I hope I have not wearied you, but I thought you would like to hear about this book, which strikes me as EXCELLENT in its facts, and the author a most nice and modest man.
Most truly yours, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, March 19th [1855].
My dear Fox,
How long it is since we have had any communication, and I really want to hear how the world goes with you; but my immediate object is to ask you to observe a point for me, and as I know now you are a very busy man with too much to do, I shall have a good chance of your doing what I want, as it would be hopeless to ask a quite idle man. As you have a Noah's Ark, I do not doubt that you have pigeons. (How I wish by any chance they were fantails!) Now what I want to know is, at what age nestling pigeons have their tail feathers sufficiently developed to be counted. I do not think I ever saw a young pigeon. I am hard at work at my notes collecting and comparing them, in order in some two or three years to write a book with all the facts and arguments, which I can collect, FOR AND VERSUS the immutability of species. I want to get the young of our domestic breeds, to see how young, and to what degree the differences appear. I must either breed myself (which is no amusement but a horrid bore to me) the pigeons or buy their young; and before I go to a seller, whom I have heard of from Yarrell, I am really anxious to know something about their development, not to expose my excessive ignorance, and therefore be excessively liable to be cheated and gulled. With respect to the ONE point of the tail feathers, it is of course in relation to the wonderful development of tail feathers in the adult fantail. If you had any breed of poultry pure, I would beg a chicken with exact age stated, about a week or fortnight old! To be sent in a box by post, if you could have the heart to kill one; and secondly, would let me pay postage...Indeed, I should be very glad to have a nestling common pigeon sent, for I mean to make skeletons, and have already just begun comparing wild and tame ducks. And I think the results rather curious ("I have just been testing practically what disuse does in reducing parts; I have made skeleton of wild and tame duck (oh, the smell of well-boiled, high duck!!) and I find the tame-duck wing ought, according to scale of wild prototype, to have its two wings 360 grains in weight, but it has it only 317." — A letter to Sir J. Hooker, 1855.), for on weighing the several bones very carefully, when perfectly cleaned the proportional weights of the two have greatly varied, the foot of the tame having largely increased. How I wish I could get a little wild duck of a week old, but that I know is almost impossible.
With respect to ourselves, I have not much to say; we have now a terribly noisy house with the whooping cough, but otherwise are all well. Far the greatest fact about myself is that I have at last quite done with the everlasting barnacles. At the end of the year we had two of our little boys very ill with fever and bronchitis, and all sorts of ailments. Partly for amusement, and partly for change of air, we went to London and took a house for a month, but it turned out a great failure, for that dreadful frost just set in when we went, and all our children got unwell, and E. and I had coughs and colds and rheumatism nearly all the time. We had put down first on our list of things to do, to go and see Mrs. Fox, but literally after waiting some time to see whether the weather would not improve, we had not a day when we both could go out.
I do hope before very long you will be able to manage to pay us a visit. Time is slipping away, and we are getting oldish. Do tell us about yourself and all your large family.
I know you will help me IF YOU CAN with information about the young pigeons; and anyhow do write before very long.
My dear Fox, your sincere old friend, C. DARWIN.
P.S. — Amongst all sorts of odds and ends, with which I am amusing myself, I am comparing the seeds of the variations of plants. I had formerly some wild cabbage seeds, which I gave to some one, was it to you? It is a THOUSAND to one it was thrown away, if not I should be very glad of a pinch of it.
[The following extract from a letter to Mr. Fox (March 27th, 1855) refers to the same subject as the last letter, and gives some account of the "species work: " "The way I shall kill young things will be to put them under a tumbler glass with a teaspoon of ether or chloroform, the glass being pressed down on some yielding surface, and leave them for an hour or two, young have such power of revivication. (I have thus killed moths and butterflies.) The best way would be to send them as you procure them, in pasteboard chip-box by post, on which you could write and just tie up with string; and you will REALLY make me happier by allowing me to keep an account of postage, etc. Upon my word I can hardly believe that ANY ONE could be so good-natured as to take such trouble and do such a very disagreeable thing as kill babies; and I am very sure I do not know one soul who, except yourself, would do so. I am going to ask one thing more; should old hens of any above poultry (not duck) die or become so old as to be USELESS, I wish you would send her to me per rail, addressed to C. Darwin, care of Mr. Acton, Post-office, Bromley, Kent." Will you keep this address? as shortest way for parcels. But I do not care so much for this, as I could buy the old birds dead at Baily to make skeletons. I should have written at once even if I had not heard from you, to beg you not to take trouble about pigeons, for Yarrell has persuaded me to attempt it, and I am now fitting up a place, and have written to Baily about prices, etc., etc. SOMETIME (when you are better) I should like very much to hear a little about your "Little Call Duck"; why so-called? And where you got it? and what it is like?.. I was so ignorant I do not even know there were three varieties of Dorking fowl: how do they differ?..
I forget whether I ever told you what the object of my present work is, — it is to view all facts that I can master (eheu, eheu, how ignorant I find I am) in Natural History (as on geographical distribution, palaeontology, classification, hybridism, domestic animals and plants, etc., etc., etc.) to see how far they favour or are opposed to the notion that wild species are mutable or immutable: I mean with my utmost power to give all arguments and facts on both sides. I have a NUMBER of people helping me in every way, and giving me most valuable assistance; but I often doubt whether the subject will not quite overpower me.
So much for the quasi-business part of my letter. I am very very sorry to hear so indifferent account of your health: with your large family your life is very precious, and I am sure with all your activity and goodness it ought to be a happy one, or as happy as can reasonably be expected with all the cares of futurity on one.
One cannot expect the present to be like the old Crux-major days at the foot of those noble willow stumps, the memory of which I revere. I now find my little entomology which I wholly owe to you, comes in very useful. I am very glad to hear that you have given yourself a rest from Sunday duties. How much illness you have had in your life! Farewell my dear Fox. I assure you I thank you heartily for your proffered assistance.]
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, May 7th [1855].
My dear Fox,
My correspondence has cost you a deal of trouble, though this note will not. I found yours on my return home on Saturday after a week's work in London. Whilst there I saw Yarrell, who told me he had carefully examined all points in the Call Duck, and did not feel any doubt about it being specifically identical, and that it had crossed freely with common varieties in St. James's Park. I should therefore be very glad for a seven-days' duckling and for one of the old birds, should one ever die a natural death. Yarrell told me that Sabine had collected forty varieties of the common duck!..Well, to return to business; nobody, I am sure, could fix better for me than you the characteristic age of little chickens; with respect to skeletons, I have feared it would be impossible to make them, but I suppose I shall be able to measure limbs, etc., by feeling the joints. What you say about old cocks just confirms what I thought, and I will make my skeletons of old cocks. Should an old wild turkey ever die, please remember me; I do not care for a baby turkey, nor for a mastiff. Very many thanks for your offer. I have puppies of bull-dogs and greyhound in salt, and I have had cart-horse and race-horse young colts carefully measured. Whether I shall do any good I doubt. I am getting out of my depth.
Most truly yours, C. DARWIN.
[An extract from a letter to Mr. Fox may find a place here, though of a later date, viz. July, 1855]:
"Many thanks for the seven days' old white Dorking, and for the other promised ones. I am getting quite a 'chamber of horrors,' I appreciate your kindness even more than before; for I have done the black deed and murdered an angelic little fantail and pouter at ten days old. I tried chloroform and ether for the first, and though evidently a perfectly easy death, it was prolonged; and for the second I tried putting lumps of cyanide of potassium in a very large damp bottle, half an hour before putting in the pigeon, and the prussic acid gas thus generated was very quickly fatal."
A letter to Mr. Fox (May 23rd, 1855) gives the first mention of my father's laborious piece of work on the breeding of pigeons:
"I write now to say that I have been looking at some of our mongrel chickens, and I should say ONE WEEK OLD would do very well. The chief points which I am, and have been for years, very curious about, is to ascertain whether the YOUNG of our domestic breeds differ as much from each other as do their parents, and I have no faith in anything short of actual measurement and the Rule of Three. I hope and believe I am not giving so much trouble without a motive of sufficient worth. I have got my fantails and pouters (choice birds, I hope, as I paid 20 shillings for each pair from Baily) in a grand cage and pigeon-house, and they are a decided amusement to me, and delight to H."
In the course of my father's pigeon-fancying enterprise he necessarily became acquainted with breeders, and was fond of relating his experiences as a member of the Columbarian and Philoperistera Clubs, where he met the purest enthusiasts of the "fancy," and learnt much of the mysteries of their art. In writing to Mr. Huxley some years afterwards, he quotes from a book on 'Pigeons' by Mr. J. Eaton, in illustration of the "extreme attention and close observation" necessary to be a good fancier.
"In his [Mr. Eaton's] treatise, devoted to the Almond Tumbler ALONE, which is a sub-variety of the short-faced variety, which is a variety of the Tumbler, as that is of the Rock-pigeon, Mr. Eaton says: 'There are some of the young fanciers who are over-covetous, who go for all the five properties at once [i.e., the five characteristic points which are mainly attended to, — C.D.], they have their reward by getting nothing.' In short, it is almost beyond the human intellect to attend to ALL the excellencies of the Almond Tumbler!
"To be a good breeder, and to succeed in improving any breed, beyond everything enthusiasm is required. Mr. Eaton has gained lots of prizes, listen to him.
"'If it was possible for noblemen and gentlemen to know the amazing amount of solace and pleasure derived from the Almond Tumbler, when they begin to understand their (i.e., the tumbler's) properties, I should think that scarce any nobleman or gentleman would be without their aviaries of Almond Tumblers.'"
My father was fond of quoting this passage, and always with a tone of fellow-feeling for the author, though, no doubt, he had forgotten his own wonderings as a child that "every gentleman did not become an ornithologist." — ('Autobiography,' page 32.)
To Mr. W.B. Tegetmeier, the well-known writer on poultry, etc., he was indebted for constant advice and co-operation. Their correspondence began in 1855, and lasted to 1881, when my father wrote: "I can assure you that I often look back with pleasure to the old days when I attended to pigeons, fowls, etc., and when you gave me such valuable assistance. I not rarely regret that I have had so little strength that I have not been able to keep up old acquaintances and friendships." My father's letters to Mr. Tegetmeier consist almost entirely of series of questions relating to the different breeds of fowls, pigeons, etc., and are not, therefore interesting. In reading through the pile of letters, one is much struck by the diligence of the writer's search for facts, and it is made clear that Mr. Tegetmeier's knowledge and judgment were completely trusted and highly valued by him. Numerous phrases, such as "your note is a mine of wealth to me," occur, expressing his sense of the value of Mr. Tegetmeier's help, as well as words expressing his warm appreciation of Mr. Tegetmeier's unstinting zeal and kindness, or his "pure and disinterested love of science." On the subject of hive-bees and their combs, Mr. Tegetmeier's help was also valued by my father, who wrote, "your paper on 'Bees-cells,' read before the British Association, was highly useful and suggestive to me."
To work out the problems on the Geographical Distributions of animals and plants on evolutionary principles, he had to study the means by which seeds, eggs, etc., can be transported across wide spaces of ocean. It was this need which gave an interest to the class of experiment to which the following letters allude.]
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, May 17th [1855].
My dear Fox,
You will hate the very sight of my hand-writing; but after this time I promise I will ask for nothing more, at least for a long time. As you live on sandy soil, have you lizards at all common? If you have, should you think it too ridiculous to offer a reward for me for lizard's eggs to the boys in your school; a shilling for every half-dozen, or more if rare, till you got two or three dozen and send them to me? If snake's eggs were brought in mistake it would be very well, for I want such also; and we have neither lizards nor snakes about here. My object is to see whether such eggs will float on sea water, and whether they will keep alive thus floating for a month or two in my cellar. I am trying experiments on transportation of all organic beings that I can; and lizards are found on every island, and therefore I am very anxious to see whether their eggs stand sea water. Of course this note need not be answered, without, by a strange and favourable chance, you can some day answer it with the eggs.
Your most troublesome friend, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. April 13th [1855].
...I have had one experiment some little time in progress, which will, I think, be interesting, namely, seeds in salt water immersed in water of 32-33 degrees, which I have and shall long have, as I filled a great tank with snow. When I wrote last I was going to triumph over you, for my experiment had in a slight degree succeeded; but this, with infinite baseness, I did not tell, in hopes that you would say that you would eat all the plants which I could raise after immersion. It is very aggravating that I cannot in the least remember what you did formerly say that made me think you scoffed at the experiments vastly; for you now seem to view the experiment like a good Christian. I have in small bottles out of doors, exposed to variation of temperature, cress, radish, cabbages, lettuces, carrots, and celery, and onion seed — four great families. These, after immersion for exactly one week, have all germinated, which I did not in the least expect (and thought how you would sneer at me); for the water of nearly all, and of the cress especially, smelt very badly, and the cress seed emitted a wonderful quantity of mucus (the 'Vestiges' would have expected them to turn into tadpoles), so as to adhere in a mass; but these seeds germinated and grew splendidly. The germination of all (especially cress and lettuces) has been accelerated, except the cabbages, which have come up very irregularly, and a good many, I think, dead. One would have thought, from their native habitat, that the cabbage would have stood well. The Umbelliferae and onions seem to stand the salt well. I wash the seed before planting them. I have written to the "Gardeners' Chronicle" (A few words asking for information. The results were published in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle,' May 26, November 24, 1855. In the same year (page 789) he sent a P.S. to his former paper, correcting a misprint and adding a few words on the seeds of the Leguminosae. A fuller paper on the germination of seeds after treatment in salt water, appeared in the 'Linnaean Soc. Journal,' 1857, page 130.), though I doubt whether it was worth while. If my success seems to make it worth while, I will send a seed list, to get you to mark some different classes of seeds. To-day I replant the same seeds as above after fourteen days' immersion. As many sea-currents go a mile an hour, even in a week they might be transported 168 miles; the Gulf Stream is said to go fifty and sixty miles a day. So much and too much on this head; but my geese are always swans...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April 14th, 1855.]
...You are a good man to confess that you expected the cress would be killed in a week, for this gives me a nice little triumph. The children at first were tremendously eager, and asked me often, "whether I should beat Dr. Hooker!" The cress and lettuce have just vegetated well after twenty-one days' immersion. But I will write no more, which is a great virtue in me; for it is to me a very great pleasure telling you everything I do.
...If you knew some of the experiments (if they may be so-called) which I am trying, you would have a good right to sneer, for they are so ABSURD even in MY opinion that I dare not tell you.
Have not some men a nice notion of experimentising? I have had a letter telling me that seeds MUST have GREAT power of resisting salt water, for otherwise how could they get to islands? This is the true way to solve a problem!
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1855].
My dear Hooker,
You have been a very good man to exhale some of your satisfaction in writing two notes to me; you could not have taken a better line in my opinion; but as for showing your satisfaction in confounding my experiments, I assure you I am quite enough confounded — those horrid seeds, which, as you truly observe, if they sink they won't float.
I have written to Scoresby and have had a rather dry answer, but very much to the purpose, and giving me no hopes of any law unknown to me which might arrest their everlasting descent into the deepest depths of the ocean. By the way it was very odd, but I talked to Col. Sabine for half an hour on the subject, and could not make him see with respect to transportal the difficulty of the sinking question! The bore is, if the confounded seeds will sink, I have been taking all this trouble in salting the ungrateful rascals for nothing.
Everything has been going wrong with me lately; the fish at the Zoological Society ate up lots of soaked seeds, and in imagination they had in my mind been swallowed, fish and all, by a heron, had been carried a hundred miles, been voided on the banks of some other lake and germinated splendidly, when lo and behold, the fish ejected vehemently, and with disgust equal to my own, ALL the seeds from their mouths. (In describing these troubles to Mr. Fox, my father wrote: — "All nature is perverse and will not do as I wish it; and just at present I wish I had my old barnacles to work at, and nothing new." The experiment ultimately succeeded, and he wrote to Sir J. Hooker: — "I find fish will greedily eat seeds of aquatic grasses, and that millet-seed put into fish and given to a stork, and then voided, will germinate. So this is the nursery rhyme of 'this is the stick that beats the pig,' etc., etc.,")
But I am not going to give up the floating yet: in first place I must try fresh seeds, though of course it seems far more probable that they will sink; and secondly, as a last resource, I must believe in the pod or even whole plant or branch being washed into the sea; with floods and slips and earthquakes; this must continually be happening, and if kept wet, I fancy the pods, etc. etc., would not open and shed their seeds. Do try your Mimosa seed at Kew.
I had intended to have asked you whether the Mimosa scandens and Guilandina bonduc grows at Kew, to try fresh seeds. R. Brown tells me he believes four W. Indian seeds have been washed on shores of Europe. I was assured at Keeling Island that seeds were not rarely washed on shore: so float they must and shall! What a long yarn I have been spinning.
If you have several of the Loffoden seeds, do soak some in tepid water, and get planted with the utmost care: this is an experiment after my own heart, with chances 1000 to 1 against its success.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 11th [1855].
My dear Hooker, — I have just received your note. I am most sincerely and heartily glad at the news (The appointment of Sir J.D. Hooker as Assistant Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew.) it contains, and so is my wife. Though the income is but a poor one, yet the certainty, I hope, is satisfactory to yourself and Mrs. Hooker. As it must lead in future years to the Directorship, I do hope you look at it, as a piece of good fortune. For my own taste I cannot fancy a pleasanter position, than the Head of such a noble and splendid place; far better, I should think, than a Professorship in a great town. The more I think of it, the gladder I am. But I will say no more; except that I hope Mrs. Hooker is pretty well pleased...
As the "Gardeners' Chronicle" put in my question, and took notice of it, I think I am bound to send, which I had thought of doing next week, my first report to Lindley to give him the option of inserting it; but I think it likely that he may not think it fit for a Gardening periodical. When my experiments are ended (should the results appear worthy) and should the 'Linnean Journal' not object to the previous publication of imperfect and provisional reports, I should be DELIGHTED to insert the final report there; for it has cost me so much trouble, that I should think that probably the result was worthy of more permanent record than a newspaper; but I think I am bound to send it first to Lindley.
I begin to think the floating question more serious than the germinating one; and am making all the inquiries which I can on the subject, and hope to get some little light on it...
I hope you managed a good meeting at the Club. The Treasurership must be a plague to you, and I hope you will not be Treasurer for long: I know I would much sooner give up the Club than be its Treasurer.
Farewell, Mr. Assistant Director and dear friend, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. June 5th, 1855.
...Miss Thorley (A lady who was for many years a governess in the family.) and I are doing A LITTLE BOTANICAL WORK! for our amusement, and it does amuse me very much, viz., making a collection of all the plants, which grow in a field, which has been allowed to run waste for fifteen years, but which before was cultivated from time immemorial; and we are also collecting all the plants in an adjoining and SIMILAR but cultivated field; just for the fun of seeing what plants have survived or died out. Hereafter we shall want a bit of help in naming puzzlers. How dreadfully difficult it is to name plants.
What a REMARKABLY nice and kind letter Dr. A. Gray has sent me in answer to my troublesome queries; I retained your copy of his 'Manual' till I heard from him, and when I have answered his letter, I will return it to you.
I thank you much for Hedysarum: I do hope it is not very precious, for as I told you it is for probably a MOST foolish purpose. I read somewhere that no plant closes its leaves so promptly in darkness, and I want to cover it up daily for half an hour, and see if I can teach it to close by itself, or more easily than at first in darkness...I cannot make out why you would prefer a continental transmission, as I think you do, to carriage by sea. I should have thought you would have been pleased at as many means of transmission as possible. For my own pet theoretic notions, it is quite indifferent whether they are transmitted by sea or land, as long as some tolerably probable way is shown. But it shocks my philosophy to create land, without some other and independent evidence. Whenever we meet, by a very few words I should, I think, more clearly understand your views...
I have just made out my first grass, hurrah! hurrah! I must confess that fortune favours the bold, for, as good luck would have it, it was the easy Anthoxanthum odoratum: nevertheless it is a great discovery; I never expected to make out a grass in all my life, so hurrah! It has done my stomach surprising good...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [June?] 15th, [1855].
My dear Hooker,
I just write one line to say that the Hedysarum is come QUITE SAFELY, and thank you for it.
You cannot imagine what amusement you have given me by naming those three grasses: I have just got paper to dry and collect all grasses. If ever you catch quite a beginner, and want to give him a taste of Botany, tell him to make a perfect list of some little field or wood. Both Miss Thorley and I agree that it gives a really uncommon interest to the work, having a nice little definite world to work on, instead of the awful abyss and immensity of all British Plants.
Adios. I was really consummately impudent to express my opinion "on the retrograde step" ("To imagine such enormous geological changes within the period of the existence of now living beings, on no other ground but to account for their distribution, seems to me, in our present state of ignorance on the means of transportal, an almost retrograde step in science." — Extract from the paper on 'Salt Water and Seeds' in "Gardeners' Chronicle", May 26, 1855.), and I deserved a good snub, and upon reflection I am very glad you did not answer me in "Gardeners' Chronicle".
I have been VERY MUCH interested with the Florula. (Godron's 'Florula Juvenalis,' which gives an interesting account of plants introduced in imported wool.)
[Writing on June 5th to Sir J.D. Hooker, my father mentions a letter from Dr. Asa Gray. The letter referred to was an answer to the following:]
CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. (The well-known American Botanist. My father's friendship with Dr. Gray began with the correspondence of which the present is the first letter. An extract from a letter to Sir J. Hooker, 1857, shows that my father's strong personal regard for Dr. Gray had an early origin: "I have been glad to see A. Gray's letters; there is always something in them that shows that he is a very lovable man.") Down, April 25th [1855].
My dear Sir,
I hope that you will remember that I had the pleasure of being introduced to you at Kew. I want to beg a great favour of you, for which I well know I can offer no apology. But the favour will not, I think, cause you much trouble, and will greatly oblige me. As I am no botanist, it will seem so absurd to you my asking botanical questions; that I may premise that I have for several years been collecting facts on "variation," and when I find that any general remark seems to hold good amongst animals, I try to test it in Plants. [Here follows a request for information on American Alpine plants, and a suggestion as to publishing on the subject.] I can assure you that I perceive how presumptuous it is in me, not a botanist, to make even the most trifling suggestion to such a botanist as yourself; but from what I saw and have heard of you from our dear and kind friend Hooker, I hope and think you will forgive me, and believe me, with much respect,
Dear sir, yours very faithfully, CHARLES DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, June 8th [1855].
My dear Sir,
I thank you cordially for your remarkably kind letter of the 22d. ult., and for the extremely pleasant and obliging manner in which you have taken my rather troublesome questions. I can hardly tell you how much your list of Alpine plants has interested me, and I can now in some degree picture to myself the plants of your Alpine summits. The new edition of your Manual is CAPITAL news for me. I know from your preface how pressed you are for room, but it would take no space to append (Eu) in brackets to any European plant, and, as far as I am concerned, this would answer every purpose. (This suggestion Dr. Gray adopted in subsequent editions.) From my own experience, whilst making out English plants in our manuals, it has often struck me how much interest it would give if some notion of their range had been given; and so, I cannot doubt, your American inquirers and beginners would much like to know which of their plants were indigenous and which European. Would it not be well in the Alpine plants to append the very same addition which you have now sent me in MS.? though here, owing to your kindness, I do not speak selfishly, but merely pro bono Americano publico. I presume it would be too troublesome to give in your manual the habitats of those plants found west of the Rocky Mountains, and likewise those found in Eastern Asia, taking the Yenesei (?), — which, if I remember right, according to Gmelin, is the main partition line of Siberia. Perhaps Siberia more concerns the northern Flora of North America. The ranges of plants to the east and west, viz., whether most found are in Greenland and Western Europe, or in E. Asia, appears to me a very interesting point as tending to show whether the migration has been eastward or westward. Pray believe me that I am most entirely conscious that the ONLY USE of these remarks is to show a botanist what points a non-botanist is curious to learn; for I think every one who studies profoundly a subject often becomes unaware [on] what points the ignorant require information. I am so very glad that you think of drawing up some notice on your geographical distribution, for the air of the Manual strikes me as in some points better adapted for comparison with Europe than that of the whole of North America. You ask me to state definitely some of the points on which I much wish for information; but I really hardly can, for they are so vague; and I rather wish to see what results will come out from comparisons, than have as yet defined objects. I presume that, like other botanists, you would give, for your area, the proportion (leaving out introduced plants) to the whole of the great leading families: this is one point I had intended (and, indeed, have done roughly) to tabulate from your book, but of course I could have done it only VERY IMPERFECTLY. I should also, of course, have ascertained the proportion, to the whole Flora, of the European plants (leaving out introduced) AND OF THE SEPARATE GREAT FAMILIES, in order to speculate on means of transportal. By the way, I ventured to send a few days ago a copy of the "Gardeners' Chronicle" with a short report by me of some trifling experiments which I have been trying on the power of seeds to withstand sea water. I do not know whether it has struck you, but it has me, that it would be advisable for botanists to give in WHOLE NUMBERS, as well as in the lowest fraction, the proportional numbers of the families, thus I make out from your Manual that of the INDIGENOUS plants the proportion of the Umbelliferae are 36/1798 = 1/49; for, without one knows the WHOLE numbers, one cannot judge how really close the numbers of the plants of the same family are in two distant countries; but very likely you may think this superfluous. Mentioning these proportional numbers, I may give you an instance of the sort of points, and how vague and futile they often are, which I ATTEMPT to work out...; reflecting on R. Brown's and Hooker's remark, that near identity of proportional numbers of the great families in two countries, shows probably that they were once continuously united, I thought I would calculate the proportions of, for instance, the INTRODUCED Compositae in Great Britain to all the introduced plants, and the result was, 10/92 = 1/9.2. In our ABORIGINAL or indigenous flora the proportion is 1/10; and in many other cases I found an equally striking correspondence. I then took your Manual, and worked out the same question; here I find in the Compositae an almost equally striking correspondence, viz. 24/206 = 1/8 in the introduced plants, and 223/1798 = 1/8 in the indigenous; but when I came to the other families I found the proportion entirely different, showing that the coincidences in the British Flora were probably accidental!