More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I Part 19

LETTER 99. TO MAXWELL MASTERS. Down, April 13th [1860].

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 bia.s.sing one's judgment!

I was struck with your remark about the Compositae, 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 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 (99/1. "Vegetable Teratology,"

London, 1869 (Ray Soc.).) 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 developed (99/2. See "Origin of Species,"

Edition I., page 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., pages 97, 98, also Letter 33.) 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 in the "Origin" seems to point in the same direction.

(99/3. "Origin of Species," Edition I., page 145.)

3. Thanks for the correction about furze: I found the seedlings just sprouting, and was so much surprised and their appearance that I sent them to Hooker; but I never plainly asked myself whether they were cotyledons or first leaves. (99/4. The trifoliate leaves of furze seedlings are not cotyledons, but early leaves: see Lubbock's "Seedlings," I., page 410.)

4. That is a curious fact about the seeds of the furze, the more curious as I found with Leguminosae that immersion in plain cold water for a very few days killed some kinds.

If at any time anything should occur to you ill.u.s.trating 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 organisation 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.

LETTER 100. TO J.S. HENSLOW. Down, May 8th [1860].

Very many thanks about the Elodea, which case interests me much. I wrote to Mr. Marshall (100/1. W. Marshall was the author of "Anacharis alsinastrum, a new water-weed": four letters to the "Cambridge Independent Press," reprinted as a pamphlet, 1852.) at Ely, and in due time he says he will send me whatever information he can procure.

Owen is indeed very spiteful. (100/2. Owen was believed to be the author of the article in the "Edinburgh Review," April, 1860. See Letter 98.) 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 revilers are tearing each other to pieces. I suppose Sedgwick will be very fierce against me at the Philosophical Society. (100/3. The meeting of the "Cambridge Phil.

Soc." was held on May 7th, 1860, 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 domestication 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 cla.s.sifications, 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.") Judging from his notice in the "Spectator," (100/4. March 24th, 1860; see "Life and Letters," II., page 297.) 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 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 I not invent the hypothesis of Natural Selection (which from the a.n.a.logy 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, cla.s.sification, 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 (100/5. See "Life and Letters," II., page 247; the letter is there dated December 24th, but must, we think, have been written in November at latest.) or any one saying that Natural Selection does not explain large cla.s.ses 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 [1860].

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 deliberation, 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 Philosophical Society published? (101/1. Henslow's remarks are not given in the above-mentioned report in the "Cambridge Chronicle.") If so, and you could get 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 mult.i.tude of kindnesses you have done me from my earliest days at Cambridge.

LETTER 102. TO C. LYELL. Down, May 22nd [1860].

Hooker has sent me a letter of Thwaites (102/1. See Letter 97.), 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 discussion 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. (102/2. See notes appended to a letter to Lyell, September 1843 (Botany).

When you can spare it, I should like (but out of mere curiosity) to see Binney on Coal marine marshes.

I once made Hooker very savage by saying that I believed the Coal plants grew in the sea, like mangroves. (102/3. See "Life and Letters," I., page 356.)

LETTER 103. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(103/1. This letter is of interest as containing a strong expression upon the overwhelming importance of selection.)

Down [1860].

Many thanks for Harvey's letter (103/2. W.H. Harvey had been corresponding with Sir J.D. Hooker on the "Origin of Species."), which I will keep a little longer and then return. I will write to him and try to make clear from a.n.a.logy 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. (103/3. In a letter to Hooker, May 22nd, 1860, 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.) My blessed little Scaevola has come into flower, and I will try artificial fertilisation on it.

I have looked over Harvey's letter, and have a.s.sumed (I hope rightly) that he could not object to knowing that you had forwarded it to me.

LETTER 104. TO ASA GRAY. Down, June 8th [1860].

I have to thank you for two notes, one through Hooker, and one with some letters to be posted, which was done. I antic.i.p.ated your request by making a few remarks on Owen's review. (104/1. "The Edinburgh Review,"

April, 1860.) 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 Dublin "Nat. Hist. Review" is the most unfair thing which has appeared,--one ma.s.s of misrepresentation. It is evidently by Haughton, 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 intermediate 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 Selection, 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 "Fraser's Magazine"

(104/2. See "Life and Letters," II., page 314.) 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.

LETTER 105. TO C. LYELL. Down, June 17th [1860].

One word more upon the Deification (105/1. "If we confound 'Variation'

or 'Natural Selection' with such creational 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," page 469, London, 1863). See Letter 131.) of Natural Selection: attributing so much weight to it does not exclude still more general laws, i.e. 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' Chronicle" to you, on account of a paper by me on the fertilisation of orchids by insects (105/2.

"Fertilisation of British Orchids by Insect Agency." This article in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" of June 9th, 1860, page 528, begins with a request that observations should be made on the manner of fertilisation in the bee-and in the fly-orchis.), 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.