LETTER 215. TO J.D. HOOKER.

LETTER 215. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(215/1. The following extract from a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker (dated April 3rd, 1868) refers to his Presidential Address for the approaching meeting of the British Association at Norwich.

Some account of Sir Joseph's success is given in the "Life and Letters," III., page 100, also in Huxley's "Life," Volume I., page 297, where Huxley writes to Darwin:--

"We had a capital meeting at Norwich, and dear old Hooker came out in great force, as he always does in emergencies. The only fault was the terrible 'Darwinismus' which spread over the section and crept out when you least expected it, even in Fergusson's lecture on 'Buddhist Temples.' You will have the rare happiness to see your ideas triumphant during your lifetime.

"P.S.--I am going into opposition; I can't stand it.")

Down, April 3rd [1868].

I have been thinking over your Presidential Address; I declare I made myself quite uncomfortable by fancying I had to do it, and feeling myself utterly dumbfounded.

But I do not believe that you will find it so difficult. When you come to Down I shall be very curious to hear what your ideas are on the subject.

Could you make anything out of a history of the great steps in the progress of Botany, as representing the whole of Natural History? Heaven protect you! I suppose there are men to whom such a job would not be so awful as it appears to me...If you had time, you ought to read an article by W. Bagehot in the April number of the "Fortnightly" (215/2. "Physic and Politics," "Fortnightly Review," Volume III., page 452, 1868.), applying Natural Selection to early or prehistoric politics, and, indeed, to late politics,--this you know is your view.

LETTER 216. A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN. 9, St. Mark's Crescent, N.W., August 16th [1868].

I ought to have written before to thank you for the copies of your papers on Primula and on "Cross-unions of Dimorphic Plants, etc." The latter is particularly interesting and the conclusion most important; but I think it makes the difficulty of how these forms, with their varying degrees of sterility, originated, greater than ever. If "natural selection" could not accumulate varying degrees of sterility for the plant's benefit, then how did sterility ever come to be associated with one cross of a trimorphic plant rather than another? The difficulty seems to be increased by the consideration that the advantage of a cross with a distinct individual is gained just as well by illegitimate as by legitimate unions. By what means, then, did illegitimate unions ever become sterile? It would seem a far simpler way for each plant's pollen to have acquired a prepotency on another individual's stigma over that of the same individual, without the extraordinary complication of three differences of structure and eighteen different unions with varying degrees of sterility!

However, the fact remains an excellent answer to the statement that sterility of hybrids proves the absolute distinctness of the parents.

I have been reading with great pleasure Mr. Bentham's last admirable address (216/1. "Proc. Linn. Soc." 1867-8, page lvii.), in which he so well replies to the gross misstatements of the "Athenaeum;" and also says award in favour of pangenesis. I think we may now congratulate you on having made a valuable convert, whose opinions on the subject, coming so late and being evidently so well considered, will have much weight.

I am going to Norwich on Tuesday to hear Dr. Hooker, who I hope will boldly promulgate "Darwinism" in his address. (216/2. Sir Joseph Hooker's Presidential Address at the British Association Meeting.) Shall we have the pleasure of seeing you there?

I am engaged in negociations about my book.

Hoping you are well and getting on with your next volumes.

(216/3. We are permitted by Mr. Wallace to append the following note as to his more recent views on the question of Natural Selection and sterility:--

"When writing my "Darwinism," and coming again to the consideration of this problem of the effect of Natural Selection in accumulating variations in the amount of sterility between varieties or incipient species twenty years later, I became more convinced, than I was when discussing with Darwin, of the substantial accuracy of my argument. Recently a correspondent who is both a naturalist and a mathematician has pointed out to me a slight error in my calculation at page 183 (which does not, however, materially affect the result), disproving the 'physiological selection' of the late Dr. Romanes, but he can see no fallacy in my argument as to the power of Natural Selection to increase sterility between incipient species, nor, so far as I am aware, has any one shown such fallacy to exist.

"On the other points on which I differed from Mr. Darwin in the foregoing discussion--the effect of high fertility on population of a species, etc.--I still hold the views I then expressed, but it would be out of place to attempt to justify them here."

A.R.W. (1899).)