Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookquite 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 me. So I beg you to mind, never to write to me when it bores you. Do you know "Elements de Teratologie (on monsters, I believe) Vegetale," par A. Moquin Tandon"? (319/5. Paris, 1841.) 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 (319/6. "Lecons de Botanique," 1841.), 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 monocotyledonous 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. (319/7. On use of terms "high" and "low" see Letters 36 and 70.) I see Aug. Hilaire uses a multiplicity of parts--several circles of stamens, etc.--as evidence of the highness of the Ranunculaceae; 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 (page 572) that "chez une foule de plantes c'est dans le bouton," that impregnation takes place. He instances only Goodenia (319/8. For letters on this point, see Index s.v. Goodenia.), 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 send the Galapagos scraps to you. I direct this to Kew, 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. HOOKER. Down, April 10th [1846]. I was much pleased to see and sign your certificate for the Geolog[ical Society]; we shall thus occasionally, I hope, meet. (320/1. Sir Joseph was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1846.) 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 "Hort. Journal." I think Dean Herbert's article well worth reading. I have been so extravagant as to order M[oquin] Tandon (320/2. Probably "Elements de Teratologie Vegetale": Paris, 1841.), 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 correcting the press on this subject; he has plenty of people who attack him; I see Falconer never loses a chance, and it is wonderful how well Forbes stands it. What a very striking 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 (320/3. See Wallace, "Geogr. Distribution," Volume I., page 263, on the "special Oriental or even Malayan element" in the West African mammals and birds.): 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 (320/4. This refers to his "Lecons de Botanique (Morphologie Vegetale)," 1841. Saint-Hilaire often explains morphological differences as due to differences in vigour. See Letter 319.), 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 a |