18431862] ORCHIDS 269 



d d cock-sure man (as Lord Melbourne said), and I have Letter 599 

 some doubts whether to be much trusted. I suspect he has 

 never recorded his experiment at the time with care. He 

 has made me indignant by the way he speaks of Gartner, 

 evidently knowing nothing of his work. I mean to try and 

 pump him in the Cottage Gardener, and shall perhaps defend 

 Gartner. He alludes to me occasionally, and I cannot tell 

 with what spirit. He speaks of " this Mr. Darwin ' in one 

 place as if I were a very noxious animal. 



Let me have a line about poor Henslow pretty soon. 



In a letter of May iSth, 1861, Darwin wrote again :- 



By the way, thanks about Beaton. I have now read more 

 of his writings, and one answer to me in Cottage Gardener. 

 I can plainly see that he is not to be trusted. He does not 

 well know his own subject of crossing. 



To J. D. Hooker. 1 Letter 600 



2, Hesketh Crescent, Torquay [1861]. 



. . . The beauty of the adaptation of parts seems to me 

 unparalleled. I should think or guess [that] waxy pollen was 

 most differentiated. In Cypripedium, which seems least modi- 

 fied, and a much exterminated group, the grains are single. 

 In all others, as far as I have seen, they are in packets of four ; 

 and these packets cohere into many wedge-formed masses in 

 Orchis, into eight, four, and finally two. It seems curious that 

 a flower should exist which could, at most, fertilise only two 

 other flowers, seeing how abundant pollen generally is ; this 

 fact I look at as explaining the perfection of the contrivance 

 by which the pollen, so important from its fewness, is carried 



Index of Botanists, 1893. Dr. Masters tells us that Beaton had a 

 " first-rate reputation as a practical gardener, and was esteemed for his 

 shrewdness and humour." He was a regular contributor to the Cottage 

 Gardener, and wrote various articles on cross breeding, etc., in 1861. One 

 of these was in reply to a letter published in the Cottage Gardener, 

 May I4th, 1861, p. 112, in which Darwin asked for information as to the 

 Composite and the hollyhock being crossed by insect visitors. In 

 the number for June 8th, 1861, p. 211, Darwin wrote on the variability of 

 the central flower of the carrot and the peloria of the central flower in 

 Pelargonium. An extract from a letter by Darwin on Leschenaultia, 

 Cottage Gardener, May 28th, 1861, p. 151, is given in note 5, Letter 590. 

 1 Part of this letter has been published in Life and Letters, III., p. 265. 



