More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LETTER 146. TO J.D. HOOKER.

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

Down, November 20th [1862].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lecture IV., page 89--Atavism.

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

LETTER 150. TO JOHN SCOTT.

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

[1862?]

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

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

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