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I suppose you have read Tyndall. (179/1. Probably Tyndall "On the
Conformation of the Alps" ("Phil. Mag." 1864, page 255).) I have now
come round again to Ramsay's view, (179/2. "Phil. Mag." 1864, page 293.)
for the third or fourth time; but Lyell says when I read his discussion
in the "Elements," I shall recant for the fifth time. (179/3. This
refers to a discussion on the "Connection of the predominance of Lakes
with Glacial Action" ("Elements," Edition VI., pages 168-74). Lyell
adheres to the views expressed in the "Antiquity of Man" (1863) against
Ramsay's theory of the origin of lake basins by ice action.) What a
capital writer Tyndall is!
In your last note you ask what the Bardfield oxlip is. It is P. elatior
of Jacq., which certainly looks, when growing, to common eyes different
from the common oxlip. I will fight you to the death that as primrose
and cowslip are different in appearance (not to mention odour,
habitat and range), and as I can now show that, when they cross, the
intermediate offspring are sterile like ordinary hybrids, they must be
called as good species as a man and a gorilla.
I agree that if Scott's red cowslip grew wild or spread itself and
did not vary [into] common cowslip (and we have absolutely no proof of
primrose or cowslip varying into each other), and as it will not cross
with the cowslip, it would be a perfectly good species. The power of
remaining for a good long period constant I look at as the essence of a
species, combined with an appreciable amount of difference; and no one
can say there is not this amount of difference between primrose and
oxlip.
(PLATE: HUGH FALCONER, 1844. From a photograph by Hill & Adamson.)
LETTER 180. HUGH FALCONER TO W. SHARPEY.
(180/1. Falconer had proposed Darwin for the Copley Medal of the Royal
Society (which was awarded to him in 1864), but being detained abroad,
he gave his reasons for supporting Darwin for this honour in a letter to
Sharpey, the Secretary of the Royal Society. A copy of the letter here
printed seems to have been given to Erasmus Darwin, and by him shown to
his brother Charles.)
Montauban, October 25th, 1864.
Busk and myself have made every effort to be back in London by the 27th
inst., but we have been persecuted by mishaps--through the breakdown
of trains, diligences, etc., so that we have been sadly put out in our
reckoning--and have lost some of the main objects that brought us round
by this part of France--none of which were idle or unimportant.
Busk started yesterday for Paris from Bruniquel, to make sure of being
present at the meeting of the Royal Council on Thursday. He will tell
you that there were strong reasons for me remaining behind him. But as I
seconded the proposal of Mr. Darwin for the Copley Medal, in default of
my presence at the first meeting, I beg that you will express my great
regrets to the President and Council at not being there, and that I am
very reluctantly detained. I shall certainly be in London (D.V.) by the
second meeting on the 3rd proximo. Meanwhile I solicit the favour of
being heard, through you, respecting the grounds upon which I seconded
Mr. Darwin's nomination for the Copley Medal.
Referring to the classified list which I drew up of Mr. Darwin's
scientific labours, ranging through the wide field of (1) Geology, (2)
Physical Geography, (3) Zoology, (4) physiological Botany, (5) genetic
Biology, and to the power with which he has investigated whatever
subject he has taken up,--Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit,--I am of
opinion that Mr. Darwin is not only one of the most eminent naturalists
of his day, but that hereafter he will be regarded as one of the great
naturalists of all countries and of all time. His early work on the
structure and distribution of coral reefs constitutes an era in the
investigation of the subject. As a monographic labour, it may be
compared with Dr. Wells' "Essay upon Dew," as original, exhaustive, and
complete--containing the closest observation with large and important
generalisations.
Among the zoologists his monographs upon the Balanidae and Lepadidae,
Fossil and Recent, in the Palaeontographical and Ray Societies'
publications, are held to be models of their kind.
In physiological Botany, his recent researches upon the dimorphism of
the genital organs in certain plants, embodied in his papers in the
"Linnean Journal," on Primula, Linum, and Lythrum, are of the highest
order of importance. They open a new mine of observation upon a field
which had been barely struck upon before. The same remark applies to his
researches on the structure and various adaptations of the orchideous
flower to a definite object connected with impregnation of the plants
through the agency of insects with foreign pollen. There has not yet
been time for their due influence being felt in the advancement of the
science. But in either subject they constitute an advance per saltum.
I need not dwell upon the value of his geological researches, which
won for him one of the earlier awards of the Wollaston Medal from the
Geological Society, the best of judges on the point.
And lastly, Mr. Darwin's great essay on the "Origin of Species" by
Natural Selection. This solemn and mysterious subject had been either so
lightly or so grotesquely treated before, that it was hardly regarded as
being within the bounds of legitimate philosophical investigation. Mr.
Darwin, after twenty years of the closest study and research, published
his views, and it is sufficient to say that they instantly fixed the
attention of mankind throughout the civilised world. That the efforts of
a single mind should have arrived at success on a subject of such vast
scope, and encompassed with such difficulties, was more than could have
been reasonably expected, and I am far from thinking that Charles Darwin
has made out all his case. But he has treated it with such power and in
such a philosophical and truth-seeking spirit, and illustrated it with
such an amount of original and collated observation as fairly to have
brought the subject within the bounds of rational scientific research.
I consider this great essay on genetic Biology to constitute a strong
additional claim on behalf of Mr. Darwin for the Copley Medal. (180/2.
The following letter (December 3rd, 1864), from Mr. Huxley to Sir J.D.
Hooker, is reprinted, by the kind permission of Mr. L. Huxley, from his
father's "Life," I., page 255. Sabine's address (from the "Reader") is
given in the "Life and Letters," III., page 28. In the "Proceedings of
the Royal Society" the offending sentence is slightly modified. It is
said, in Huxley's "Life" (loc. cit., note), that the sentence which
follows it was introduced to mitigate the effect:--
"I wish you had been at the anniversary meeting and dinner, because the
latter was very pleasant, and the former, to me, very disagreeable. My
distrust of Sabine is, as you know, chronic; and I went determined to
keep ca |