be  extremely  difficult  to  distinguish  between 
true  and  new  spreading  of  a  species,  and  a  rotation  of  crop. 
With  respect  to  your  idea  of  plants  travelling  west,  I  was 
much  struck  by  a  remark  of  yours  in  the  penultimate  Li?inea?i 
Journal  on    the    spreading    of    plants    from     America     near 

of  Naval  Works.  George  Bentham  was  attracted  to  botany  during  a 
"caravan  tour"  through  France  in  1816,  when  he  set  himself  to  work  out 
the  names  of  flowers  with  De  Candolle's  Flore  Francaise.  During  this 
period  he  entered  as  a  student  of  the  Faculte  de  Theologie  at  Tours. 
About  1820  he  was  turned  to  the  study  of  philosophy,  probably  through 
an  acquaintance  with  John  Stuart  Mill.  He  next  became  the  manager  of 
his  father's  estates  near  Montpellier,  and  it  was  here  that  he  wrote  his 
first  serious  work,  an  Essai  sur  la  Classification  des  Arts  et  Sciences.  In 
1826  the  Benthams  returned  to  England,  where  he  made  many  friends, 
among  whom  was  Dr.  Arnott;  and  it  was  in  his  company  that  Bentham, 
in  1824,  paid  a  long  visit  to  the  Pyrenees,  the  fruits  of  which  was  his  first 
botanical  work,  Catalogue  des  Plantes  indigenes  des  Pyrenees,  etc.,  1826. 
About  this  time  Bentham  entered  Lincoln's  Inn  with  a  view  to  being 
called  to  the  Bar,  but  the  greater  part  of  his  energies  was  given  to 
helping  his  Uncle  Jeremy,  and  to  independent  work  in  logic  and  juris- 
prudence. He  published  his  Outlines  of  a  New  System  of  Logic  (1827), 
but  the  merit  of  his  work  was  not  recognised  until  1850.  In  1829  Bentham 
finally  gave  up  the  Bar  and  took  up  his  life's  work  as  a  botanist.  In  1854 
he  presented  his  collections  and  books  (valued  at  ,£6,000)  to  the  Royal 
Gardens,  Kew,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  resided  in  London,  and  worked 
daily  at  the  Herbarium.  His  work  there  began  with  the  Flora  of  Hong 
Ko?ig,  which  was  followed  by  that  of  Australia  published  in  1867  in  seven 
volumes  octavo.  At  the  same  time  the  Genera  Plantarum  was  being 
planned  ;  it  was  begun,  with  Dr.  Hooker  as  a  collaborator,  in  1862,  and 
concluded  in  1883.  With  this  monumental  work  his  labours  ended; 
"his  strength  .  .  .  suddenly  gave  way  .  .  .  his  visits  to  Kew  ended,  and 
lingering  on  under  increasing  debility,  he  died  of  old  age  on  Sep.  10th 
last"  (1883). 

The  amount  of  work  that  he  accomplished  was  gigantic  and  of  the 
most  masterly  character.  In  speaking  of  his  descriptive  work  the  writer 
(Sir  J.  D.  Hooker)  of  the  obituary  notice  in  Nature  (Oct.  2nd,  1884),  from 
which  many  of  the  above  facts  are  taken,  says  that  he  had  "no  superior 
since  the  days  of  Linna?us  and  Robert  Brown,  and  he  has  left  no  equal 
except  Asa  Gray"  (Al/iemeiou,  Dec.  31st,  1850;  Contemp.  Rev.,  May, 
1873;  "George  Bentham,  F.R.S.,"  by  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker,  Annals  Dot., 
Vol.  XII.,  1898). 

29 


450  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  342  Behring  Straits.  Do  you  not  consider  so  many  more  seeds 
and  plants  being  taken  from  Europe  to  America,  than  in  a 
reverse  direction,  would  go  some  way  to  account  for  compara- 
tive fewness  of  naturalised  American  plants  here  ?  Though  I 
think  one  might  wildly  speculate  on  European  weeds  having 
become  well  fitted  for  cultivated  land,  during  thousands  of 
years  of  culture,  whereas  cultivated  land  would  be  a  new  home 
for  native  American  weeds,  and  they  would  not  consequently 
be  able  to  beat  their  European  rivals  when  put  in  contest 
with  them  on  cultivated  land.     Here  is  a  bit  of  wild  theory  ! ' 

But  I  did  not  sit  down  intending  to  scribble  thus  ;  but  to 
beg  a  favour  of  you.  I  gave  Hooker  a  list  of  species  of 
Silenc,  on  which  Gartner  has  experimentised  in  crossing  : 
now  I  want  extremely  to  be  permitted  to  say  that  such  and 
such  are  believed  by  Mr.  Benthatn  to  be  true  species,  and 
such  and  such  to  be  only  varieties.  Unfortunately  and 
stupidly,  Gartner  does  not  append  author's  name  to  the 
species. 

Thank  you  heartily  for  what  you  say  about  my  book  ;  but 
you  will  be  greatly  disappointed  ;  it  will  be  grievously  too 
hypothetical.  It  will  very  likely  be  of  no  other  service  than 
collocating  some  facts  ;  though  I  myself  think  I  see  my  way 
approximately  on  the  origin  of  species.  But,  alas,  how 
frequent,  how  almost  universal  it  is  in  an  author  to  persuade 
himself  of  the  truth  of  his  own  dogmas.  My  only  hope  is 
that  I  certainly  see  very  many  difficulties  of  gigantic  stature. 

If  you  can  remember  any  cases  of  one  introduced  species 
beating  out  or  prevailing  over  another,  I  should  be  most 
thankful  to  hear  it.  I  believe  the  common  corn-poppy  has 
been  seen  indigenous  in  Sicily.  I  should  like  to  know  whether 
you  suppose  that  seedlings  of  this  wild  plant  would  stand  a 
contest  with  our  own  poppy  ;  I  should  almost  expect  that  our 
poppies  were  in  some  degree  acclimatised  and  accustomed  to 
our  cornfields.     If  this  could  be  shown  to  be  so  in  this  and 


1  See  Asa  Gray,  Scientific  Papers,  1889,  Vol.  II.,  p.  235,  on  "The 
Pertinacity  and  Predominance  of  Weeds,"  where  the  view  here  given  is 
adopted.  In  a  letter  to  Asa  Gray  (Nov.  6th,  1862),  published  in  the  Life 
and  Letters,  II.,  p.  390,  Darwin  wrote:  "Does  it  not  hurt  your  Yankee 
pride  that  we  thrash  you  so  confoundedly?  I  am  sure  Mrs.  Gray  will 
stick  up  for  your  own  weeds.  Ask  her  whether  they  are  not  more  honest 
downright  good  sort  of  weeds." 


1843— 1882]  NATURALISED    PLANTS  451 

other  cases,  I    think   we   could    understand   why   many  not-  Letter  342 
trained  American  plants  would  not  succeed  in  our  agrarian 
habitats. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  343 

Mr.  Darwin  used  the  knowledge  of  the  spread  of  introduced  plants  in 
North  America  and  Australia  to  throw  light  on  the  cosmic  migration  of 
plants.  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  apparently  objected  that  it  was  not  fair  to  argue 
from  agrarian  to  other  plants  ;  he  also  took  a  view  differing  slightly  from 
that  of  Darwin  as  to  climatal  and  other  natural  conditions  favouring 
introduced  plants  in  Australia. 

Down,  Jan.  28th,   1859. 

Thanks  about  glaciers.  It  is  a  pleasure  and  profit  to  me 
to  write  to  you,  and  as  in  your  last  you  have  touched  on 
naturalised  plants  of  Australia,  I  suppose  you  would  not 
dislike  to  hear  what  I  can  say  in  answer.  At  least  I  know 
you  would  not  wish  me  to  defer  to  your  authority,  as  long  as 
not  convinced. 

I  quite  agree  to  what  you  say  about  our  agrarian  plants 
being  accustomed  to  cultivated  land,  and  so  no  fair  test. 
Buckman  has,  I  think,  published  this  notion  with  respect  to 
North  America.  With  respect  to  roadside  plants,  I  cannot 
feel  so  sure  that  these  ought  to  be  excluded,  as  animals  make 
roads  in  many  wild  countries.1 

I  have  now  looked  and  found  passage  in  F.  Midler's2 
letter  to  me,  in  which  he  says  :  "  In  the  wildernesses  of 
Australia  some  European  perennials  are  "  advancing  in  sure 
progress,"  "  not  to  be  arrested,"  etc.  He  gives  as  instances  (so 
I  suppose  there  are  other  cases)  eleven  species,  viz.,  3.  Rumex, 
Poterium  sanguisorba,  Poteutilla  anserina,  Medicago  sativa, 
Taraxacum  officinale,  Marrubium  vulgare,  Plantago  lanceolata, 

1  In  the  account  of  naturalised  plants  in  Australia  in  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker's 
Introductory  Essay  to  the  Flora  of  Tasmania,  1859,  p.  cvi,  many  of  the 
plants  are  marked  "  Britain— waste  places,"  "  Europe— cornfields,"  etc. 
In  the  same  list  the  species  which  have  also  invaded  North  America — a 
large  number— are  given.  On  the  margin  of  Darwin's  copy  is  scribbled 
in  pencil  :  "  Very  good,  showing  how  many  of  the  same  species  are 
naturalised  in  Australia  and  United  States,  with  very  different  climates  ; 
opposed  to  your  conclusion."  Sir  Joseph  supposed  that  one  chief  cause 
of  the  intrusion  of  English  plants  in  Australia,  and  not  vice  versa,  was  the 
great  importation  of  European  seed  to  Australia  and  the  scanty  return  of 
Australian  seed. 

2  Ferdinand  M  tiller. 


452  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION        [Chap.  VI 

Letter  343  P.  major,  Loltum  perenne.  All  these  are  seeding  freely.  Now 
I  remember,  years  and  years  ago,  your  discussing  with  me 
how  curiously  easily  plants  get  naturalised  on  uninhabited 
islands,  if  ships  even  touch  there.  I  remember  we  discussed 
packages  being  opened  with  old  hay  or  straw,  etc.  Now 
think  of  hides  and  wool  (and  wool  exported  largely  over 
Europe),  and  plants  introduced,  and  samples  of  corn  ;  and  I 
must  think  that  if  Australia  had  been  the  old  country,  and 
Europe  had  been  the  Botany  Bay,  very  few,  very  much  fewer, 
Australian  plants  would  have  run  wild  in  Europe  than  have 
now  in  Australia. 

The  case  seems  to  me  much  stronger  between  La  Plata 
and  Spain. 

Nevertheless,  I  will  put  in  my  one  sentence l  on  this  head, 
illustrating  the  greater  migration  during  Glacial  period  from 
north  to  south  than  reversely,  very  humbly  and  cautiously. 

I  am  very  glad  to  hear  you  are  making  good  progress 
with  your  Australian  Introduction.  I  am,  thank  God,  more 
than  half  through  my  chapter  on  geographical  distribution, 
and  have  done  the  abstract  of  the  Glacial  part.  .  .  . 

Letter  344  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  March  30th,  1859. 
Many  thanks  for  your  agreeable  note.     Please  keep  the 
geographical  MS.  till  you  hear  from  me,  for  I  may  have  to 
beg  you  to  send  it  to  Murray  ;  as  through  Lyell's  intervention 
I  hope  he  will  publish,  but  he  requires  first  to  see  MS.2 

1  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  1.,  p.  379.  Darwin  refers  to  the  facts  given 
by  Hooker  and  De  Candolle  showing  a  stronger  migratory  flow  from  north 
to  south  than  in  the  opposite  direction.  Darwin  accounts  for  this  by  the 
northern  plants  having  been  long  subject  to  severe  competition  in  their 
northern  homes,  and  having  acquired  a  greater  "dominating  power" 
than  the  southern  forms.  "Just  in  the  same  manner  as  we  see  at  the 
present  day  that  very  many  European  productions  cover  the  ground  in 
La  Plata,  and  in  a  lesser  degree  in  Australia,  and  have  to  a  certain  extent 
beaten  the  natives  ;  whereas  extremely  few  southern  forms  have  become 
naturalised  in  any  part  of  Europe,  though  hides,  wool,  and  other  objects 
likely  to  carry  seeds  have  been  largely  imported  during  the  last  two  or 
three  centuries  from  La  Plata,  and  during  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years 
from  Australia." 

3  The  Origin  of  Species;  see  a  letter  to  Lyell  in  Life  and  Letters,  II. 
p.  151. 


1843—1882]  GLACIAL     PERIOD  4<J3 

I  demur  to  what  you  say  that  we  change  climate  of  the  Letter  344 
world  to  account  for  "migration  of  bugs,  flies,  etc."  We 
do  nothing  of  the  sort  ;  for  we  rest  on  scored  rocks,  old 
moraines,  arctic  shells,  and  mammifers.  I  have  no  theory 
whatever  about  cause  of  cold,  no  more  than  I  have  for 
cause  of  elevation  and  subsidence  ;  and  I  can  see  no  reason 
why  I  should  not  use  cold,  or  elevation,  or  subsidence  to 
explain  any  other  phenomena,  such  as  distribution.  1  think 
if  I  had  space  and  time  I  could  make  a  pretty  good  case 
against  any  great  continental  changes  since  the  Glacial 
epoch,  and  this  has  mainly  led  me  to  give  up  the  Lyellian 
doctrine  as  insufficient  to  explain  all  mutations  of  climate. 

I  was  amused  at  the  British  Museum  evidence.1  I  am 
made  to  give  my  opinion  so  authoritatively  on  botanical 
matters  !  .  .  . 

As  for  our  belief  in  the  origin  of  species  making  any 
difference  in  descriptive  work,  I  am  sure  it  is  incorrect,  for 
I  did  all  my  barnacle  work  under  this  point  of  view.  Only 
I  often  groaned  that  I  was  not  allowed  simply  to  decide 
whether  a  difference  was  sufficient  to  deserve  a  name. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  about  Iluxlcy — a  wonderful  man. 


To  J.  D.   Hooker.  Letter  345 

Wells  Terrace,   Ilkley,  Otley,  Yorkshire, 

Thursday  [before  Dec.  9th,  1859]. 

I  have  read  your  discussion,2  as  usual,  with  great  interest. 
The  points  are  awfully  intricate,  almost  at  present  beyond  the 
confines  of  knowledge.  The  view  which  I  should  have  looked 
at  as  perhaps  most  probable  (though  it  hardly  differs  from 
yours)  is  that  the  whole  world  during  the  Secondary  ages  was 
inhabited  by  marsupials,  araucarias  (Mem. — Fossil  wood  so 
common  of  this  nature  in  South  America3),  Banksia,  etc.; 
and  that  these  were  supplanted  and  exterminated  in  the 
greater   area  of  the  north,   but  were  left  alive  in  the  south. 

1  This  refers  to  the  letter  to  Murchison  (Letter  65,  pp.  109-10), 
published  with  the  evidence  of  the  1858  enquiry  by  the  Trustees  of  the 
British  Museum. 

2  See  Introductory  Essay,  p.  c.  Darwin  did  not  receive  this  work 
until  Dec.  23rd,  so  that  the  reference  is  to  proof-sheets. 

3  See  Letter  6,  Note  1,  p.  23. 


454  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  345  Whence  these  very  ancient  forms  originally  proceeded  seems 
a  hopeless  enquiry. 

Your  remarks  on  the  passage  of  the  northern  forms 
southward,  and  of  the  southern  forms  of  no  kinds  passing 
northward,  seem  to  mc  grand.  Admirable,  also,  are  your 
remarks  on  the  struggle  of  vegetation  :  I  find  that  I  have 
rather  misunderstood  you,  for  I  feared  I  differed  from  you, 
which  I  see  is  hardly  the  case  at  all.  I  cannot  help  suspecting 
that  you  put  rather  too  much  weight  to  climate  in  the  case 
of  Australia.  La  Plata  seems  to  present  such  analogous 
facts,  though  I  suppose  the  naturalisation  of  European 
plants  has  there  taken  place  on  a  still  larger  scale  than 
in  Australia.  .  .  . 

You  will  get  four  copies  of  my  book — one  for  self,  and 
three  for  the  foreign  botanists — in  about  ten  days,  or  sooner ; 
i.e.,  as  soon  as  the  sheets  can  be  bound  in  cloth.  I  hope  this 
will  not  be  too  late  for  your  parcels. 

When  you  read  my  volume,  use  your  pencil  and  score,  so 
that  some  time  I  may  have  a  talk  with  you  on  any  criticisms. 

Letter  346  To  Hugh  Falconer. 

Down,  Dec.  17th,  [1859]. 
Whilst  I  think  of  it,  let  me  tell  you  that  years  ago  I 
remember  seeing  in  the  Museum  of  the  Geological  Society 
a  tooth  of  hippopotamus '  from  Madagascar  :  this,  on  geo- 
graphical and  all  other  grounds,  ought  to  be  looked  to. 
Pray  make  a  note  of  this  fact.  We  have  returned  a  week 
ago  from  Ilkley,  and  it  has  done  me  some  decided  good.  In 
London  I  saw  Lyell  (the  poor  man  who  has  "  rushed  into  the 
bosom   of  two  heresies  " — by  the  way,  1  saw  his  celts,  and 

1  At  a  meeting  of  the  Geological  Society,  May  1st,  1833,  a  letter  was 
read  from  Mr.  Telfair  to  Sir  Alex.  Johnstone,  accompanying  a  specimen 
of  recent  conglomerate  rock,  from  the  island  of  Madagascar,  containing 
fragments  of  a  tusk,  and  part  of  a  molar  tooth  of  a  hippopotamus 
(Proc.  Geo/.  Soc,  1833,  p.  479).  There  is  a  reference  to  these  remains 
of  hippopotamus  in  a  paper  by  Mr.  R.  B.  Newton  in  the  Geo/.  Mag., 
Vol.  X.,  1893  ;  and  in  Dr.  Forsyth  Major's  memoir  on  Megaladapis 
Madagascariensis  {Phil.   Trans.  R.  Soc,  Vol.  185,  p.  30,  1S94). 

Since  this  letter  was  written,  several  bones  belonging  to  two  or 
possibly  three  species  of  hippopotamus  have  been  found  in  Madagascar. 
See  Forsyth  Major,  "  On  the  General  Results  of  a  Zoological  Expedition 
to  Madagascar  in  1894-96"  (J 'roc.  Zool.  Soc,  1896,  p.  971). 


>    s 


Dr.  Asa  Gray 
1867 


1843— 1882]  ASA    GRAY  455 

how  intensely  interesting),  and  he  told  me  that  you  were  very  Letter  346 
antagonistic  to  my  views  on  species.  I  well  knew  this  would 
be  the  case.  I  must  freely  confess,  the  difficulties  and  objec- 
tions arc  terrific  ;  but  I  cannot  believe  that  a  false  theory 
would  explain,  as  it  seems  to  me  it  does  explain,  so  many 
classes  of  facts.  Do  you  ever  see  Wollaston?  He  and  you 
would  agree  nicely  about  my  book 1 — ill  luck  to  both  of 
you.  If  you  have  anything  at  all  pleasant  for  me  to  hear,  do 
write  ;  and  if  all  that  you  can  say  is  very  unpleasant,  it  will 
do  you  good  to  expectorate.  And  it  is  well  known  that  you 
are  very  fond  of  writing  letters.  Farewell,  my  good  old 
friend  and  enemy. 

Do  make  a  note  about  the  hippopotamus.  If  you  are 
such  a  gentleman  as  to  write,  pray  tell  me  how  Torquay 
agrees  with  your  health. 

To  Asa  Gray.2  Letter  347 

Down,  Dec.  24th  [1859]. 
I   have   been   for   ten   weeks   at   Water-cure,   and   on    my 
return   a   fortnight   ago  through   London    1  found  a  copy  of 

'   Origin  of  Species,  1859. 

2  Asa  Gray  (1810-88)  was  born  in  the  township  of  Paris,  Oneida  Co., 
New  York.  He  became  interested  in  science  when  a  student  at  the  Fair- 
field Academy  ;  he  took  his  doctor's  degree  in  1831,  but  instead  of  pursuing 
medical  work  he  accepted  the  post  of  Instructor  in  Chemistry,  Mineralogy, 
and  Botany  in  the  High  School  of  Utica.  Gray  afterwards  became 
assistant  to  Professor  Torrey  in  the  New  York  Medical  School,  and  in 
1835  he  was  appointed  Curator  and  Librarian  of  the  New  York  Lyceum 
of  Natural  History.  From  1842  to  1872  he  occupied  the  Chair  of  Natural 
History  in  Harvard  College,  and  the  post  of  Director  of  the  Cambridge 
Botanical  Gardens  ;  from  1872  till  the  time  of  his  death  he  was  relieved 
of  the  duties  of  teaching  and  of  the  active  direction  of  the  Gardens,  but 
retained  the  Herbarium.  Professor  Gray  was  a  Foreign  Member  of  the 
Linnean  and  of  the  Royal  Societies.  The  Flora  of  North  America  (of 
which  the  first  parts  appeared  in  1838),  Manual  of  the  Botany  of  the 
Northern  United  States,  the  Botany  of  Commodore  Wilkef  South 
\c  Exploring  Expedition  are  among  the  most  important  of  Gray's 
systematic  memoirs  ;  in  addition  to  these  he  wrote  several  botanical 
text-books  and  a  great  number  of  papers  of  first-class  importance.  In 
an  obituary  notice  written  by  Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  Asa  day  is  described 
as  "  one  of  the  first  to  accept  and  defend  the  doctrine  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion .  .  .,  so  that  Darwin,  whilst  fully  recognising  the  different  standpoints 
from  which  he  and  Gray  took  their  departures,  and  their  divergence  of 


456  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  347  your  Memoir,1  and  heartily  do  I  thank  you  for  it.  I  have 
not  read  it,  and  shall  not  be  able  very  soon,  for  I  am 
much  overworked,  and  my  stomach  has  got  nearly  as  bad 
as  ever. 

With  respect  to  the  discussion  on  climate,  I  beg  you  to 
believe  that  I  never  put  myself  for  a  moment  in  competition 
with  Dana  ;  but  when  one  has  thought  on  a  subject,  one 
cannot  avoid  forming  some  opinion.  What  I  wrote  to 
Hooker  I  forget,  after  reading  only  a  few  sheets  of  your 
Memoir,  which  I  saw  would  be  full  of  interest  to  me. 
Hooker  asked  me  to  write  to  you,  but,  as  I  told  him,  I 
would  not  presume  to  express  an  opinion  to  you  without 
careful  deliberation.  What  he  wrote  I  know  not :  I  had 
previously  several  years  ago  seen  (by  whom  I  forget)  some 
speculation  on  warmer  period  in  the  U.  States  subsequent 
to  Glacial  period  ;  and  I  had  consulted  Lyell,  who  seemed 
much  to  doubt,  and  Lyell's  judgment  is  really  admirably 
cautious.  The  arguments  advanced  in  your  paper  and  in 
your  letter  seem  to  me  hardly  sufficient ;  not  that  I  should  be 
at  all  sorry  to  admit  this  subsequent  and  intercalated  warmer 
period — the  more  changes  the  merrier,  I  think.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  do  not  believe  that  introduction  of  the  Old  World 
forms  into  New  World  subsequent  to  the  Glacial  period  will 
do  for  the  modified  or  representative  forms  in  the  two  Worlds. 
There  has  been  too  much  change  in  comparison  with  the 
little  change  of  isolated  alpine  forms ;  but  you  will  see  this 
in  my  book.2  I  may  just  make  a  few  remarks  why  at  first 
sight  I  do  not  attach  much  weight  to  the  argument  in  your 
letter  about  the  warmer  climate.  Firstly,  about  the  level  of 
the  land  having  been  lower  subsequently  to  Glacial  period,  as 
evidenced  by  the  whole,  etc.,  I  doubt  whether  meteorological 

opinion  on  important  points,  nevertheless  regarded  him  as  the  naturalist 
who  had  most  thoroughly  gauged  the  Origin  of  Species,  and  as  a  tower 
of  strength  to  himself  and  his  cause"  (Proc.  R.  Soc,  Vol.  XLVI.,  p.  xv, 
1890 :  Letters  of  Asa  Gray,  edited  by  Jane  Loring  Gray,  2  vols., 
Boston,  U.S.,  1893). 

'  "  Diagnostic  Characters  of  New  Species  of  Phaenogamous  Plants 
collected  in  Japan  by  Charles  Wright  .  .  .  with  Observations  upon  the 
Relations  of  the  Japanese  Flora  to  that  of  North  America  and  of  other 
parts  of  the  Northern  Temperate  Zone  "  {Mem.  American  Acad.  Arts 
and  Sci.,  Vol  VI.,  p.  377,  1857). 

2  Origin  of  Species  (1859),  Chap.  XI.,  pp.  365  et  seq. 


i843— 1882]  CLIMATE  457 

knowledge  is  sufficient  for  this  deduction  :  turning  to  the  Letter  347 
S.  hemisphere,  it  might  be  argued  that  a  greater  extent  of 
water  made  the  temperature  lower  ;  and  when  much  of  the 
northern  land  was  lower,  it  would  have  been  covered  by  the 
sea  and  intermigration  between  Old  and  New  Worlds  would 
have  been  checked.  Secondly,  I  doubt  whether  any  infer- 
ence on  nature  of  climate  can  be  deduced  from  extinct 
species  of  mammals.  If  the  musk-ox  and  deer  of  great  size 
of  your  Barren-Grounds  had  been  known  only  by  fossil  bones, 
who  would  have  ventured  to  surmise  the  excessively  cold 
climate  they  lived  under?  With  respect  to  food  of  large 
animals,  if  you  care  about  the  subject  will  you  turn  to  my 
discussion  on  this  subject  partly  in  respect  to  the  ElepJias 
primigenius  in  my  Journal  of  Researches  (Murray's  Home 
and  Colonial  Library),  Ch.  V.,  p.  85. *  In  this  country  we 
infer  from  remains  of  Elephas  primigenius  that  the  climate 
at  the  period  of  its  embedment  was  very  severe,  as  seems 
countenanced  by  its  woolly  covering,  by  the  nature  of  the 
deposits  with  angular  fragments,  the  nature  of  the  co- 
embedded  shells,  and  co-existence  of  the  musk-ox.  I  had 
formerly  gathered  from  Lycll  that  the  relative  position  of 
the  Megatherium  and  Mylodon  with  respect  to  the  Glacial 
deposits,  had  not  been  well  made  out ;  but  perhaps  it  has 
been  so  recently.  Such  are  my  reasons  for  not  as  yet 
admitting  the  warmer  period  subsequent  to  Glacial  epoch  ; 
but  I  daresay  I  may  be  quite  wrong,  and  shall  not  be  at  all 
sorry  to  be  proved  so. 

I  shall  assuredly  read  your  essay  with  care,  for  I  have 
seen  as  yet  only  a  fragment,  and  very  likely  some  parts, 
which  I  could  not  formerly  clearly  understand,  will  be  clear 
enough. 

1  "  The  firm  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  a  vegetation  possessing  a 
character  of  tropical  luxuriance  to  support  such  large  animals,  and  the 
impossibility  of  reconciling  this  with  the  proximity  of  perpetual  congela- 
tion, was  one  chief  cause  of  the  several  theories  of  sudden  revolutions  of 
climate.  ...  I  am  far  from  supposing  that  the  climate  has  not  changed 
since  the  period  when  these  animals  lived,  which  now  lie  buried  in  the 
ice.  At  present  I  only  wish  to  show  that  as  far  as  quantity  of  food  alone 
is  concerned,  the  ancient  rhinoceroses  might  have  roamed  over  the 
steppes  of  Central  Siberia  even  in  their  present  condition,  as  well  as  the 
living  rhinoceroses  and  elephants  over  the  karoos  of  Southern  Africa" 
(Journal  of  Researches,  p.  89,   1888). 


45§  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  348  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  [Dec]  26th,  [1859]. 

I  have  just  read  with  intense  interest  as  far  as  p.  xxvi,1  i.e., 
to  where  you  treat  of  the  Australian  Flora  itself;  and  the  latter 
part  I  remember  thinking  most  of  in  the  proof-sheets.  Either 
you  have  altered  a  good  deal,  or  I  did  not  see  all  or  was 
purblind,  for  I  have  been  much  more  interested  with  all  the 
first  part  than  I  was  before, — not  that  I  did  not  like  it  at  first. 
All  seems  to  me  very  clearly  written,  and  I  have  been  baulked 
at  only  one  sentence.  I  think,  on  the  whole,  I  like  the  geo- 
logical, or  rather  palasontological,  discussion  best :  it  seems 
to  me  excellent,  and  admirably  cautious.  I  agree  with  all 
that  you  say  as  far  as  my  want  of  special  knowledge  allows 
me  to  judge. 

I  have  no  criticisms  of  any  importance,  but  I  should  have 
liked  more  facts  in  one  or  two  places,  which  I  shall  not  ask 
about.  I  rather  demur  to  the  fairness  of  youi  comparison  of 
rising  and  sinking  areas,2  as  in  the  Indian  Ocean  you  compare 
volcanic  land  with  exclusively  coral  islands,  and  these  latter 
are  very  small  in  area  and  have  very  peculiar  soil,  and  during 
their  formation  are  likely  to  have  been  utterly  submerged, 
perhaps  many  times,  and  restocked  with  existing  plants. 
In  the  Pacific,  ignorance  of  Marianne  and  Caroline  and 
other  chief  islands  almost  prevent  comparison  ; 3  and  is  it 
right  to  include  American  islands  like  Juan  Fernandez  and 
Galapagos  ?  In  such  lofty  and  probably  ancient  islands  as 
Sandwich  and  Tahiti  it  cannot  make  much  difference  in  the 
flora  whether  they  have  sunk  or  risen  a  few  thousand  feet  of 
late  ages. 

I  wish  you  could  work  in  your  notion  of  certain  parts  of 
the  Tropics  having  kept  hot,  whilst  other  parts  were  cooled  ; 
I  tried  this  scheme  in  my  mind,  and  it  seemed  to  fail.  On 
the  whole,  I  like  very  much  all  that  I  have  read  of  your 
Introduction,  and  I  cannot  doubt  that  it  will  have  great  weight 

'  For  Darwin's  impression  of  the  Introductory  Essay  to  the  Tasma- 
nia.}! Flora  as  a  whole,  see  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  257. 

-  Hooker,  op.  cit.,  p.  xv,  §  24.  Hooker's  view  was  that  sinking  islands 
"  contain  comparatively  fewer  species  and  fewer  peculiar  generic  types 
than  those  which  are  rising."  In  Darwin's  copy  of  the  Essay  is  written 
on  the  margin  of  p.  xvi  :  "  I  doubt  whole  case." 

;'  Gainbier  Island  would  be  an  interesting  case.     [Note  in  original.] 


1843— 1882]  TASMANIAN     FLORA  459 

in  converting  other  botanists  from  the  doctrine  of  immutable    etter  348 
creation.     What    a   lot   of   matter    there    is    in   one   of 


your 
pages ! 

There  are  many  points  1  wish  much  to  discuss  with  you. 

How  I  wish  you  could  work  out  the  Pacific  floras :  I 
remember  ages  ago  reading  some  of  your  MS.  In  Paris 
there  must  be,  I  should  think,  materials  from  French  voyages. 
But  of  all  places  in  the  world  I  should  like  to  see  a  good 
flora  of  the  Sandwich  Islands.1  I  would  subscribe  .£50  to  any 
collector  to  go  there  and  work  at  the  islands.  Would  it  not 
pay  for  a  collector  to  go  there,  especially  if  aided  by  any 
subscription  ?  It  would  be  a  fair  occasion  to  ask  for  aid 
from  the  Government  grant  of  the  Royal  Society.  I  think 
it  is  the  most  isolated  group  in  the  world,  and  the  islands 
themselves  well  isolated  from  each  other. 

To  Asa  Gray.  Letter  349 

Down,  Jan.  7th  [1S60]. 
I  have  just  finished  your  Japan  memoir,2  and  I  must 
thank  you  for  the  extreme  interest  with  which  I  have  read 
it.  It  seems  to  me  a  most  curious  case  of  distribution  ; 
and  how  very  well  you  argue,  and  put  the  case  from  analogy 
on  the  high  probability  of  single  centres  of  creation.  That 
great  man  Agassiz,  when  he  comes  to  reason,  seems  to  me 
as  great  in  taking  a  wrong  view  as  he  is  great  in  observing 
and  classifying.  One  of  the  points  which  has  struck  me 
as  most  remarkable  and  inexplicable  in  your  memoir  is 
the  number  of  monotypic  (or  nearly  so)  genera  amongst 
the  representative  forms  of  Japan  and  N.  America.  And 
how  very  singular  the  preponderance  of  identical  and  repre- 
sentative species  in  Eastern,  compared  with  Western, 
America.  I  have  no  good  map  showing  how  wide  the 
moderately  low  country  is  on  the  west  side  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains;  nor,  of  course,  do  I  know  whether  the  whole 
of  the  low  western  territory  has  been  botanised  ;  but  it  has 
occurred  to  me,  looking  at  such  maps  as    I    have,   that  the 

1  See  Hillebrand,  Flora  of  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  1888. 

'-'  "  Diagnostic  Characters  of  New  Species  of  Phasnogamous  Plants 
collected  in  Japan  by  Charles  Wright.  With  Observations  upon  the 
Relations  of  the  Japanese  Flora  to  that  of  North  America,  etc.  : 
1857-59." — Memoirs  of  Amer.  Acad.,  VI. 


460  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  349  eastern  area  must  be  larger  than  the  western,  which  would 
account  to  a  certain  small  extent  for  preponderance  on 
eastern  side  of  the  representative  species.  Is  there  any  truth 
in  this  suspicion  ?  Your  memoir  sets  me  marvelling  and 
reflecting.  I  confess  I  am  not  able  quite  to  understand  your 
Geology  at  pp.  447,  448  ;  but  you  would  probably  not  care 
to  hear  my  difficulties,  and  therefore  I  will  not  trouble  you 
with  them. 

I  was  so  grieved  to  get  a  letter  from  Dana  at  Florence, 
giving  me  a  very  poor  (though  improved)  account  of  his 
health. 

Letter  350  To  T.   H.  Huxley. 

15)  Marine  Parade,  Eastbourne, 

Nov.   1st  [i860]. 

Your  note  has  been  wonderfully  interesting.  Your  term, 
"  pithecoid  man,"  is  a  whole  paper  and  theory  in  itself. 
How  I  hope  the  skull  of  the  new  MacraucHenia  has  come. 
It  is  grand.  I  return  Hooker's  letter,  with  very  many 
thanks.  The  glacial  action  on  Lebanon  is  particularly 
interesting,  considering  its  position  between  Europe  and 
Himalaya.  I  get  more  and  more  convinced  that  my 
doctrine  of  mundane  Glacial  period  x  is  correct,  and  that  it 
is  the  most  important  of  all  late  phenomena  with  respect 
to  distribution  of  plants  and  animals.  I  hope  your  Review  2 
progresses  favourably.  I  am  exhausted  and  not  well,  so 
write  briefly  ;  for  we  have  had  nine  days  of  as  much  misery 
as  man  can  endure.  My  poor  daughter  has  suffered  pitiably, 
and  night  and  day  required  three  persons  to  support  her. 
The  crisis  of  extreme  danger  is  over,  and  she  is  rallying 
surprisingly,  but  the  doctors  are  yet  doubtful  of  ultimate 
issue.  But  the  suffering  was  so  pitiable  I  almost  got  to 
wish  to  see  her  die.     She  is  easy  now.     When  she  will  be 

1  In  the  1st  edition  of  the  Origin,  p,  373.  Darwin  argues  in  favour  of 
a  Glacial  period  practically  simultaneous  over  the  globe.  In  the  5th 
edition,  1869,  p.  451,  he  adopted  Mr.  Croll's  views  on  the  alternation  of 
cold  periods  in  the  northern  and  southern  hemispheres.  An  interesting 
modification  of  the  mundane  Glacial  period  theory  is  given  in  Belt's 
The  Naturalist  in  Nicaragua,  1874,  p.  265.  Mr.  Belt's  views  are  dis- 
cussed in  Wallace's  Geogr.  Distribution,  1S76,  Vol.  I.,  p.  151. 

2  The  history  of  the  foundation  of  the  Natural  History  Review  is 
given  in  Huxley's  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  I.,  p.  209.     See  Letter  107. 


1843—1882]  GLACIAL    PERIOD  461 

fit  to  travel  home   I   know  not.     I  most  sincerely  hope  that  Letter  350 
Mrs.  Huxley  keeps   up  pretty  well.     The  work  which  most 
men  have   to    do  is    a  blessing  to   them    in   such    cases   as 
yours.     God  bless  you. 

Sir  H.  Holland  came  here  to  see  her,  and  was  wonder- 
fully kind. 

To  C.   Lyell.  Letter  351 

Down,  Nov.   20th   [1S60]. 

I  quite  agree  in  admiration  of  Forbes'  Essay,1  yet,  on 
my  life,  I  think  it  has  done,  in  some  respects,  as  much 
mischief  as  good.  Those  who  believe  in  vast  continental 
extensions  will  never  investigate  means  of  distribution. 
Good  heavens,  look  at  Heer's  map  of  Atlantis  !  I  thought 
his  division  and  lines  of  travel  of  the  British  plants  very 
wild,  and  with  hardly  any  foundation.  I  quite  agree  with 
what  you  say  of  almost  certainty  of  Glacial  epoch  having 
destroyed  the  Spanish  saxifrages,  etc.,  in  Ireland.2  I 
remember  well  discussing  this  with  Hooker  ;  and  I  suggested 
that  a  slightly  different  or  more  equable  and  humid  climate 
might  have  allowed  (with  perhaps  some  extension  of  land) 
the  plants  in  question  to  have  grown  along  the  entire 
western  shores  between  Spain  and  Ireland,  and  that  subse- 
quently they  became  extinct,  except  at  the  present  points 
under  an  oceanic  climate.  The  point  of  Devonshire  now 
has  a  touch  of  the  same  character. 

I  demur  in  this  particular  case  to  Forbes'  transportal 
by  ice.  The  subject  has  rather  gone  out  of  my  mind,  and 
it  is  not  worth  looking  to  my  MS.  discussion  on  migration 
during  the  Glacial  period  ;  but  I  remember  that  the  distri- 
bution of  mammalia,  and  the  very  regular  relation  of  the 
Alpine  plants  to  points  due  north  (alluded  to  in  Origin), 
seemed  to  indicate  continuous  land  at  close  of  Glacial  period. 

To  J.  D.   Hooker.  Letter  352 

Down,   March   iSth  [1861]. 
I    have    been    recalling     my    thoughts    on    the    question 
whether  the    Glacial  period    affected  the    whole    world    con- 
temporaneously, or  only  one   longitudinal   belt  after  another. 

1  Memoir  of  the  Geolog.  Survey  of  the  United  Kingdom^  Vol.  I.,  1846. 
3  See  Letter  20. 


462  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  352  To  my  sorrow  my  old  reasons  for  rejecting  the  latter  alter- 
native seem  to  me  sufficient,  and  I  should  very  much  like 
to  know  what  you  think.  Let  us  suppose  that  the  cold 
affected  the  two  Americas  either  before  or  after  the  Old 
World.  Let  it  advance  first  either  from  north  or  south  till 
the  Tropics  became  slightly  cooled,  and  a  few  temperate 
forms  reached  the  Silla  of  Caracas  and  the  mountains  of 
Brazil.  You  would  say,  I  suppose,  that  nearly  all  the 
tropical  productions  would  be  killed  ;  and  that  subsequently, 
after  the  cold  had  moderated,  tropical  plants  immigrated 
from  the  other  non-chilled  parts  of  the  world.  But  this  is 
impossible  unless  you  bridge  over  the  tropical  parts  of  the 
Atlantic — a  doctrine  which  you  know  I  cannot  admit,  though 
in  some  respects  wishing  I  could.  Oswald  Heer  would  make 
nothing  of  such  a  bridge.  When  the  Glacial  period  affected 
the  Old  World,  would  it  not  be  rather  rash  to  suppose  that 
the  meridian  of  India,  the  Malay  Archipelago,  and  Australia 
were  refrigerated,  and  Africa  not  refrigerated  ?  But  let  us 
grant  that  this  was  so ;  let  us  bridge  over  the  Red  Sea 
(though  rather  opposed  to  the  former  almost  certain  com- 
munication between  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Mediterranean) ; 
let  us  grant  that  Arabia  and  Persia  were  damp  and  fit  for 
the  passage  of  tropical  plants  :  nevertheless,  just  look  at 
the  globe  and  fancy  the  cold  slowly  coming  on,  and  the 
plants  under  the  tropics  travelling  towards  the  equator,  and 
it  seems  to  me  highly  improbable  that  they  could  escape 
from  India  to  the  still  hot  regions  of  Africa,  for  they  would 
have  to  go  westward  with  a  little  northing  round  the  northern 
shores  of  the  Indian  Ocean.  So  if  Africa  were  refrigerated 
first,  there  would  be  considerable  difficulty  in  the  tropical 
productions  of  Africa  escaping  into  the  still  hot  regions  of 
India.  Here  again  you  would  have  to  bridge  over  the  Indian 
Ocean  within  so  very  recent  a  period,  and  not  in  the  line 
of  the  Laccadive  Archipelago.  If  you  suppose  the  cold  to 
travel  from  the  southern  pole  northwards,  it  will  not  help 
us,  unless  we  suppose  that  the  countries  immediately  north 
of  the  northern  tropic  were  at  the  same  time  warmer,  so 
as  to  allow  free  passage  from  India  to  Africa,  which  seems 
to  me  too  complex  and  unsupported  an  hypothesis  to  admit. 
Therefore  I  cannot  see  that  the  supposition  of  different 
longitudinal    belts    of  the    world    being   cooled    at    different 


1843— 1882]  GLACIAL    PERIOD  463 

periods  helps  us  much.  The  supposition  of  the  whole  world  Letter  352 
being  cooled  contemporaneously  (but  perhaps  not  quite 
equally,  South  America  being  less  cooled  than  the  Old 
World)  seems  to  me  the  simplest  hypothesis,  and  does  not 
add  to  the  great  difficulty  of  all  the  tropical  productions  not 
having  been  exterminated.  I  still  think  that  a  few  species 
of  each  still  existing  tropical  genus  must  have  survived  in 
the  hottest  or  most  favourable  spots,  either  dry  or  damp. 
The  tropical  productions,  though  much  distressed  by  the 
fall  of  temperature,  would  still  be  under  the  same  conditions 
of  the  length  of  the  day,  etc.,  and  would  be  still  exposed 
to  nearly  the  same  enemies,  as  insects  and  other  animals  ; 
whereas  the  invading  temperate  productions,  though  finding 
a  favouring  temperature,  would  have  some  of  their  conditions 
of  life  new,  and  would  be  exposed  to  many  new  enemies. 
But  I  fully  admit  the  difficulty  to  be  very  great.  I  cannot 
see  the  full  force  of  your  difficulty  of  no  known  cause  of 
a  mundane  change  of  temperature.  We  know  no  cause  of 
continental  elevations  and  depressions,  yet  we  admit  them 
Can  you  believe,  looking  to  Europe  alone,  that  the  intense 
cold,  which  must  have  prevailed  when  such  gigantic  glaciers 
extended  on  the  plains  of  N.  Italy,  was  due  merely  to  changed 
positions  of  land  within  so  recent  a  period  ?  I  cannot.  It 
would  be  far  too  long  a  story,  but  it  could,  I  think,  be  clearly 
shown  that  all  our  continents  existed  approximately  in  their 
present  positions  long  before  the  Glacial  period  ;  which  seems 
opposed  to  such  gigantic  geographical  changes  necessary 
to  cause  such  a  vast  fall  of  temperature.  The  Glacial  period 
endured  in  Europe  and  North  America  whilst  the  level  of 
the  land  oscillated  in  height  fully  3,000  feet,  and  this  does 
not  look  as  if  changed  level  was  the  cause  of  the  Glacial 
period.  But  I  have  written  an  unreasonably  long  discussion. 
Do  not  answer  me  at  length,  but  send  me  a  few  words 
some  time   on  the   subject. 

I  have  had  this  copied,  that  it  might  not  bore  you  too 
much  to  read  it. 

A  few  words  more.  When  equatorial  productions  were 
dreadfully  distressed  by  fall  of  temperature,  and  probably  by 
changed  humidity,  and  changed  proportional  numbers  of  other 
plants  and  enemies  (though  they  might  favour  some  of  the 
species),  I   must  admit  that   they  all  would  be   exterminated 


464  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  352  if  productions  exactly  fitted,  not  only  for  the  climate,  but 
for  all  the  conditions  of  the  equatorial  regions  during  the 
Glacial  period  existed  and  could  everywhere  have  immi- 
grated. But  the  productions  of  the  temperate  regions  would 
have  probably  found,  under  the  equator,  in  their  new  homes 
and  soils,  considerably  different  conditions  of  humidity  and 
periodicity,  and  they  would  have  encountered  a  new  set  of 
enemies  (a  most  important  consideration)  ;  for  there  seems 
good  reason  to  believe  that  animals  were  not  able  to  migrate 
nearly  to  the  extent  to  which  plants  did  during  the  Glacial 
period.  Hence  I  can  persuade  myself  that  the  temperate 
productions  would  not  entirely  replace  and  exterminate  the 
productions  of  the  cooled  tropics,  but  would  become  partially 
mingled  with  them. 

I  am  far  from  satisfied  with  what  I  have  scribbled.  I  con- 
clude that  there  must  have  been  a  mundane  Glacial  period,  and 
that  the  difficulties  are  much  the  same  whether  we  suppose 
it  contemporaneous  over  the  world,  or  that  longitudinal 
belts  were  affected  one  after  the  other.  For  Heaven's  sake 
forgive  me  ! 

Letter  353  To  H.  W.  Bates. 

March  26th  [1861]. 
I  have  been  particularly  struck  with  your  remarks  on  the 
Glacial  period.1  You  seem  to  me  to  have  put  the  case  with 
admirable  clearness  and  with  crushing  force.  I  am  quite 
staggered  with  the  blow,  and  do  not  know  what  to  think. 
Of  late  several  facts  have  turned  up  leading  me  to  believe 
more  firmly  that  the  Glacial  period  did  affect  the  equatorial 

1  In  his  "  Contributions  to  the  Insect  Fauna  of  the  Amazon  Valley," 
Trans.  Eniom.  Soc,  Vol.  V.,  p.  335  (read  Nov.  24th,  i860),  Mr.  Rates 
discusses  the  migration  of  species  from  the  equatorial  regions  after  the 
Glacial  period.  He  arrives  at  a  result  which,  he  points  out,  "is  highly 
interesting  as  bearing  upon  the  question  of  how  far  extinction  is  likely 
to  have  occurred  in  equatorial  regions  during  the  time  of  the  Glacial 
epoch."  ..."  The  result  is  plain,  that  there  has  always  (at  least 
throughout  immense  geological  epochs)  been  an  equatorial  fauna  rich  in 
endemic  species,  and  that  extinction  cannot  have  prevailed  to  any  extent 
within  a  period  of  time  so  comparatively  modern  as  the  Glacial  epoch  in 
geology."  This  conclusion  does  not  support  the  view  expressed  in  the 
Origin  of  Species  (Ed.  I.,  chap.  XL,  p.  378)  that  the  refrigeration  of  the 
earth  extended  to  the  equatorial  regions.     (Bates,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  352,  353.) 


1843—1882]  GLACIAL    PERIOD  465 

regions  ;  but  I  can  make  no  answer  to  your  argument,  and  Letter  353 
am  completely  in  a  cleft  stick.  By  an  odd  chance  I  have 
only  a  few  days  ago  been  discussing  this  subject,  in  relation 
to  plants,  with  Dr.  Hooker,  who  believes  to  a  certain  extent, 
but  strongly  urged  the  little  apparent  extinction  in  the 
equatorial  regions.  I  stated  in  a  letter  some  days  ago  to  him 
that  the  tropics  of  S.  America  seem  to  have  suffered  less 
than  the  Old  World.  There  arc  many  perplexing  points  ; 
temperate  plants  seem  to  have  migrated  far  more  than 
animals.  Possibly  species  may  have  been  formed  more 
rapidly  within  tropics  than  one  would  have  expected.  I 
freely  confess  that  you  have  confounded  me  ;  but  I  cannot 
yet  give  up  my  belief  that  the  Glacial  period  did  to  certain 
extent  affect  the  tropics. 

To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Letter  354 

Down,  Feb.  25th  [1862]. 
I  have  almost  finished  your  Arctic  paper,1  and  I  must  tell 
you  how  I  admire  it.  The  subject,  treated  as  you  have 
treated  it,  is  really  magnificent.  Good  Heaven,  what  labour 
it  must  have  cost  you  !  And  what  a  grand  prospect  there  is 
for  the  future.  I  need  not  say  how  much  pleased  I  am  at 
your  notice  of  my  work  ;  for  you  know  that  I  regard  your 
opinion  more  than  that  of  all  others.  Such  papers  are  the  real 
engine  to  compel  people  to  reflect  on  modification  of  species  ; 
any  one  with  an  enquiring  mind  could  hardly  fail  to  wish  to 
consider  the  whole  subject  after  reading  your  paper.  By 
Jove  !  you  will  be  driven,  nolens  volens,  to  a  cooled  globe. 
Think  of  your  own  case  of  Abyssinia  and  Fernando  Po, 
and  South  Africa,  and  of  your  Lebanon  case 2 ;  grant  that 
there  are  highlands  to  favour  migration,  but  surely  the  low- 
lands must  have  been  somewhat  cooled.  What  a  splendid 
new  and  original  evidence  and  case  is  that  of  Greenland  :  1 
cannot  see  how,  even  by  granting  bridges  of  continuous  land, 
one  can  understand  the  existing  flora.  I  should  think  from 
the  state  of  Scotland   and    America,   and    from   isothermals, 

1  "Outlines  of  the  Distribution  of  Arctic  Plants"  [Read  June  21st, 
i860],  Linn.  Soc.  Trans.,  XXIII.,  1862,  p.  251.  The  author's  remarks  on 
Mr.  Darwin's  theories  of  Geographical  Distribution  are  given  at  p.  255  : 
they  are  written  in  a  characteristically  generous  spirit. 

a  See  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  337. 

30 


466  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  354  that  during  the  coldest  part  of  Glacial  period,  Greenland  must 
have  been  quite  depopulated.  Like  a  dog  to  his  vomit,  I 
cannot  help  going  back  and  leaning  to  accidental  means  of 
transport  by  ice  and  currents.  How  curious  also  is  the  case 
of  Iceland.  What  a  splendid  paper  you  have  made  of  the 
subject.  When  we  meet  I  must  ask  you  how  much  you 
attribute  richness  of  flora  of  Lapland  to  mere  climate  ;  it 
seems  to  me  very  marvellous  that  this  point  should  have  been 
a  sort  of  focus  of  radiation  ;  if,  however,  it  is  unnaturally  rich, 
i.e.  contains  more  species  than  it  ought  to  do  for  its  latitude, 
in  comparison  with  the  other  Arctic  regions,  would  it  not 
thus  falsely  seem  a  focus  of  radiation  ?  But  1  shall  here- 
after have  to  go  over  and  over  again  your  paper  ;  at  present 
I  am  quite  muddy  on  the  subject.  How  very  odd,  on  any 
view,  the  relation  of  Greenland  to  the  mountains  of  E.  N. 
America  ;  this  looks  as  if  there  had  been  wholesale  extinction 
in  E.  N.  America.  But  I  must  not  run  on.  By  the  way,  I 
find  Link  in  1820  speculated  on  relation  of  Alpine  and  Arctic 
plants  being  due  to  former  colder  climate,  which  he  attributed 
to  higher  mountains  cutting  off  the  warm  southern  winds. 

Letter  355  J.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin. 

Kew,  Nov.   2nd,   1862. 

Did  I  tell  you  how  deeply  pleased  I  was  with  Gray's  notice 
of  my  Arctic  essay  ? 1  It  was  awfully  good  of  him,  for  I  am  sure 
he  must  have  seen  several  blunders.  He  tells  me  that 
Dr.  Dawson 2  is  down  on  me,  and  I  have  a  very  nice  lecture 
on  Arctic  and  Alpine  plants  from  Dr.  D.,  with  a  critique 
on  the  Arctic  essay — which  he  did  not  see  till  afterwards. 
He  has  found  some  mares'  nests  in  my  essay,  and  one  very 
venial  blunder  in  the  tables — he  seems  to  hate  Darwinism — 
he  accuses  me  of  overlooking  the  geological  facts,  and 
dwells  much  on  my  overlooking  subsidence  of  temperate 
America  during  Glacial  period — and  my  asserting  a  sub- 
sidence of  Arctic  America,  which  never  entered  into  my  head. 
I  wish,  however,  if  it  would  not  make  your  head  ache  too 
much,  you  would  just  look  over  my  first  three  pages,  and  tell 

1  American  Journal  of  Science  and  Arts,  XXXIV.,  and  in  Gray's 
Scientific  Papers,  Vol.  I.,  p.  122. 

'  A  letter  (No.  144)  by  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker,  dated  Nov.  7th,  1862,  on 
this  subject  occurs  in  the  Evolutionary  section,  Vol.  I.,  p.  209. 


1 843—  1 882]  DAWSON  467 

me  if  I  have  outraged  any  geological  fact  or  made  any  over-  Letter  355 
sights.  I  expounded  the  whole  thing  twice  to  Lyell  before  I 
printed  it,  with  map  and  tables,  intending  to  get  (and  I  thought 
I  had)  his  imprimatur  for  all  I  did  and  said  ;  but  when  here 
three  nights  ago,  I  found  he  was  as  ignorant  of  my  having 
written  an  Arctic  essay  as  could  be  !  And  so  I  suppose  he 
either  did  not  take  it  in,  or  thought  it  of  little  consequence. 
Hector  approved  of  it  in  toto.  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  set 
out  on  biological  grounds,  and  hold  myself  as  independent  of 
theories  of  subsidence  as  you  do  of  the  opinions  of  physicists 
on  heat  of  globe  !     I  have  written  a  long  [letter]  to  Dawson. 

By  the  way,  did  you  see  the  Athenccum  notice  of  L. 
Bonaparte's  Basque  and  Finnish  language?— is  it  not  possible 
that  the  Basques  are  Finns  left  behind  after  the  Glacial  period, 
like  the  Arctic  plants  ?  I  have  often  thought  this  theory 
would  explain  the  Mexican  and  Chinese  national  affinities. 
I  am  plodding  away  at  WelwitscJiia  by  night  and  Genera 
Plantarum  by  day.  We  had  a  very  jolly  dinner  at  the  Club 
on  Thursday.     We  are  all  well. 

To  J.  D.   Hooker.  Letter  356 

Down,  Nov.  4th  [1862]. 

I  have  read  the  pages 1  attentively  (with  even  very  much 
more  admiration  than  the  first  time)  and  cannot  imagine  what 
makes  Dr.  D.2  accuse  you  of  asserting  a  subsidence  of  Arctic 
America.  No  doubt  there  was  a  subsidence  of  N.  America 
during  the  Glacial  period,  and  over  a  large  part,  but  to 
maintain  that  the  subsidence  extended  over  nearly  the  whole 
breadth  of  the  continent,  or  lasted  during  the  whole  Glacial 
period,  I  do  not  believe  he  can  support.  I  suspect  much  of 
the  evidence  of  subsidence  during  the  Glacial  period  there  will 
prove  false,  as  it  largely  rests  on  ice-action,  which  is  becoming, 
as  you  know,  to  be  viewed  as  more  and  more  subaerial.      If 

1  The  paper  on  Arctic  plants  in  Vol.  XXIII.  of  the  Linnean  Society's 
Transactions,  1860-62. 

8  The  late  Sir  J.  W.  Dawson  wrote  a  review  (signed  J.  W.  U.)  of 
Hooker's  Arctic  paper  which  appeared  in  the  Canadian  Naturalist,  1862, 
Vol.  VII.,  p.  334.  The  chief  part  of  the  article  is  made  up  of  quotations 
from  Asa  Gray's  article  referred  to  below.  The  remainder  is  a  summary 
of  geological  arguments  against  Hooker's  views.  We  do  not  find  the 
accusation  referred  to  above,  which  seems  to  have  appeared  in  a  lecture. 


468  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  356  Dawson  has  published  criticisms  I  should  like  to  see  them. 
I  have  heard  he  is  rabid  against  me,  and  no  doubt  parti}'  in 
consequence,  against  anything  you  write  in  my  favour  (and 
never  was  anything  published  more  favourable  than  the 
Arctic  paper).  Lyell  had  difficulty  in  preventing  Dawson 
reviewing  the  Origin  '  on  hearsay,  without  having  looked 
at  it.  No  spirit  of  fairness  can  be  expected  from  so  biassed  a 
judge. 

All  I  can  say  is  that  your  few  first  pages  have  im- 
pressed me  far  more  this  reading  than  the  first  time.  Can 
the  Scandinavian  portion  of  the  flora  be  so  potent 2  from  having 
been  preserved  in  that  corner,  warmed  by  the  Gulf  Stream,  and 
from  now  alone  representing  the  entire  circumpolar  flora,  during 
the  warmer  pre-Glacial  period  ?  From  the  first  I  have  not 
been  able  to  resist  the  impression  (shared  by  Asa  Gray,  whose 
Review  3  on  you  pleased  me  much)  that  during  the  Glacial 
period  there  must  have  been  almost  entire  extinction  in 
Greenland  ;  for  depth  of  sea  does  not  favour  former  southerly 
extension  of  land  there.4  I  must  suspect  that  plants  have  been 
largely  introduced  by  sea  currents,  which  bring  so  much 
wood  from  N.  Europe.  But  here  we  shall  split  as  wide  as  the 
poles  asunder.  All  the  world  could  not  persuade  me,  if  it 
tried,  that  yours  is  not  a  grand  essay.  I  do  not  quite  under- 
stand whether  it  is  this  essay  that  Dawson  has  been  "  down 
on."  What  a  curious  notion  about  Glacial  climate,  and 
Basques  and  Finns  !  Are  the  Basques  mountaineers — I  hope 
so.  I  am  sorry  I  have  not  seen  the  AtJiemcum,  but  I  now 
take  in  the  Parthenon.  By  the  way,  I  have  just  read  with 
much  interest  Max  Muller  ; B  the  last  part,  about  first  origin 
of  language,  seems  the  least  satisfactory  part. 

1  Dawson  reviewed  the  Origin  in  the  Canadian  Naturalist,  i860. 

J  Dr.  Hooker  wrote:  "Regarded  as  a  whole  the  Arctic  flora  is 
decidedly  Scandinavian  ;  for  Arctic  Scandinavia,  or  Lapland,  though 
a  very  small  tract  of  land,  contains  by  far  the  richest  Arctic  flora, 
amounting  to  three-fourths  of  the  whole  "  ;  he  pointed  out  "  that  the 
Scandinavian  flora  is  present  in  every  latitude  of  the  globe,  and  is  the 
only  one  that  is  so"  (quoted  by  Gray,  loc.  at.  infra). 

3  Asa  Gray's  Scientific  Papers,  Vol.  I.,  p.  122. 

4  In  the  driving  southward  of  the  vegetation  by  the  Glacial  epoch  the 
Greenland  flora  would  be  "  driven  into  the  sea,  that  is,  exterminated.'' 
(Hooker  quoted  by  Gray,  loc.  cil.,  p.  124.) 

s  Probably  liis  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  1861-64. 


1843—1882]  ARCTIC    FLORA  469 

Pray  thank  Oliver  heartily  for  his  heap  of  references  on  Letter  356 
poisons.1     How  the  devil  does  he  find  them  out  ? 

I  must  not  indulge  [myself]  with  Cypripedium.  Asa  Gray 
has  made  out  pretty  clearly  that,  at  least  in  some  cases,  the 
act  of  fertilisation  is  effected  by  small  insects  being  forced  to 
crawl  in  and  out  of  the  flower  in  a  particular  direction  ;  and 
perhaps  I  am  quite  wrong  that  it  is  ever  effected  by  the 
proboscis. 

I  retract  so  far  that  if  you  have  the  rare  C.  hirsutissimum, 
I  should  very  much  like  to  examine  a  cut  single  flower  ;  for 
I  saw  one  at  a  flower  show,  and  as  far  as  I  could  see,  it 
seemed  widely  different  from  other  forms. 

P.S. — Answer  this,  if  by  chance  you  can.  I  remember 
distinctly  having  read  in  some  book  of  travels,  I  am  nearly 
sure  in  Australia,  an  account  of  the  natives,  during  famines, 
trying  and  cooking  in  all  sorts  of  ways  various  vegetable 
productions,  and  sometimes  being  injured  by  them.  Can  you 
remember  any  such  account?  I  want  to  find  it.  I  thought  it 
was  in  Sir  G.  Grey,  but  it  is  not.  Could  it  have  been  in 
Eyre's  book  ? 

J.  D.   Hooker  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  357 

[Nov.  1862]. 

...  I  have  speculated  on  the  probability  of  there  having 
been  a  post-Glacial  Arctic-Norwego-Greenland  in  connection, 
which  would  account  for  the  strong  fact,  that  temperate 
Greenland  is  as  Arctic  as  Arctic  Greenland  is — a  fact,  to  me, 
of  astounding  force.  I  do  confess,  that  a  northern  migration 
would  thus  fill  Greenland  as  it  is  filled,  in  so  far  as  the  whole 
flora  (temperate  and  Arctic)  would  be  Arctic, — but  then  the 
same  plants  should  have  gone  to  the  other  Polar  islands,  and 
above  all,  so  many  Scandinavian  Arctic  plants  should  not  be 
absent  in  Greenland,  still  less  should  whole  Natural  Orders  be 
absent,  and  above  all  the  Arctic  Leguminosae.  It  is  difficult 
(as  1  have  told  Dawson)  to  conceive  of  the  force  with  which 
arguments  drawn  from  the  absence  of  certain  familiar 
ubiquitous  plants  strike  the  botanists.    I  would  not  throw  over 


1  Doubtless  in  connection  with  Darwin's  work  on  Drosera  :  he  was 
working  at  this  subject  during  his  stay  at  Bournemouth  in  the  autumn  of 
1862. 


470  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  357  altogether  ice-transport  and  water-transport,  but  I  cannot 
realise  their  giving  rise  to  such  anomalies,  in  the  distribution, 
as  Greenland  presents.  So,  too,  I  have  always  felt  the  force 
of  your  objection,  that  Greenland  should  have  been  depopulated 
in  the  Glacial  period,  but  then  reflected  that  vegetation  now 
ascends  I  forget  how  high  (about  1,000  feet)  in  Disco,  in  70°, 
and  that  even  in  a  Glacial  ocean  there  may  always  have 
been  lurking-places  for  the  few  hundred  plants  Greenland 
now  possesses.  Supposing  Greenland  were  rcpeopled  from 
Scandinavia  over  ocean  way,  why  should  Carices  be  the  chief 
things  brought  ?  Why  should  there  have  been  no 
Leguminosas  brought,  no  plants  but  high  Arctic  ? — why  no 
Caltha  palustris,  which  gilds  the  marshes  of  Norway  and 
paints  the  housetops  of  Iceland?  In  short,  to  my  eyes,  the 
trans-oceanic  migration  would  no  more  make  such  an 
assemblage  than  special  creations  would  account  for  repre- 
sentative species— and  no  "ingenious  wriggling"  ever  satisfied 
me  that  it  would.     There,  then  ! 

I  dined  with  Henry  Christy  last  night,  who  was  just 
returned  from  celt  hunting  with  Lartet,  amongst  the  Basques, — 
I  hey  are  Pyreneans.  Lubbock  was  there,  and  told  me  that 
my  precious  speculation  was  one  of  Von  Baer's,  and  that  the 
Finns  are  supposed  to  have  made  the  Kjokken  moddings. 
I  read  Max  Mliller  a  year  ago — and  quite  agree,  first  part  is 
excellent  ;  last,  on  origin  of  language,  fatuous  and  feeble  as  a 
scientific  argument. 

Letter  358  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  Nov.  1 2th  [1862]. 
I  return  by  this  post  Dawson's  lecture,  which  seems  to 
me  interesting,  but  with  nothing  new.  I  think  he  must  be 
rather  conceited,  with  his  "  If  Dr.  Hooker  had  known  this 
and  that,  he  would  have  said  so  and  so."  It  seems  to  me 
absurd  in  Dawson  assuming  that  North  America  was  under 
sea  during  the  whole  Glacial  period.  Certainly  Greenland 
is  a  most  curious  and  difficult  problem.  But  as  for  the 
Leguminosaj,  the  case,  my  dear  fellow,  is  as  plain  as  a  pike- 
staff, as  the  seeds  are  so  very  quickly  killed  by  the  sea-water. 
Seriously,  it  would  be  a  curious  experiment  to  try  vitality  in 
salt  water  of  the  plants  which  ought  to  be  in  Greenland.  I 
forget,  however,  that  it  would  be  impossible,  I  suppose,  to 


i843— 1882]  GLACIAL    ACTION  471 

get  hardly  any  except  the  Caltha,  and  if  ever  I  stumble  on  Letter  358 
that  plant  in  seed   I  will  try  it. 

I  wish  to  Heaven  some  one  would  examine  the  rocks 
near  sea-level  at  the  south  point  of  Greenland,  and  see  if 
they  are  well  scored  ;  that  would  tell  something.  But  then 
subsidence  might  have  brought  down  higher  rocks  to  present 
sea-level.  I  am  much  more  willing  to  admit  your  Nonvego- 
Greenland  connecting  land  than  most  other  cases,  from  the 
nature  of  the  rocks  in  Spitzbergen  and  Bear  Island.  You 
have  broached  and  thrown  a  lot  of  light  on  a  splendid 
problem,  which  some  day  will  be  solved.  It  rejoices  me  to 
think  that,  when  a  boy,  I  was  shown  an  erratic  boulder  in 
Shrewsbury,  and  was  told  by  a  clever  old  gentleman  that 
till  the  world's  end  no  one  would  ever  guess  how  it  came 
there. 

It  makes  me  laugh  to  think  of  Dr.  Dawson's  indignation 
at  your  sentence  about  "obliquity  of  vision."1  By  Jove,  he 
will  try  and  pitch  into  you  some  day.  Good  night  for  the 
present. 

To  return  for  a  moment  to  the  Glacial  period.  You 
might  have  asked  Dawson  whether  ibex,  marmot,  etc.,  etc., 
were  carried  from  mountain  to  mountain  in  Europe  on  float- 
ing ice  ;  and  whether  musk  ox  got  to  England  on  icebergs  ? 
Yet  England  has  subsided,  if  we  trust  to  the  good  evidence 
of  shells  alone,  more  during  Glacial  period  than  America 
is  known  to  have  done. 

For  Heaven's  sake  instil  a  word  of  caution  into  Tyn- 
dall's  ears.  I  saw  an  extract  that  valleys  of  Switzerland 
were  wholly  due  to  glaciers.  He  cannot  have  reflected  on 
valleys  in  tropical  countries.  The  grandest  valleys  I  ever 
saw  were  in  Tahiti.  Again,  if  I  understand,  he  supposes 
that  glaciers  wear  down  whole  mountain  ranges  ;  thus  lower 
their  height,  decrease  the  temperature,  and  decrease  the 
glaciers  themselves.  Does  he  suppose  the  whole  of  Scotland 
thus  worn  down?  Surely  he  must  forget  oscillation  of  level 
would  be  more  potent  one  way  or  another  during  such 
enormous  lapses  of  time.  It  would  be  hard  to  believe  any 
mountain  range  has  been  so  long  stationary. 

I   suppose  Lycll's   book 2  will   soon   be  out.     I    was  very 

1  See  Letter  144. 

''   The  Antiquity  of  Man,  1863. 


4/2  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chai\  VI 

Letter  358  glad  to  see  in  a  newspaper  that  Murray  sold  4,000.  What 
a  sale ! 

I  am  now  working  on  cultivated  plants,  and  rather  like 
my  work  ;  but  I  am  horribly  afraid  I  make  the  rashest 
remarks  on  value  of  differences.  I  trust  to  a  sort  of  instinct, 
and,  God  knows,  can  seldom  give  any  reason  for  my  remarks. 
Lord,  in  what  a  medley  the  origin  of  cultivated  plants  is. 
I  have  been  reading  on  strawberries,  and  I  can  find  hardly 
two  botanists  agree  what  are  the  wild  forms  ;  but  I  pick  out 
of  horticultural  books  here  and  there  queer  cases  of  variation, 
inheritance,  etc.,  etc. 

What  a  long  letter  I  have  scribbled  ;  but  you  must 
forgive  me,  for  it  is  a  great  pleasure  thus  talking  to  you. 

Did  you  ever  hear  of  "Condy's  Ozonised  Water"?  I 
have  been  trying  it  with,  1  think,  extraordinary  advantage — 
to  comfort,  at  least.  A  teaspoon,  in  water,  three  or  four 
times  a  day.  If  you  meet  any  poor  dyspeptic  devil  like  me, 
suggest  it. 

Letter  359  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down,  26th  [March  1863]. 

I  hope  and  think  you  are  too  severe  on  Lyell's  early 
chapters.  Though  so  condensed,  and  not  well  arranged,  they 
seemed  to  me  to  convey  with  uncommon  force  the  antiquity 
of  man,1  and  that  was  his  object.  It  did  not  occur  to  me, 
but  I  fear  there  is  some  truth  in  your  criticism,  that  nothing 
is  to  be  trusted  until  he  [Lyell]  had  observed  it. 

I  am  glad  to  see  you  stirred  up  about  tropical  plants 
during  Glacial  period. 

Remember  that  I  have  many  times  sworn  to  you  that 
they  coexisted  ;  so,  my  dear  fellow,  you  must  make  them 
coexist.  I  do  not  think  that  greater  coolness  in  a  disturbed 
condition  of  things  would  be  required  than  the  zone  of  the 
Himalaya,  in  which  you  describe  some  tropical  and  tem- 
perate  forms    commingling;2  and    as    in    the  lower  part  of 

1  The  Geological  Evidences  of  the  Antiquity  of  Man:  London,  1863. 

2  "  During  this  [the  Glacial  period],  the  coldest  point,  the  lowlands 
under  the  equator,  must  have  been  clothed  with  a  mingled  tropical 
and  temperate  vegetation,  like  that  described  by  Hooker  as  growing 
luxuriantly  at  the  height  of  from  four  to  five  thousand  feet  on  the  lower 
slopes  of  the  Himalaya,  but  with  perhaps  a  still  greater  preponderance 
of  temperate  forms"  {Origi?i  of  Species,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  338). 


1 843-  -'882]  GLACIAL    PERIOD 


473 


the  Cameroons,  and  as  Seemann  describes,  in  low  mountains  Letter  359 
of  Panama.  It  is,  as  you  say,  absurd  to  suppose  that  such 
a  genus  as  Dipterocarpusx  could  have  been  developed  since 
the  Glacial  era;  but  do  you  feel  so  sure,  as  to  oppose2  a 
large  body  of  considerations  on  the  other  side,  that  this 
genus  could  not  have  been  slowly  accustomed  to  a  cooler 
climate?  I  see  Lindley  says  it  has  not  been  brought  to 
England,  and  so  could  not  have  been  tried  in  the  green- 
house. Have  you  materials  to  show  to  what  little  height 
it  ever  ascends  the  mountains  of  Java  or  Sumatra?  It 
makes  a  mighty  difference,  the  whole  area  being  cooled  ; 
and  the  area  perhaps  not  being  in  all  respects,  such  as 
dampness,  etc.,  etc.,  fitted  for  such  temperate  plants  as 
could  get  in.  But,  anyhow,  I  am  ready  to  swear  again  that 
Dipterocarpus  and  any  other  genus  you  like  to  name  did 
survive  during  a  cooler  period. 

About  reversion  you  express  just  what  I  mean.  I 
somehow  blundered,  and  mentally  took  literally  that  the 
child  inherited  from  his  grandfather.  This  view  of  latency 
collates  a  lot  of  facts— secondary  sexual  characters  in 
each  individual  ;  tendency  of  latent  character  to  appear 
temporarily  in  youth  ;  effect  of  crossing  in  educing  talent, 
character,  etc.  When  one  thinks  of  a  latent  character 
being  handed  down,  hidden  for  a  thousand  or  ten  thousand 
generations,  and  then  suddenly  appearing,  one  is  quite 
bewildered  at  the  host  of  characters  written  in  invisible 
ink  on  the  germ.  I  have  no  evidence  of  the  reversion 
of  all  characters  in  a  variety.  I  quite  agree  to  what 
you  say  about  genius.  I  told  Lyell  that  passage  made 
me  groan. 

What  a  pity  about  Falconer  ! 3  How  singular  and  how 
lamentable ! 

Remember  orchid  pods.  I  have  a  passion  to  grow  the 
seeds  (and  other  motives).  I  have  not  a  fact  to  go  on,  but 
have  a  notion  (no,   I   have  a  firm  conviction  !)  that  they  are 


1  Dipterocarpus,  a  genus  of  the  Dipterocarpaceae,  a  family  of  dicoty- 
ledonous plants  restricted  to  the  tropics  of  the  Old  World. 

2  The  meaning  seems  to  be  :  "Do  you  feel  so  sure  that  you  can  bring 
in  opposition  a  large  body  of  considerations  to  show,  etc." 

3  This  refers  to  Falconer's  claim  of  priority  against  Lyell.     See  Life 
ami  Letters,  III.,  p.  14  ;  also  Letters  166  and  168. 


474  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  359  parasitic  in  early  youth  on  cryptogams  ! '  Here  is  a  fool's 
notion.  I  have  some  planted  on  Sphagnum.  Do  any  tropical 
lichens  or  mosses,  or  European,  withstand  heat,  or  grow  on 
any  trees  in  hothouse  at  Kew?  If  so,  for  love  of  Heaven, 
favour  my  madness,  and  have  some  scraped  off  and  sent  me. 
I  am  like  a  gambler,  and  love  a  wild  experiment.  It 
gives  me  great  pleasure  to  fancy  that  I  see  radicles  of  orchid 
seed  penetrating  the  Sphagnum.  I  know  I  shall  not,  and 
therefore  shall  not  be  disappointed. 

Letter  360  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

Down  [Sept.  26th,  1863]. 
.  .  .  About  New  Zealand,  at  last  I  am  coming  round,  and 
admit  it  must  have  been  connected  with  some  terra  fiinna,  but 
I  will  die  rather  than  admit  Australia.     How  I  wish  mount- 
ains of  New  Caledonia  were  well  worked  !  .  .  . 

Letter  361  To  J.  D.  Hooker. 

In   the  earlier   part   of  this   letter   Mr.   Darwin   refers   to   a  review 

on  Planchon  in  the  Nat.  History  Review,  April  1865.     There  can  be  no 

doubt,  therefore,  that  "Thomson's  article"  must  be  the  review  of  Jordan's 

Diagnoses  despices  nonvelles  ou  miconnues,  etc.,  in  the  same  number, 

p.  226.    It  deals  with  "lumpers"  and  "splitters,"  and  a  possible  trinomial 

nomenclature. 

April  17th  [1865]. 

I  have  been  very  much  struck  by  Thomson's  article  ;  it 

seems  to  me  quite  remarkable  for  its  judgment,  force,  and 

clearness.     It  has  interested  me  greatly.     I  have  sometimes 

loosely  speculated  on  what  nomenclature  would  come  to,  and 

concluded  that  it  would  be  trinomial.     What  a  name  a  plant 

will  formally  bear  with  the  author's  name  after  genus  (as  some 

recommend),   and    after   species    and    subspecies !      It    really 

seems  one  of  the  greatest  questions  which  can  be  discussed 

for  systematic  Natural  History.     How  impartially  Thomson 

adjusts    the    claims    of  "hair-splitters"    and    "lumpers"!     I 

1  In  an  article  on  British  Epiphytal  Orchids  {Gard.  Chron.,  1884, 
p.  144)  Malaxis  paludosa  is  described  by  F.  W.  Burbidge  as  being 
a  true  epiphyte  on  the  stems  of  Sphagnum.  Stahl  states  that  the 
difficulty  of  cultivating  orchids  largely  depends  on  their  dependence  on 
a  mycorhizal  fungus, — though  he  does  not  apply  his  view  to  germination. 
See  Pringsheim's  Jahrbiicher,  XXXIV.,  p.  581.  We  are  indebted  to 
Sir  Joseph  Hooker  for  the  reference  to  Burbidge's  paper. 


1843— 1882]  DISPERSAL    OF    SEEDS  475 

sincerely  hope  he  will  pretty  often  write  reviews  or  essays.  Letter  361 
It  is  an  old  subject  of  grief  to  me,  formerly  in  Geology  and  of 
late  in  Zoology  and  Botany,  that  the  very  best  men  (excepting 
those  who  have  to  write  principles  and  elements,  etc.)  read  so 
little,  and  give  up  nearly  their  whole  time  to  original  work.  I 
have  often  thought  that  science  would  progress  more  if  there 
was  more  reading.  How  few  read  any  long  and  laborious 
papers  !  The  only  use  of  publishing  such  seems  to  be  as  a 
proof  that  the  author  has  given  time  and  labour  to  his  work. 

To  J.   D.   Hooker.  Letter  362 

Down,  Oct.  22nd  and  28th,  1865. 
As  for  the  anthropologists  being  a  bete  noire  to  scientific 
men,  I  am  not  surprised,  for  I  have  just  skimmed  through  the 
last  Anthrop.  Journal,  and  it  shows,  especially  the  long  attack 
on  the  British  Association,  a  curious  spirit  of  insolence, 
conceit,  dulness,  and  vulgarity.  I  have  read  with  uncommon 
interest  Travers'  x  short  paper  on  the  Chatham  Islands.  I 
remember  your  pitching  into  me  with  terrible  ferocity  because 
I  said  I  thought  the  seed  of  Edwardsia  might  have  been 
floated  from  Chili  to  New  Zealand  :  now  what  do  you  say,  my 
young  man,  to  the  three  young  trees  of  the  same  size  on  one 
spot  alone  of  the  island,  and  with  the  cast-up  pod  on  the 
shore?  If  it  were  not  for  those  unlucky  wingless  birds  I 
could  believe  that  the  group  had  been  colonised  by  accidental 
means  ;  but,  as  it  is,  it  appears  by  far  to  me  the  best  evidence 
of  continental  extension  ever  observed.  The  distance,  I  see, 
is  360  miles.  I  wish  I  knew  whether  the  sea  was  deeper  than 
between  New  Zealand  and  Australia.  I  fear  you  will  not 
admit  such  a  small  accident  as  the  wingless  birds  having  been 
transported  on  icebergs.  Do  suggest,  if  you  have  a  chance, 
to  any  one  visiting  the  Islands  again,  to  look  out  for  erratic 
boulders  there.  How  curious  his  statement  is  about  the  fruit- 
trees  and  bees  ! 2  I  wish  I  knew  w  hether  the  clover  had  spread 
before  the  bees  were  introduced.  .  .  . 


1  Sec  Travers,  II.  H.,  "Notes  on  the  Chatham  Islands,"  Linn.  Soc. 
Journ.  IX.,  Oct.  1865.  Mr.  Travers  says  he  picked  up  a  seed  of 
Edwardsia,  evidently  washed  ashore.  The  stranded  logs  indicated  a 
current  from  New  Zealand. 

-  "  Since  the  importation  of  bees,  European  fruit-trees  and  bushes 
have  produced  freely."     Travers,  Linn.  Soc.  Journal,  IX.,  p.  144. 


476  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  362  I  saw  in  the  Gardeners  Chronicle  the  sentence  about 
the  Origin  dying  in  Germany,  but  did  not  know  it  was  by 
Seemann. 

Letter  363  To  C.  Lyell. 

Down,  Feb.  7th  [1866]. 

I  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  note  and  the  extract, 
which  have  interested  me  extremely.  I  cannot  disbelieve  for 
a  moment  Agassiz  on  Glacial  action  after  all  his  experience, 
as  you  say,  and  after  that  capital  book1  with  plates  which  he 
early  published  ;  as  for  his  inferences  and  reasoning  on  the 
valley  of  the  Amazon  that  is  quite  another  question,  nor  can 
he  have  seen  all  the  regions  to  which  Mrs.  A.2  alludes.  Her 
letter  is  not  very  clear  to  me,  and  I  do  not  understand  what 
she  means  by  "  to  a  height  of  more  than  three  thousand  feet." 
There  arc  no  erratic  boulders  (to  which  I  particularly 
attended)  in  the  low  country  round  Rio.  It  is  possible  or 
even  probable  that  this  area  may  have  subsided,  for  I  could 
detect  no  evidence  of  elevation,  or  any  Tertiary  formations  or 
volcanic  action.  The  Organ  Mountains  are  from  six  to  seven 
thousand  feet  in  height  ;  and  I  am  only  a  little  surprised  at 
their  bearing  the  marks  of  glacial  action.  For  some  temperate 
genera  of  plants,  viz.,  Vaccinium,  Andromeda,  GaultJieria, 
Hypericum,  Drosera,  Habenaria,  inhabit  these  mountains,  and 
I  look  at  this  almost  as  good  evidence  of  a  cold  period,  as 
glacial  action.  That  there  are  not  more  temperate  plants  can 
be  accounted  for  by  the  isolated  position  of  these  mountains. 
There  are  no  erratic  boulders  on  the  Pacific  coast  north  of 
Chiloe,  and  but  few  glaciers  in  the  Cordillera,  but  it  by  no 

1  Etudes  sur  les  Glaciers;  Neuchatel,  1840. 

2  A  letter  from  Mrs.  Agassiz  to  Lady  Lyell,  which  had  been  for- 
warded to  Mr.  Darwin.  The  same  letter  was  sent  also  to  Sir  Charles 
Bunbury,  who,  in  writing  to  Lyell  on  Feb.  3rd,  1866,  criticises  some 
of  the  statements.  He  speaks  of  Agassiz's  observations  on  glacial 
phenomena  in  Brazil  as  "very  astonishing  indeed;  so  astonishing  that 
I  have  very  great  difficulty  in  believing  them.  They  shake  my  faith  in 
the  glacial  system  altogether  ;  or  perhaps  they  ought  rather  to  shake 
the  faith  in  Agassiz.  ...  If  Brazil  was  ever  covered  with  glaciers,  I  can 
see  no  reason  why  the  whole  earth  should  not  have  been  so.  l'erhaps 
the  whole  terrestrial  globe  was  once  'one  entire  and  perfect  icicle'" 
(From  the  privately  printed  Life  of  Sir  Charles  Bunbury,  edited  by 
Lady  Bunbury,  Vol.  ii.,  p.  334). 


1843— 1882]  GLACIAL     PERIOD  477 

means  follows,  I  think,  that  there  may  not  have  been  formerly  Letter  363 
gigantic  glaciers  on  the  eastern  and  more  humid  side. 

In  the  third  edition  of  Origin,  p.  403,1  you  will  find  a  brief 
allusion,  on  authority  of  Mr.  D.  Forbes,  on  the  former  much 
lower  extension  of  glaciers  in  the  equatorial  Cordillera.  Fray 
also  look  at  page  407  at  what  I  say  on  the  nature  of  tropical 
vegetation  (which  I  could  now  much  improve)  during  the 
Glacial  period.2 

I  feel  a  strong  conviction  that  soon  every  one  will  believe 
that  the  whole  world  was  cooler  during  the  Glacial  period. 
Remember  Hooker's  wonderful  case  recently  discovered  of 
the  identity  of  so  many  temperate  plants  on  the  summit 
of  Fernando  Po,  and  on  the  mountains  of  Abyssinia.3  I  look 
at  [it]  as  certain  that  these  plants  crossed  the  whole  of  Africa 
from  east  to  west  during  the  same  period.  I  wish  I  had 
published  a  long  chapter  written  in  full,  and  almost  ready  for 
the  press,  on  this  subject,  which  I  wrote  ten  years  ago.  It 
was  impossible  in  the  Origin  to  give  a  fair  abstract. 

My  health  is  considerably  improved,  so  that  I  am  able  to 
work  nearly  two  hours  a  day,  and  so  make  some  little 
progress  with  my  everlasting  book  on  domestic  varieties. 
You  will  have  heard  of  my  sister  Catherine's  easy  death4  last 
Friday  morning.  She  suffered  much,  and  we  all  look  at  her 
death  as  a  blessing,  for  there  was  much  fear  of  prolonged  and 
greater  suffering.  We  are  uneasy  about  Susan,5  but  she  has 
hitherto  borne  it  better  than  we  could  have  hoped. 

1  Origin,  Ed.  vi.,  p.  335,  1882.  "  Mr.  D.  Forbes  informs  me  that  he 
found  in  various  parts  of  the  Cordillera,  from  lat.  130  W.  to  300  S.,  at 
about  the  height  of  twelve  thousand  feet,  deeply  furrowed  rocks  .  .  .  and 
likewise  great  masses  of  detritus,  including  grooved  pebbles.  Along  this 
whole  space  of  the  Cordillera  true  glaciers  do  not  now  exist,  even  at 
much  more  considerable  height." 

3  "During  this,  the  coldest  period,  the  lowlands  under  the  Equator 
must  have  been  clothed  with  a  mingled  tropical  and  temperate  vegeta- 
tion. .  .   ."     {Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  1882,  p.  338). 

3  "Dr.  Hooker  has  also  lately  shown  that  several  of  the  plants  living 
in  the  upper  parts  of  the  lofty  island  of  Fernando  Po,  and  in  the  neigh- 
bouring Cameroon  Mountains,  in  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  are  closely  related 
to  those  on  the  mountains  of  Abyssinia,  and  likewise  to  those  of  temperate 
Europe"  {he.  tit.,  p.  ^yj). 

*  Catherine  Darwin  died  in  February  1866. 

5  Susan  Darwin  died  in  October  1866. 


47S  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  363        Remember  glacial  action  of  Lebanon  when  you  speak  of 
no  glacial  action  in  S.  on  Himalaya,  and  in  S.E.  Australia. 

P.S. — I  have  been  very  glad  to  see  Sir  C.  Bunbury's 
letter.1  If  the  genera  which  I  name  from  Gardner2  are  not 
considered  by  him  as  usually  temperate  forms,  I  am,  of  course, 
silenced;  but  Hooker  looked  over  the  MS.  chapter  some  ten 
years  ago  and  did  not  score  out  my  remarks  on  them,  and  he 
is  generally  ready  enough  to  pitch  into  my  ignorance  and 
snub  me,  as  I  often  deserve.  My  wonder  was  how  any,  ever 
so  few,  temperate  forms  reached  the  mountains  of  Brazil ;  and 
I  supposed  they  travelled  by  the  rather  high  land  and  ranges 
(name  forgotten)  which  stretch  from  the  Cordillera  towards 
Brazil.  Cordillera  genera  of  plants  have  also,  somehow, 
reached  the  Silla  of  Caracas.  When  I  think  of  the  vegetation 
of  New  Zealand  and  west  coast  of  South  America,  where 
glaciers  now  descend  to  or  very  near  to  the  sea,  I  feel  it  rash 
to  conclude  that  all  tropical  forms  would  be  destroyed  by  a 
considerably  cooler  period  under  the  Equator. 


Letter  364  To   C-    Lyell. 

Down,  Thursday,  Feb.    15th  [1866J. 

Many  thanks  for  Hooker's  letter  ;  it  is  a  real  pleasure  to 
me  to  read  his  letters ;  they  are  always  written  with  such  spirit. 
I  quite  agree  that  Agassiz  could  never  mistake  weathered 
blocks  and  glacial  action  ;  though  the  mistake  has,  I  know, 
been  made  in  two  or  three  quarters  of  the  world.  I  have 
often  fought  with  Hooker  about  the  physicists  putting  their 
veto  on  the  world  having  been  cooler;  it  seems  to  me  as 
irrational  as  if,  when  geologists  first  brought  forward  some 
evidence  of  elevation  and  subsidence,  a  former  Hooker  had 
declared  that  this  could  not  possibly  be  admitted  until 
geologists  could  explain  what  made  the  earth  rise  and  fall. 
It  seems  that  I  erred  greatly  about  some  of  the  plants  on 
the  Organ  Mountains.3     But  I  am  very  glad  to  hear  about 

1  The  letter  from  Bunbury  to  Lyell,  already  quoted  on  this  subject. 
Bunbury  writes  :  "  There  is  nothing  in  the  least  northern,  nothing  that  is 
not  characteristically  Brazilian,  in  the  flora  of  the  Organ  Mountains." 

3  Travels  in  the  Interior  of  Brazil,  by  G.  Gardner  :  London,  1846. 

3  "On  the  Organ  Mountains  of  Brazil  some  few  temperate  European, 
some  Antarctic,  and  some  Andean  genera  were  found  by  Gardner,  which 


1843-1882]  GLACIAL    PERIOD  479 

Fuchsia,  etc.  I  cannot  make  out  what  Hooker  does  believe  ;  Letter  364 
he  seems  to  admit  the  former  cooler  climate,  and  almost  in 
the  same  breath  to  spurn  the  idea.  To  retort  Hooker's 
words,  "it  is  inexplicable  to  me"  how  he  can  compare  the 
transport  of  seeds  from  the  Andes  to  the  Organ  Mountains 
with  that  from  a  continent  to  an  island.  Not  to  mention  the 
much  greater  distance,  there  are  no  currents  of  water  from 
one  to  the  other  ;  and  what  on  earth  should  make  a  bird  fly 
that  distance  without  resting  many  times?  I  do  not  at  all 
suppose  that  nearly  all  tropical  forms  were  exterminated 
during  the  cool  period  ;  but  in  somewhat  depopulated  areas, 
into  which  there  could  be  no  migration,  probably  many 
closely  allied  species  will  have  been  formed  since  this  period. 
Hooker's  paper  in  the  Natural  History  Review1  is  well  worth 
studying  ;  but  I  cannot  remember  that  he  gives  good  grounds 
for  his  conviction  that  certain  orders  of  plants  could  not 
withstand  a  rather  cooler  climate,  even  if  it  came  on  most 
gradually.  We  have  only  just  learnt  under  how  cool  a 
temperature  several  tropical  orchids  can  flourish.  I  clearly 
saw  Hooker's  difficulty  about  the  preservation  of  tropical 
forms  during  the  cool  period,  and  tried  my  best  to  retain 
one  spot  after  another  as  a  hothouse  for  their  preservation  ; 
but  it  would  not  hold  good,  and  it  was  a  mere  piece  of 
truckling  on  my  part  when  I  suggested  that  longitudinal  belts 
of  the  world  were  cooled  one  after  the  other.  I  shall  very 
much  like  to  see  Agassiz's  letter,  whenever  you  receive  one. 
I  have  written  a  long  letter  ;  but  a  squabble  with  or  about 
Hooker  always  does  me  a  world  of  good,  and  we  have  been  at 
it  many  a  long  year.  1  cannot  understand  whether  he  attacks 
me  as  a  wriggler  or  a  hammerer,  but  I  am  very  sure  that  a 
deal  of  wriggling  has  to  be  done. 


'tot.' 


To  J.   D.   Hooker.  Letter  365 

Down,  July  30th  [1866]. 
Many  thanks  about  the  lupin.     Your  letter  has  interested 
me  extremely,  and  reminds  me  of  old  times.     I  suppose,  by 

do  not  exist    in  the  low  intervening   hot    countries  "    {Origin,  Ed.   VI., 

P-  33fy- 

1  Possibly  an  unsigned  article,  entitled  "New  Colonial  Floras"  (a 
review  of  Grisebach's  Flora  of  the  Uri/ish  West  Indian  Islands  and 
Thwaites'  Enumeratio  Plantarum  Zeylania). — Nat.  Hist.  Review,  Jan. 
1865,  p.  46.     See  Letter  1S4,  p.  260. 


480  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  365  your  writing,  you  would  like  to  hear  my  notions.  I  cannot 
admit  the  Atlantis1  connecting  Madeira  and  Canary  Islands 
without  the  strongest  evidence,  and  all  on  that  side :  the 
depth  is  so  great  ;  there  is  nothing  geologically  in  the 
islands  favouring  the  belief ;  there  are  no  endemic  mammals 
or  batrachians.  Did  not  Bunbury  show  that  some  Orders  of 
plants  were  singularly  deficient  ?  But  I  rely  chiefly  on  the 
large  amount  of  specific  distinction  in  the  insects  and  land- 
shells  of  P.  Santo  and  Madeira :  surely  Canary  and  Madeira 
could  not  have  been  connected,  if  Madeira  and  P.  Santo  had 
long  been  distinct.  If  you  admit  Atlantis,  I  think  you  are 
bound  to  admit  or  explain  the  difficulties. 

With  respect  to  cold  temperate  plants  in  Madeira,  I,  of 
course,  know  not  enough  to  form  an  opinion  ;  but,  admitting 
Atlantis,  I  can  see  their  rarity  is  a  great  difficulty  ;  otherwise, 
seeing  that  the  latitude  is  only  a  little  north  of  the  Persian 
Gulf,  and  seeing  the  long  sea-transport  for  seeds,  the  rarity  of 
northern  plants  does  not  seem  to  me  difficult.  The  immigra- 
tion may  have  been  from  a  southerly  direction,  and  it  seems 
that  some  few  African  as  well  as  coldish  plants  are  common 
to  the  mountains  to  the  south. 

Believing  in  occasional  transport,  I  cannot  feel  so  much 
surprise  at  there  being  a  good  deal  in  common  to  Madeira 
and  Canary,  these  being  the  nearest  points  of  land  to  each 
other.  It  is  quite  new  and  very  interesting  to  me  what  you 
say  about  the  endemic  plants  being  in  so  large  a  proportion 
rare  species.  From  the  greater  size  of  the  workshop  (i.e., 
greater  competition  and  greater  number  of  individuals,  etc.) 

1  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  lectured  on  "  Insular  Floras"  at  the  Nottingham 
meeting  of  the  British  Association  on  Aug.  27th,  1866.  His  lecture  is 
given  in  the  Gardeners'1  Chronicle,  1867,  p.  6.  No  doubt  he  was  at  this 
time  preparing  his  remarks  on  continental  extension,  which  take  the 
form  of  a  judicial  statement,  giving  the  arguments  and  difficulties  on 
both  sides.  He  sums  up  against  continental  extension,  which,  he  says, 
accounts  for  everything  and  explains  nothing ;  "  whilst  the  hypothesis 
of  trans-oceanic  migration,  though  it  leaves  a  multitude  of  facts  un- 
explained, offers  a  rational  solution  of  many  of  the  most  puzzling 
phenomena."  In  his  lecture,  Sir  Joseph  wrote  that  in  ascending  the 
mountains  in  Madeira  there  is  but  little  replacement  of  lowland  species 
by  those  of  a  higher  northern  latitude.  "  Plants  become  fewer  and  fewer 
as  we  ascend,  and  their  places  are  not  taken  by  boreal  ones,  or  by 
but  very  few." 


i843— 1882]  INSULAR    FLORAS  481 

I  should  expect  that  continental  forms,  as  they  are  occasion-  Letter  365 
ally  introduced,  would  always  tend  to  beat  the  insular  forms  ; 
and,  as  in  every  area,  there  will  always  be  many  forms  more  or 
less  rare  tending  towards  extinction,  I  should  certainly  have 
expected  that  in  islands  a  large  proportion  of  the  rarer  forms 
would  have  been  insular  in  their  origin.  The  longer  the  time 
any  form  has  existed  in  an  island  into  which  continental  forms 
are  occasionally  introduced,  by  so  much  the  chances  will  be 
in  favour  of  its  being  peculiar  or  abnormal  in  nature,  and 
at  the  same  time  scanty  in  numbers.  The  duration  of  its 
existence  will  also  have  formerly  given  it  the  best  chance, 
when  it  was  not  so  rare,  of  being  widely  distributed  to  adjoin- 
ing archipelagoes.  Here  is  a  wriggle  :  the  older  a  form  is,  the 
better  the  chance  will  be  of  its  having  become  developed  into 
a  tree  !  An  island  from  being  surrounded  by  the  sea  will 
prevent  free  immigration  and  competition,  hence  a  greater 
number  of  ancient  forms  will  survive  on  an  island  than  on 
the  nearest  continent  whence  the  island  was  stocked  ;  and  I 
have  always  looked  at  Clethra  ]  and  the  other  extra-European 
forms  as  remnants  of  the  Tertiary  flora  which  formerly 
inhabited  Europe.  This  preservation  of  ancient  forms  in 
islands  appears  to  me  like  the  preservation  of  ganoid  fishes 
in  our  present  freshwaters.  You  speak  of  no  northern 
plants  on  mountains  south  of  the  Pyrenees:  does  my  memory 
quite  deceive  me  that  Boissier  published  a  long  list  from  the 
mountains  in  Southern  Spain?     I  have  not  seen  Wollaston's 2 

1  Clethra  is  an  American  shrubby  genus  of  Ericaceae,  found  nowhere 
nearer  to  Madeira  than  North  America.  Of  this  plant  and  of  Persea, 
Sir  Charles  Lyell  (Principles,  1872,  Vol.  II.,  p.  422)  says:  "Regarded  as 
relics  of  a  Miocene  flora,  they  are  just  such  forms  as  we  should  naturally 
expect  to  have  come  from  the  adjoining  Miocene  continent."  See  also 
Origin  0/ Species,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  83,  where  a  similar  view  is  quoted  from  Heer. 

2  Thomas  Vernon  Wollaston  (1821-78).  Wollaston  was  an  under- 
graduate at  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  and  in  late  life  published  several 
books  on  the  coleopterous  insects  of  Madeira,  the  Canaries,  the  Cape 
Verde  Islands,  and  other  regions.  lie  is  referred  to  in  the  Origin  of 
Species  (Ed.  vi.  p.  109)  as  having  discovered  "the  remarkable  fact  that 
200  beetles,  out  of  the  550  species  (but  more  are  now  known)  inhabiting 
Madeira,  are  so  far  deficient  in  wings  that  they  cannot  fly  ;  and  that,  of 
the  twenty-nine  endemic  genera,  no  less  than  twenty-three  have  all  their 
species  in  this  condition  ! :'  See  Obituary  Notice  in  Nature,  Vol.  XVII., 
P   ;io,  1878,  and  Trans.  Entom.  Soc,  1877,  p.  xxxviii. 

3' 


482  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  365  Catalogue}  but  must  buy  it,  if  it  gives  the  facts  about  rare 
plants  which  you  mention. 

And  now  I  have  given  more  than  enough  of  my  notions, 
which  I  well  know  will  be  in  flat  contradiction  with  all  yours. 

Wollaston,  in  his  Insecta  Maderensia?  4to,  p.  12,  and  in 
his  Variation  of  Species,  pp.  82-7,  gives  the  case  of  apterous 
insects,  but  I  remember  I  worked  out  some  additional  details. 

I  think  he  gives  in  these  same  works  the  proportion  of 
European  insects. 

Letter  366  To  J.   D.   Hooker. 

Sir  Joseph  had  asked  (July  31st,  1866):  "  Is  there  an  evidence  that 
the  south  of  England  and  of  Ireland  were  not  submerged  during  the 
Glacial  epoch,  when  the  W.  and  N.  of  England  were  islands  in  a  glacial 
sea?  And  supposing  they  were  above  water,  could  the  present  Atlantic 
and  N.W.  of  France  floras  we  now  find  there  have  been  there  during  the 
Glacial  epoch  ? — Yet  this  is  what  Forbes  demands,  p.  346.  At  p.  347 
he  sees  this  objection,  and  wriggles  out  of  his  difficulty  by  putting  the 
date  of  the  Channel  'towards  the  close  of  the  Glacial  epoch.'  What 
does  Austen  make  the  date  of  the  Channel  ? — ante  ox  post  Glacial  ?  "  The 
changes  in  level  and  other  questions  are  dealt  with  in  a  paper  by  R.  A.  C. 
Austen  (afterwards  Godwin-Austen),  "  On  the  Superficial  Accumulations 
of  the  Coasts  of  the  English  Channel  and  the  Changes  they  indicate." 
Quart.  Journ.  Geol  Soc.,  VII.,  185 1,  p.  118.  Obit,  notice  by  Prof.  Bonney 
in  the  Proc.  Geol.  Soc.,  XLI.,  p.  37,  1885. 

Down,  Aug.  3rd  [1866]. 

I  will  take  your  letter  seriatim.  There  is  good  evidence 
that  S.E.  England  was  dry  land  during  the  Glacial  period. 
I  forget  what  Austen  says,  but  Mammals  prove,  I  think,  that 
England  has  been  united  to  the  Continent  since  the  Glacial 
period.  I  don't  see  your  difficulty  about  what  I  say  on  the 
breaking  of  an  isthmus  :  if  Panama  was  broken  through  would 
not  the  fauna  of  the  Pacific  flow  into  the  W.  Indies,  or  vice 
versa,  and  destroy  a  multitude  of  creatures?  Of  course  I'm 
no  judge,  but  I  thought  De  Candolle  had  made  out  his  case 
about  small  areas  of  trees.  You  will  find  at  p.  112,  3rd  edit. 
Origin,  a  too  concise  allusion  to  the  Madeira  flora  being  a 
remnant  of  the  Tertiary  European  flora.  I  shall  feel  deeply 
interested     by    reading    your    botanical    difficulties     against 

1  Probably  the  Catalogue  of  the  Coleopterous  Insects  of  the  Canaries 
in  the  British  Museum,  1864. 

3  Insecta  Maderensia,  London,  1854. 


1843-1882]  INSULAR     FLORAS  483 

occasional  immigration.  The  facts  you  give  about  certain  Letter  .366 
plants,  such  as  the  heaths,1  are  certainly  very  curious.  1 
thought  the  Azores  flora  was  more  boreal,  but  what  can  you 
mean  by  saying  that  the  Azores  are  nearer  to  Britain  and 
Newfoundland  than  to  Madeira  ? — on  the  globe  they  arc 
nearly  twice  as  far  off.2  With  respect  to  sea  currents,  1 
formerly  made  enquiries  at  Madeira,  but  cannot  now  give 
you  the  results  ;  but  I  remember  that  the  facts  were  different 
from  what  is  generally  stated  :  I  think  that  a  ship  wrecked  on 
the  Canary  Islands  was  thrown  up  on  the  coast  of  Madeira. 

You  speak  as  if  only  land-shells  differed  in  Madeira  and 
Porto  Santo  :  does  my  memory  deceive  me  that  there  is  a  host 
of  representative  insects? 

When  you  exorcise  at  Nottingham  occasional  means  of 
transport,  be  honest,  and  admit  how  little  is  known  on  the 
subject.  Remember  how  recently  you  and  others  thought 
that  salt  water  would  soon  kill  seeds.  Reflect  that  there  is 
not  a  coral  islet  in  the  ocean  which  is  not  pretty  well  clothed 
with  plants,  and  the  fewness  of  the  species  can  hardly  with 
justice  be  attributed  to  the  arrival  of  few  seeds,  for  coral  islets 
close  to  other  land  support  only  the  same  limited  vegetation. 
Remember  that  no  one  knew  that  seeds  would  remain  for 
many  hours  in  the  crops  of  birds  and  retain  their  vitality ; 
that  fish  eat  seeds,  and  that  when  the  fish  are  devoured  by 
birds  the  seeds  can  germinate,  etc.  Remember  that  every 
year  many  birds  are  blown  to  Madeira  and  to  the  Bermudas. 
Remember  that  dust  is  blown  1,000  miles  over  the  Atlantic. 
Now,  bearing  all  this  in  mind,  would  it  not  be  a  prodigy  if  an 
unstocked  island  did  not  in  the  course  of  ages  receive  colonists 
from  coasts  whence  the  currents  flow,  trees  are  drifted  and 
birds  are  driven  by  gales.  The  objections  to  islands  being 
thus  stocked  are,  as  far  as  I  understand,  that  certain  species 
and  genera  have  been  more  freely  introduced,  and  others  less 
freely  than  might  have  been  expected.  But  then  the  sea  kills 
some  sorts  of  seeds,  others  are  killed  by  the  digestion  of  birds, 

1  In  Hookers  lecture  he  gives  St.  Dabeoc's  Heath  and  Calluna 
vulgaris  as  the  most  striking  of  the  few  boreal  plants  in  the  Azores. 
Darwin  seems  to  have  been  impressed  by  the  boreal  character  of  the 
Azores,  thus  taking  the  opposite  view  to  that  of  Sir  Joseph.  See 
Letter  370,  note  I. 
See  Letter  368. 


484  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  366  and  some  would  be  more  liable  than  others  to  adhere  to  birds' 
feet.  But  we  know  so  very  little  on  these  points  that  it  seems 
to  me  that  we  cannot  at  all  tell  what  forms  would  probably 
be  introduced  and  what  would  not.  1  do  not  for  a  moment 
pretend  that  these  means  of  introduction  can  be  proved  to 
have  acted  ;  but  they  seem  to  me  sufficient,  with  no  valid 
or  heavy  objections,  whilst  there  are,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the 
heaviest  objections  on  geological  and  on  geographical  distri- 
bution grounds  (pp.  387,  388,  Origin  x)  to  Forbes'  enormous 
continental  extensions.  But  I  fear  that  I  shall  and  have 
bored  you. 

Letter  367  J.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin. 

In  a  letter  of  July  31st,  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  wrote,  "You  must  not 
suppose  me  to  be  a  champion  of  continental  connection,  because  I  am 
not  agreeable  to  trans-oceanic  migration  .  .  .  either  hypothesis  appears 
to  me  well  to  cover  the  facts  of  oceanic  floras,  but  there  are  grave 
objections  to  both,  botanical  to  yours,  geological  to  Forbes'." 

The  following  interesting  letters  give  some  of  Sir  Joseph's  difficulties. 

Kew,  Aug.  4th,  1866. 
You  mention  (Journal)  no  land-birds,  except  introduced, 
upon  St.  Helena.  Beatson  (Introd.  xvii)  mentions  one2  "in 
considerable  numbers,"  resembles  sand-lark- — is  called  "wire 
bird,"  has  long  greenish  legs  like  wires,  runs  fast,  eyes  large, 
bill  moderately  long,  is  rather  shy,  does  not  possess  much 
powers  of  flight.  What  was  it  ?  I  have  written  to  ask 
Sclater,  also  about  birds  of  Madeira  and  Azores.  It  is  a 
very  curious  thing  that  the  Azores  do  not  contain  the  (non- 
European)  American  genus  Cletkra,  that  is  found  in  Madeira 
and  Canaries,  and  that  the  Azores  contain  no  trace  of 
American  element  (beyond  what  is  common  to  Madeira), 
except  a  species  of  Sdnicula,  a  genus  with  hooked  bristles 
to  the  small  seed-vessels.  The  European  Sanicula  roams 
from  Norway  to  Madeira,  Canaries,  Cape  Verde,  Cameroons, 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  from  Britain  to  Japan,  and  also  is,  I 

1  Ed.  III.,  or  Ed.  VI.,  p.  323. 

8  sEgia/i/is  sanctce-helencs,  a  small  plover  "  very  closely  allied  to  a 
species  found  in  South  Africa,  but  presenting  certain  differences  which 
entitle  it  to  the  rank  of  a  peculiar  species"  (Wallace,  Island  Life,  p.  294). 
In  the  earlier  editions  of  the  Origin  (eg.  Ed.  III.,  p.  422)  Darwin  wrote 
that  "  Madeira  does  not  possess  one  peculiar  bird."  In  Ed.  IV.,  1866, 
p.  465.  the  mistake  was  put  righ 


1843—1882]  INSULAR    FLORAS  485 

think,  in  N.  America  ;  but  docs  not  occur  in  the  Azores,  where  Letter  367 
it  is  replaced  by  one  that  is  of  a  decidedly  American  type. 

This  tells  heavily  against  the  doctrine  that  joins  Atlantis 
to  America,  and  is  much  against  your  trans-oceanic  migration 
— for  considering  how  near  the  Azores  are  to  America,  and 
in  the  influence  of  the  Gulf-stream  and  prevalent  winds,  it 
certainly  appears  marvellous.  Not  only  are  the  Azores  in 
a  current  that  sweeps  the  coast  of  U.  States,  but  they  are 
in  the  S.W.  winds,  and  in  the  eye  of  the  S.W.  hurricanes  ! 

I  suppose  you  will  answer  that  the  European  forms  are 
prepotent,  but  this  is  riding  prepotency  to  death. 

R.  T.  Lowe  has  written  me  a  capital  letter  on  the 
Madciran,  Canarian,  and  Cape  Verde  floras. 

I  misled  you  if  I  gave  you  to  understand  that  Wollaston's 
Catalogue  said  anything  about  rare  plants.  I  am  worked 
and  worried  to  death  with  this  lecture  :  and  curse  myself  as 
a  soft  headed  and  hearted  imbecile  to  have  accepted  it. 


J.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  36S 

Kew,  Monday  [Aug.  6th,   1 866]. 

Again  thanks  for  your  letter.  You  need  not  fear  my  not 
doing  justice  to  your  objections  to  the  continental  hypothesis  ! 

Referring  to  p.  344 l  again,  it  never  occurred  to  me  that 
you  alluded  to  extinction  of  marine  life  :  an  isthmus  is  a 
piece  of  land,  and  you  go  on  in  the  same  sentence  about 
"  an  island,"  which  quite  threw  me  out,  for  the  destruction 
of  an  isthmus  makes  an  island  ! 

I  surely  did  not  say  Azores  nearer  to  Britain  and  New- 
foundland "  than  to  Madeira,"  but  "  than  Madeira  is  to 
said  places." 

With  regard  to  the  Madciran  coleoptera  I  rely  very  little 
on  local  distribution  of  insects — they  are  so  local  themselves. 
A  butterfly  is  a  great  rarity  in  Kew,  even  a  white,  though  we 
are  surrounded  by  market  gardens.  All  insects  arc  most  rare 
with  us,  even  the  kinds  that  abound  on  the  opposite  side  of 
Thames. 

1  Origin  of  Species,  Ed.  ill.,  pp.  343-4:  "In  some  cases,  however, 
as  by  the  breaking  of  an  isthmus  and  the  consequent  irruption  of  a 
multitude  of  new  inhabitants,  or  by  the  final  subsidence  of  an  island,  the 
extinction  may  have  been  comparatively  rapid.' 


486  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  368  So  with  shells,  wc  have  literally  none — not  a  Helix  even, 
though  they  abound  in  the  lanes  200  yards  off  the  Gardens. 
Of  the  89  Dezertas  insects  [only  ?]  1 1  arc  peculiar.  Of  the 
162  Porto  Santan  113  are  Madeiran  and  51  Dezertan. 

Never  mind  bothering  Murray  about  the  new  edition 
of  the  Origin  for  me.  You  will  tell  me  anything  bearing  on 
my  subject. 

Letter  369  J.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin. 

Kew,  Aug.  7th,  1866. 
Dear  old  Darwin, 

You  must  not  let  me  worry  you.  I  am  an  obstinate 
pig,  but  you  must  not  be  miserable  at  my  looking  at  the 
same  thing  in  a  different  light  from  you.  I  must  get  to  the 
bottom  of  this  question,  and  that  is  all  I  can  do.  Some 
cleverer  fellow  one  day  will  knock  the  bottom  out  of  it,  and 
see  his  way  to  explain  what  to  a  botanist  without  a  theory  to 
support  must  be  very  great  difficulties.  True  enough,  all 
may  be  explained,  as  you  reason  it  will  be — I  quite  grant  this  ; 
but  meanwhile  all  is  not  so  explained,  and  I  cannot  accept  a 
hypothesis  that  leaves  so  many  facts  unaccounted  for.  You 
say  the  temperate  parts  of  N.  America  [are]  nearly  two  and  a 
half  times  as  distant  from  the  Azores  as  Europe  is.  According 
to  a  rough  calculation  on  Col.  James'  chart  I  make  E.  Azores 
to  Portugal  850,  West  do.  to  Newfoundland  1500,  but  I  am 
writing  to  a  friend  at  Admiralty  to  have  the  distance 
calculated  (which  looks  like  cracking  nuts  with  Nasmyth's 
hammer  !) 

Are  European  birds  blown  to  America  ?  Are  the  Azorean 
erratics  an  established  fact  ?  I  want  them  very  badly,  though 
they  are  not  of  much  consequence,  as  a  slight  sinking  would 
hide  all  evidence  of  that  sort. 

I  do  want  to  sum  up  impartially,  leaving  the  verdict  to 
jury.  I  cannot  do  this  without  putting  all  difficulties  most 
clearly.  How  do  you  know  how  you  would  fare  with  me  if 
you  were  a  continentalist !  Then  too  we  must  recollect  that 
I  have  to  meet  a  host  who  are  all  on  the  continental  side — in 
fact,  pretty  nearly  all  the  thinkers,  Forbes,  Hartung,  Heer, 
Unger,  Wollaston,  Lowe  (Wallace,  I  suppose),  and  now 
Andrew  Murray.  I  do  not  regard  all  these,  and  snap  my 
fingers  at  all  but  you  ;  in  my  inmost  soul  I  conscientiously 


1843— 1882]  INSULAR    FLORAS  487 

say  I  incline   to  your  theory,  but   I   cannot  accept   it  as  an  Letter  369 
established  truth  or  unexceptionable  hypothesis. 

The  "  Wire  bird "  being  a  Grallator  is  a  curious  fact 
favourable  to  you.  .  .  .  How  I  do  yearn  to  go  out  again  to 
St.  Helena. 

Of  course  I  accept  the  ornithological  evidence  as  tremen- 
dously strong,  though  why  they  should  get  blown  westerly, 
and  not  change  specifically,  as  insects,  shells,  and  plants  have 
done,  is  a  mystery. 

To  J.   D.    Hooker.  Letter  370 

Down,  Aug.  8th  [1866]. 

It  would  be  a  very  great  pleasure  to  mc  if  I  could  think 
that  my  letters  were  of  the  least  use  to  you.  I  must  have 
expressed  myself  badly  for  you  to  suppose  that  I  look  at 
islands  being  stocked  by  occasional  transport  as  a  well-estab- 
lished hypothesis.  We  both  give  up  creation,  and  therefore 
have  to  account  for  the  inhabitants  of  islands  either  by  con- 
tinental extensions  or  by  occasional  transport.  Now,  all 
that  I  maintain  is  that  of  these  two  alternatives,  one  of  which 
must  be  admitted,  notwithstanding  very  many  difficulties, 
occasional  transport  is  by  far  the  most  probable.  I  go  thus 
far  further — that  I  maintain,  knowing  what  we  do,  that  it 
would  be  inexplicable  if  unstocked  islands  were  not  stocked 
to  a  certain  extent  at  least  by  these  occasional  means. 
European  birds  are  occasionally  driven  to  America,  but  far 
more  rarely  than  in  the  reverse  direction  :  they  arrive  viA 
Greenland  (Baird)  ;  yet  a  European  lark  has  been  caught  in 
Bermuda. 

By  the  way,  you  might  like  to  hear  that  European  birds 
regularly  migrate  viA  the  northern  islands  to  Greenland. 

About  the  erratics  in  the  Azores  see  Origin,  p.  393. ' 
Hartung  could  hardly  be  mistaken  about  granite  blocks  on 
a  volcanic  island. 

I    do   not   think  it  a   mystery    that   birds   have  not  been 


1  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  328.  The  importance  of  erratic  blocks  on  the 
Azores  is  in  showing  the  probability  of  ice-borne  seeds  having  stocked 
the  islands,  and  thus  accounting  for  the  number  of  European  species  and 
their  unexpectedly  northern  character.  Darwin's  delight  in  the  verifica- 
tion of  his  theory  is  described  in  a  letter  to  Sir  Joseph  of  April  26th,  1858, 
in  the    Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  112. 


488  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  370  modified  in  Madeira.1  Pray  look  at  p.  422  of  Origin  [Ed.  ill.]. 
You  would  not  think  it  a  mystery  if  you  had  seen  the  long 
lists  which  I  have  (somewhere)  of  the  birds  annually  blown, 
even  in  flocks,  to  Madeira.  The  crossed  stock  would  be  the 
more  vigorous. 

Remember  if  you  do  not  come  here  before  Nottingham, 
if  you  do  not  come  afterwards  I  shall  think  myself  diabolically 
ill-used. 

Letter  371  J.  D.  Hooker  to  C.  Darwin. 

Kew,  Aug.  9th,  1866. 

If  my  letters  did  not  gene  you  it  is  impossible  that  you 
should  suppose  that  yours  were  of  no  use  to  me!  I  would 
throw  up  the  whole  thing  were  it  not  for  correspondence  with 
you,  which  is  the  only  bit  of  silver  in  the  affair.  I  do  feel  it 
disgusting  to  have  to  make  a  point  of  a  speciality  in  which  I 
cannot  see  my  way  a  bit  further  than  I  could  before  I  began. 
To  be  sure,  I  have  a  very  much  clearer  notion  of  the  pros  and 
cons  on  both  sides  (though  these  were  rather  forgotten  facts 
than  rediscoveries).  I  see  the  sides  of  the  well  further  down 
more  distinctly,  but  the  bottom  is  as  obscure  as  ever. 

I  think  I  know  the  Origin  by  heart  in  relation  to  the 
subject,  and  it  was  reading  it  that  suggested  the  queries  about 
Azores  boulders  and  Madeira  birds.  The  former  you  and 
I  have  talked  over,  and  I  thought  I  remembered  that  you 
wanted  it  confirmed.  The  latter  strikes  me  thus :  why  should 
plants  and  insects  have  been  so  extensively  changed  and  birds 
not  at  all  ?  I  perfectly  understand  and  feel  the  force  of  your 
argument  in  reference  to  birds  per  se,  but  why  do  these  not 
apply  to  insects  and  plants  ?  Can  you  not  see  that  this 
suggests  the  conclusion  that  the  plants  are  derived  one  way 
and  the  birds  another? 

I  certainly  did  take  it  for  granted  that  you  supposed  the 

1  Origin,  Ed.  VI.,  p.  328.  Madeira  has  only  one  endemic  bird. 
Darwin  accounts  for  the  fact  from  the  island  having  been  stocked  with 
birds  which  had  struggled  together  and  become  mutually  co-adapted  on 
the  neighbouring  continents.  "  Hence,  when  settled  in  their  new  homes, 
each  kind  will  have  been  kept  by  the  others  in  its  proper  place  and 
habits,  and  will  consequently  have  been  but  little  liable  to  modification." 
Crossing  with  frequently  arriving  immigrants  will  also  tend  to  keep  down 
modification. 


1843— 1882]  INSULAR    FLORAS  489 

stocking  [by]  occasional  transport  to  be  something  even  more  Letter  371 
than  a  "  well-established  hypothesis,"  but  disputants  seldom 
stop  to  measure  the  strength  of  their  antagonist's  opinion. 

I  shall  be  with  you  on  Saturday  week,  I  hope.  I  should 
have  come  before,  but  have  made  so  little  progress  that  I 
could  not.  I  am  now  at  St.  Helena,  and  shall  then  go  to,  and 
finish  with,  Kerguelen's  land. 

After  giving   the   distances   of  the   Azores,  etc.,  from   America,    Sir 
Joseph  continues  : — 

But  to  my  mind  [it]  does  not  mend  the  matter — for  I  do 
not  ask  why  Azores  have  even  proportionally  (to  distance) 
a  smaller  number  of  American  plants,  but  why  they  have 
none,  seeing  the  winds  and  currents  set  that  way.  The 
Bermudas  are  all  American  in  flora,  but  from  what  Col. 
Munro  informs  me  I  should  say  they  have  nothing  but 
common  American  weeds  and  the  juniper  (cedar).  No 
changed  forms,  yet  they  are  as  far  from  America  as  Azores 
from  Europe.     I  suppose  they  are  modern  and  out  of  the  pale. 

.  .  .  There  is  this,  to  me,  astounding  difference  between 
certain  oceanic  islands  which  were  stocked  by  continental 
extension  and  those  stocked  by  immigration  (following  in 
both  definitions  your  opinion),  that  the  former  [continental] 
do  contain  many  types  of  the  more  distant  continent,  the 
latter  do  not  any  !  Take  Madagascar,  with  its  many  Asiatic 
genera  unknown  in  Africa  ;  Ceylon,  with  many  Malayan 
types  not  Peninsular  ;  Japan,  with  many  non-Asiatic  American 
types.  Baird's  fact  of  Greenland  migration  I  was  aware  of 
since  I  wrote  my  Arctic  paper.  I  wish  I  was  as  satisfied 
either  of  continental  [extensions]  or  of  transport  means  as 
I   am  of  my  Greenland  hypothesis  ! 

Oh,  dear  me,  what  a  comfort  it  is  to  have  a  belief  (sneer 
away). 

J.   D.   Hooker  to  C.  Darwin.  Letter  372 

Kew,  Dec.  4tli,    1866. 

I  have  just  finished  the  New  Zealand  Manual}  and  am 
thinking  about  a  discussion  on  the  geographical  distribu- 
tion, etc.,  of  the  plants.  There  is  scarcely  a  single  indigenous 
annual  plant  in  the  group.      I   wish  that  I   knew  more  of  the 

'  Handbook  of  the  New  Zealand  Flora. 


490  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION         [Chap.  VI 

Letter  37a  past  condition  of  the  islands,  and  whether  they  have  been 
rising  or  sinking.  There  is  much  that  suggests  the  idea  that 
the  islands  were  once  connected  during  a  warmer  epoch, 
were  afterwards  separated  and  much  reduced  in  area  to 
what  they  now  are,  and  lastly  have  assumed  their  present 
size.  The  remarkable  genera  luniformity  of  the  flora,  even  of 
the  arboreous  flora,  throughout  so  many  degrees  of  latitude,  is 
a  very  remarkable  feature,  as  is  the  representation  of  a  good 
many  of  the  southern  half  of  certain  species  of  the  north,  by 
very  closely  allied  varieties  or  species ;  and,  lastly,  there  is 
the  immense  preponderance  of  certain  genera  whose  species 
all  run  into  one  another  and  vary  horribly,  and  which  suggest 
a  rising  area.  I  hear  that  a  whale  has  been  found  some  miles 
inland. 

Letter  373  J.   D.   Hooker  to  C.   Darwin. 

Kew,  Doc.  14th,  1866. 

I  do  not  see  how  the  mountains  of  New  Zealand, 
S.  Australia,  and  Tasmania  could  have  been  peopled,  and 
[with]  so  large  an  extent  of  antarctic l  forms  common  to 
Fuegia,  without  some  intercommunication.  And  I  have 
always  supposed  this  was  before  the  immigration  of  Asiatic 
plants  into  Australia,  and  of  which  plants  the  temperate  and 
tropical  plants  of  that  country  may  be  considered  as  altered 
forms.  The  presence  of  so  many  of  these  temperate  and  cold 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  genera  on  the  top  of  Kini  Balu 
in  Borneo  (under  the  equator)  is  an  awful  staggerer,  and 
demands  a  very  extended  northern  distribution  of  Australian 
temperate  forms.  It  is  a  frightful  assumption  that  the  plains 
of  Borneo  were  covered  with  a  temperate  cold  vegetation  that 
was  driven  up  Kini  Balu  by  the  returning  cold.  Then  there 
is  the  very  distant  distribution  of  a  few  Australian  types 
northward  to  the  Philippines,  China,  and  Japan  :  that  is  a 
fearful  and  wonderful  fact,  though,  as  these  plants  are  New 
Zealand  too  for  the  most  part,  the  migration  northward  may 
have  been  east  of  Australia. 

1  Introductory  Essay  to  Flora  of  New  Zealand,  p.  xx.  "The  plants 
of  the  Antarctic  islands,  which  are  equally  natives  of  New  Zealand, 
Tasmania,  and  Australia,  are  almost  invariably  found  only  on  the  lofty 
mountains  of  these  countries." 


1843— 1882]  INSULAR    FLORAS  491 

To  J.  D.   Hooker.  Letter  374 

Dec.  24th  [1866]. 

.  .  .  One  word  more  about  the  flora  derived  from  supposed 
Pleistocene  antarctic  land  requiring  land  intercommunication. 
This  will  depend  much,  as  it  seems  to  me,  upon  how  far 
you  finally  settle  whether  Azores,  Cape  de  Verdes,  Tristan 
d'Acunha,  Galapagos,  Juan  Fernandez,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  have 
all  had  land  intercommunication.  If  you  do  not  think  this 
necessary,  might  not  New  Zealand,  etc.,  have  been  stocked 
during  commencing  Glacial  period  by  occasional  means  from 
antarctic  land  ?  As  for  lowlands  of  Borneo  being  tenanted 
by  a  moderate  number  of  temperate  forms  during  the  Glacial 
period,  so  far  [is  it]  from  appearing  a  "  frightful  assumption  " 
that  1  am  arrived  at  that  pitch  of  bigotry  that  I  look  at 
it  as  proved  ! 

J.   D.   Hooker  to  C.  Darw  in.  Letter  375 

Kew:  Dec.  25th,  1866. 
I  was  about  to  write  to-day,  when  your  jolly  letter  came 
this  morning,  to  tell  you  that  after  carefully  going  over  the 
N.  Z.  Flora,  I  find  that  there  are  only  about  thirty  reputed 
indigenous  Dicot.  annuals,  of  which  almost  half,  not  being 
found  by  Banks  and  Solander,  are  probably  non-indigenous. 
This  is  just  -oVth  of  the  Dicots.,  or,  excluding  the  doubtful, 
about  -j-Vh,  whereas  the  British  proportion  of  annuals  is  -^ 
amongst  Dicots.  ! !  !  Of  the  naturalised  New  Zealand  plants 
one-half  are  annual  !  I  suppose  there  can  be  no  doubt  but 
that  a  deciduous-leaved  vegetation  affords  more  conditions 
for  vegetable  life  than  an  evergreen  one,  and  that  it  is  hence 
that  we  find  countries  characterised  by  uniform  climates  to  be 
poor  in  species,  and  those  to  be  evergreens.  I  can  now  work 
this  point  out  for  New  Zealand  and  Britain.  Japan  may  be 
an  exception  :  it  is  an  extraordinary  evergreen  country,  and 
has  many  species  apparently,  but  it  has  so  much  novelty  that 
it  may  not  be  so  rich  in  species  really  as  it  hence  looks,  and 
I  do  believe  it  is  very  poor.  It  has  very  few  annuals.  Then, 
again,  I  think  that  the  number  of  plants  with  irregular 
flowers,  and  especially  such  as  require  insect  agency, 
diminishes  much  with  evergreenity.  Hence  in  all  humid 
temperate  regions  we  have,  as  a  rule,  few  species,  many 
evergreens,  few  annuals,    few  Leguminosae  and   orchitis,  i'cw 


492  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  375  lepidoptera  and  other  flying  insects,  many  Coniferae,  Amcn- 
tacea-,  Gramineae,  Cypcraceae,  and  other  wind-fertilised  trees 
and  plants,  etc.  Orchids  and  Leguminosae  are  scarce  in 
islets,  because  the  necessary  fertilising  insects  have  not 
migrated  with  the  plants.     Perhaps  you  have  published  this. 

Utter  376  To  J.  D.   Hooker. 

Down,  Jan.  9th  [1867]. 

I  like  the  first  part  of  your  paper  in  the  Gard.  CJironick  x 
to  an  extraordinary  degree:  you  never,  in  my  opinion,  wrote 
anything  better.  You  ask  for  all,  even  minute  criticisms. 
In  the  first  column  you  speak  of  no  alpine  plants  and  no 
replacement  by  zones,  which  will  strike  every  one  with 
astonishment  who  has  read  Humboldt  and  Webb  on  Zones 
on  Teneriffe.  Do  you  not  mean  boreal  or  arctic  plants?2 
In  the  third  column  you  speak  as  if  savages3  had  generally 
viewed  the  endemic  plants  of  the  Atlantic  islands.  Now,  as 
you  well  know,  the  Canaries  alone  of  all  the  archipelagoes 
were  inhabited.  In  the  third  column  have  you  really  materials 
to  speak  of  confirming  the  proportion  of  winged  and  wingless 
insects  on  islands  ? 

Your  comparison  of  plants4  of  Madeira  with  islets  of  Great 
Britain  is  admirable. 

I  must  just  allude  to  one  of  your  last  notes  with  very 
curious  case  of  proportion  of  annuals  in   New  Zealand.'' 

Are  annuals  adapted  for  short  seasons,  as  in  arctic  regions, 
or    tropical    countries    with    dry    season,    or   for    periodically 

1  The  lecture  on  Insular  Floras  {Card.   C/iro/i.,  Jan.,   1867). 

-  The  passage  which  seems  to  be  referred  to  does  mention  the  absence 
of  boreal  plants. 

3  "  Such  plants  on  oceanic  islands  are,  like  the  savages  which  in  some 
islands  have  been  so  long  the  sole  witnesses  of  their  existence,  the  last 
representatives  of  their  several  races." 

■'  "  What  should  we  say,  for  instance,  if  a  plant  so  totally  unlike  any- 
thing British  as  the  Monizia  cdulis  .  .  .  were  found  on  one  rocky  islet 
of  the  Scillies,  or  another  umbelliferous  plant,  Melanoselinum  ...  on 
one  mountain  in  Wales  ;  or  if  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  Scilly  Islands  had 
varieties,  species,  and  genera  too,  differing  from  anything  in  Britain,  and 
found  nowhere  else  in  the  world  ! " 

■'•  On  this  subject  see  Hildebrand's  interesting  paper  "  Die  Lebensdauer 
der  Pflanzen  "  (Engler's  Botanische Jahrbiicher,  Vol.  II.,  1882,  p.  51).  He 
shows  that  annuals  are  rare  in  very  dry  desert-lands,  in  northern  and 


iS43— 1882] 


INSULAR    FLORAS 


493 


disturbed  and  cultivated  ground?     You  speak  of  evergreen  Lit  576 
vegetation  as  leading  to  few  or  confined  conditions  ;    but  is 
not  evergreen  vegetation  connected  with  humid  and  equable 
climate?     Does    not    a    very    humid    climate    almost     imply 
(Tyndall)  an  equable  one? 

I  have  never  printed  a  word  that  I  can  remember  about 
orchids  and  papilionaceous  plants  being  few  in  islands  on 
account  of  rarity  of  insects  ;  and  I  remember  you  screamed  at 
me  when  I  suggested  this  a  propos  of  Papilionacea;  in  New 
Zealand,  and  of  the  statement  about  clover  not  seeding 
there  till  the  hive-bee  was  introduced,  as  I  stated  in  my 
paper  in  Gard.  Chronicle}  I  have  been  these  last  few  days 
vexed  and  annoyed  to  a  foolish  degree  by  hearing  that 
my  MS.  on  Domestic  Animals,  etc.,  will  make  two  volumes, 
both  bigger  than  the  Origin.  The  volumes  will  have  to  be 
full-sized  octavo,  so  I  have  written  to  Murray  to  suggest 
details  to  be  printed  in  small  type.  But  I  feel  that  the  size 
is  quite  ludicrous  in  relation  to  the  subject.  I  am  ready  to 
swear  at  myself  and  at  every  fool  who  writes  a  book. 


To  J.  D.  Hooker.  Liter  377 

Down,  Jan.   15th  [1867]. 

Thanks   for  your  jolly  letter.     I   have  read  your  second 
article,2  and  like  it  even  more  than  the  first,  and  more  than 

alpine  regions.     The  following  table  gives  the  percentages  of  annuals, 
etc.,  in  various  situations  in  Freiburg  (Baden)  : — 


Sandy,  dry,  and  stony  places 
Dry  fields 
Damp  fields    . 
Woods  and  copses 
Water    .... 
Cultivated  land 


Annuals. 

Biennials. 

Perennials 

21 

I  I 

65 

6 

4 

90 

1  2 

2 

77 

3 

2 

65 

3 

97 

89 

1 1 

I 
.Shrubs. 


9 

3' 


1  "  In  an  old  number  of  the  Gardeners'  Chronicle  an  extract  is  given 
from  a  New  Zealand  newspaper  in  which  much  surprise  is  expressed 
the  introduced  cL.  1    seeded   freely  until  the  hive-bee  was  intro- 

duced."    "  On  the  Agency  of  Bees  in  the  Fertilisation  of  Papilionaceous 
Flowers  .  .  ."  {Card.  Citron.,  1858,  p.  828).     Sec  Letter  362,  note  2. 

a  The  lecture  on  Insular  Floras  was  published  in  insta  in  the 
,  Jan.  5th,  12th,  19th,  26th,  1867. 


494  GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION  [Chap.  VI 

Letter  377  this  I  cannot  say.  By  mere  chance  I  stumbled  yesterday  on 
a  passage  in  Humboldt  that  a  violet  grows  on  the  Peak  of 
Teneriffe  in  common  with  the  Pyrenees.  If  Humboldt  is  right 
that  the  Canary  Is.  which  lie  nearest  to  the  continent  have  a 
much  stronger  African  character  than  the  others,  ought  you 
not  just  to  allude  to  this?  I  do  not  know  whether  you  admit, 
and  if  so  allude  to,  the  view  which  seems  to  me  probable,  that 
most  of  the  genera  confined  to  the  Atlantic  islands  (I  do  not 
say  the  species)  originally  existed  in,  and  were  derived  from, 
Europe,  [and  have]  become  extinct  on  this  continent.  I  should 
thus  account  for  the  community  of  peculiar  genera  in  the 
several  Atlantic  islands.  About  the  Salvages :  is  capital.  I 
am  glad  you  speak  of  linking,  though  this  sounds  a  little  too 
close,  instead  of  being  continuous.  All  about  St.  Helena  is 
grand.  You  have  no  faith,  but  if  I  knew  any  one  who  lived 
in  St.  Helena  I  would  supplicate  him  to  send  me  home  a  cask 
or  two  of  earth  from  a  few  inches  beneath  the  surface  from 
the  upper  part  of  the  island,  and  from  any  dried-up  pond,  and 
thus,  as  sure  as  I'm  a  wriggler,  I  should  receive  a  multitude 
of  lost  plants. 

I  did  suggest  to  you  to  work  out  proportion  of  plants 
with  irregular  flowers  on  islands  ;  I  did  this  after  giving  a 
very  short  discussion  on  irregular  flowers  in  my  Lythrum 
paper.2  But  what  on  earth  has  a  mere  suggestion  like  this  to 
do  with  vieum  and  tuuni  ?  You  have  comforted  me  much 
about  the  bigness  of  my  book,  which  yet  turns  me  sick  when 
I  think  of  it. 

1  The  Salvages  are  rocky  islets  about  midway  between  Madeira  and 
the  Canaries  ;  and  they  have  an  Atlantic  flora,  instead  of,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  one  composed  of  African  immigrants.  {Insular  Floras, 
p.  5  of  separate  copy.) 

■  Linn.  Soc.Journ.,  VIII.,  1865,  p.  169. 


END  OF   VOL    I. 


Printed  by  Htuull,  Watson  <S"  Vimy,  Id.,  London  and  Aylesbury. 


DARtfIN,    CHARLES  QH 

31 


More  letters...  .D2A4 


ISSUED    TO 


DMWIN,   CHARLES  ,qh 

31 
More  letters...  .D2A4 

v.l