Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookhat I do not see that I shall have to
beg any further favours. What a range and what a variability in the
Cyrena! (50/1. A genus of Lamellibranchs ranging from the Lias to the
present day.) 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 left in me; and this
confession will make you think very 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.
LETTER 51. TO C. LYELL. November 10th [1856].
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
Lepadidae" 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 (a recent genus) from the Chalk! (51/1. Chthamalus,
a genus of Cirripedia. ("A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia," by
Charles Darwin, page 447. London, 1854.) A fossil species of this genus
of Upper Cretaceous age was named by Bosquet Chthamalus Darwini. See
"Origin," Edition VI., page 284; also Zittel, "Traite de Paleontologie,"
Traduit par Dr. C. Barrois, Volume II., page 540, figure 748. Paris,
1887.) 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.
LETTER 52. TO T.H. HUXLEY. 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 (52/1. This no doubt refers to A.
Brulle's paper in the "Comptes rendus" 1844, of which a translation is
given in the "Annals and Mag. of Natural History," 1844, page 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.") 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 was meeting with Barneoud's paper which made me think there might be
truth in the doctrine. (52/2. Apparently Barneoud "On the Organogeny
of Irregular Corollas," from the "Comptes rendus," 1847, as given in
"Annals and Mag. of Natural History," 1847, page 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., page 268.) 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 I cannot quite
follow you in: supposing that Barneoud's (I do not say Brulle's) remarks
were true and universal--i.e., that the petals which have to undergo
the greatest amount of development 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 throw 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.
(53/1. 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"
(Edition I., page 55). Some correspondence on the subject is given in
the "Life and Letters," II., pages 102-5.)
Down, August 22nd [1857].
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?) (53/2. Schlagintweit.), 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 thre |