I cannot work above a couple of hours daily, and this plays the deuce with me.
P.S. 2nd.--I have worked like a slave and been baffled like a slave in trying to make out the meaning of two very different sets of stamens in some Melastomaceae. (155/9. Several letters on the Melastomaceae occur in our Botanical section.) I must tell you one fact. I counted 9,000 seeds, one by one, from my artificially fertilised pods. There is something very odd, but I am as yet beaten. Plants from two pollens grow at different rates! Now, what I want to know is, whether in individuals of the same species, growing together, you have ever noticed any difference in the position of the pistil or in the size and colour of the stamens?
LETTER 156. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 18th [1862].
I have read Nos. IV, and V. (156/1. "On our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature," being six Lectures to Working Men delivered at the Museum of Practical Geology by Prof. Huxley, 1863. These lectures, which were given once a week from November 10th, 1862, onwards, were printed from the notes of Mr. J.A. Mays, a shorthand writer, who asked permission to publish them on his own account; Mr. Huxley stating in a prefatory "Notice" that he had no leisure to revise the lectures.) They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down No. IV. with this reflection, "What is the good of writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad, I may as well shut up shop altogether. You put capitally and most simply and clearly the relation of animals and plants to each other at page 122.
Be careful about Fantails: their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging in the bound volume dated 1863 is slightly different. The passage here is, "...If you couple a male and female hybrid...the result is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will get no offspring at all." Darwin maintains elsewhere that Huxley, from not knowing the botanical evidence, made too much of this point. See "Life and Letters," II., page 384.) seems a little too strong--viz., ninety-nine out of a hundred, unless you except plants.
Page 118: You say the answer to varieties when crossed being at all sterile is "absolutely a negative." (156/3. Huxley, page 112: "Can we find any approximation to this [sterility of hybrids] in the different races known to be produced by selective breeding from a common stock? Up to the present time the answer to that question is absolutely a negative one.") Do you mean to say that Gartner lied, after experiments by the hundred (and he a hostile witness), when he showed that this was the case with Verbascum and with maize (and here you have selected races): does Kolreuter lie when he speaks about the varieties of tobacco? My God, is not the case difficult enough, without its being, as I must think, falsely made more difficult? I believe it is my own fault--my d--d candour: I ought to have made ten times more fuss about these most careful experiments. I did put it stronger in the third edition of the "Origin." If you have a new edition, do consider your second geological section: I do not dispute the truth of your statement; but I maintain that in almost every case the gravel would graduate into the mud; that there would not be a hard, straight line between the mass of gravel and mud; that the gravel, in crawling inland, would be separated from the underlying beds by oblique lines of stratification. A nice idea of the difficulty of Geology your section would give to a working man! Do show your section to Ramsay, and tell him what I say; and if he thinks it a fair section for a beginner I am shut up, and "will for ever hold my tongue." Good-night.
LETTER 157. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, [January] 10th [1863].
You will be weary of notes from me about the little book of yours. It is lucky for me that I expressed, before reading No. VI. (157/1. "Lectures to Working Men," No. VI., is a critical examination of the position of the "Origin of Species" in relation to the complete theory of the "causes of the phenomena of organic nature."), my opinion of its absolute excellence, and of its being well worth wide distribution and worth correction (not that I see where you could improve), if you thought it worth your valuable time. Had I read No. VI., even a rudiment of modesty would, or ought to, have stopped me saying so much. Though I have been well abused, yet I have had so much praise, that I have become a gourmand, both as to capacity and taste; and I really did not think that mortal man could have tickled my palate in the exquisite manner with which you have done the job. So I am an old ass, and nothing more need be said about this. I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further with further safety and truth. Of course I do not wholly agree about sterility. I hate beyond all things finding myself in disagreement with any capable judge, when the premises are the same; and yet this will occasionally happen. Thinking over my former letter to you, I fancied (but I now doubt) that I had partly found out the cause of our disagreement, and I attributed it to your naturally thinking most about animals, with which the sterility of the hybrids is much more conspicuous than the lessened fertility of the first cross. Indeed, this could hardly be ascertained with mammals, except by comparing the products of [their] whole life; and, as far as I know, this has only been ascertained in the case of the horse and ass, which do produce fewer offspring in [their] lifetime than in pure breeding. In plants the test of first cross seems as fair as test of sterility of hybrids. And this latter test applies, I will maintain to the death, to the crossing of varieties of Verbascum, and varieties, selected varieties, of Zea. (157/2. See Letter 156.) You will say Go to the Devil and hold your tongue. No, I will not hold my tongue; for I must add that after going, for my present book, all through domestic animals, I have come to the conclusion that there are almost certainly several cases of two or three or more species blended together and now perfectly fertile together. Hence I conclude that there must be something in domestication,--perhaps the less stable conditions, the very cause which induces so much variability,--which eliminates the natural sterility of species when crossed. If so, we can see how unlikely that sterility should arise between domestic races. Now I will hold my tongue. Page 143: ought not "Sanscrit" to be "Aryan"? What a capital number the last "Natural History Review" is! That is a grand paper by Falconer. I cannot say how indignant Owen's conduct about E. Columbi has made me. I believe I hate him more than you do, even perhaps more than good old Falconer does. But I have bubbled over to one or two correspondents on this head, and will say no more. I have sent Lubbock a little review of Bates' paper in "Linn. Transact." (157/3. The unsigned review of Mr. Bates' work on mimetic butterflies appeared in the "Nat. Hist. Review" (1863), page 219.) which L. seems to think will do for your "Review." Do inaugurate a great improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do; I will heap blessings on your head. Do not waste your time in answering this.
LETTER 158. TO JOHN LUBBOCK [LORD AVEBURY]. Down, January 23rd [1863].
I have no criticism, except one sentence not perfectly smooth. I think your introductory remarks very striking, interesting, and novel. (158/1. "On the Development of Chloeon (Ephemera) dimidiatum, Part I. By John Lubbock. "Trans. Linn. Soc." Volume XXIV., pages 61-78, 1864 [Read January 15th, 1863].) They interested me the more, because the vaguest thoughts of the same kind had passed through my head; but I had no idea that they could be so well developed, nor did I know of exceptions. Sitaris and Meloe (158/2. Sitaris and Meloe, two genera of coleopterous insects, are referred to by Lubbock (op. cit., pages 63-64) as "perhaps...the most remarkable cases...among the Coleoptera" of curious and complicated metamorphoses.) seem very good. You have put the whole case of metamorphosis in a new light; I dare say what you remark about poverty of fresh-water is very true. (158/3. "We cannot but be struck by the poverty of the fresh-water fauna when compared with that of the ocean" (op. cit., page 64).) I think you might write a memoir on fresh-water productions. I suggest that the key-note is that land-productions are higher and have advantage in general over marine; and consequently land-productions have generally been modified into fresh-water productions, instead of marine productions being directly changed into fresh-water productions, as at first seems more probable, as the chance of immigration is always open from sea to rivers and ponds.