190 GROWTH OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, [ch. x. 



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* 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 

 1G8 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. . . . 



C. D. 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 chey 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 ? 



Experiments on the transportal of seeds through the 

 agency of animals, also gave him much labour. He wrote 

 to Fox (1855) : 



" All nature is perverse and will not do as I wish it ; and 



* A few words asking for information. The results were published in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, May 26, Nov. 24, 1855. In the same year (p. 789) he 

 sent a postscript to his former paper, correcting a misprint and adding a few 

 words on the seeds of the Leguminosse. A fuller paper on the germination 

 of seeds after treatment in salt water, appeared in the Linnean ISoc. Journal, 

 1857, p. 130. 



