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ed 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.

(284/1. 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., page 348.
The following letter is given in additional illustration of the keen
interest Mr. Darwin took in the project.)

Down, Monday, March 4th, 1878.

I have nothing good to report. Mr. Caird called upon me yesterday;
both he and Mr. Farrer (284/2. The late Lord Farrer.) 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. If 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 raising 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 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.

I have the pleasure to enclose a cheque for 100 pounds. 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 285. TO E. VON MOJSISOVICS. Down, June 1st, 1878.

I have at last found time to read [the] first chapter of your "Dolomit
Riffe" (285/1. "Dolomitriffe Sudtirols und Venetiens." Wien, 1878.), 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. (285/2. Published in
"Life and Letters," III., pages 234, 235.)

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, Neumayr, 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 distribution of the land and sea over the world may
have formerly been very different to what it now is; and that new genera
and families may have been developed on the shores of isolated tracts in
the south, and afterwards spread to the north.

LETTER 286. TO J.W. JUDD. Down, June 27th, 1878.

I 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, (286/1. Probably a paper on "Die Congerien
und Paludinenschichten Slavoniens und deren Fauna. Ein Beitrag zur
Descendenz-Theorie," "Wien. Geol. Abhandl." VII. (Heft 3), 1874-82.),
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 (286/2. See note to Letter 285.),
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.

(286/3. We owe to Professor Judd the following interesting recollections
of Mr. Darwin, written about 1883:--

"On this last occasion, when I congratulated him on his seeming better
condition of health, he told me of the cause for anxiety which
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