340 BOTANY [CHAP. XI 



Letter 664 I am glad that he is cautious about Naudin's view, 1 for I 

 cannot think that it will hold. The tendency of hybrids to 

 revert to either parent is part of a wider law (which I am 

 fully convinced that I can show experimentally), namely, that 

 crossing races as well as species tends to bring back characters 

 which existed in progenitors hundreds and thousands of 

 generations ago. Why this should be so, God knows. But 

 Naudin's view throws no light, that I can see, on this re- 

 version of long-lost characters. I wish the Ray Society 

 would translate Gartner's Bastarderzeugung 2 ; it contains 

 more valuable matter than all other writers put together, 

 and would do great service if better known. 



1 C. Naudin's " Nouvelles Recherches sur PHybridite dans les 

 Vegetaux." The complete paper, with coloured plates, was presented to 

 the Academy in 1861, and published in full in the Nouvelles Archives du 

 Musetim cPHist. Nat., Vol. I., 1865, p. 25. The second part only appeared 

 in the Ann. Sci. Nat., XIX., 1863. Mr. Bentham's address dealing with 

 hybridism is in Proc. Linn. Soc., VIII., 1864, p. ix. A review of Naudin 

 is given in the Natural History Review, 1864, p. 50. Naudin's paper is 

 of much interest, as containing a mechanical theory of reproduction of 

 the same general character as that of pangenesis. In the Variation of 

 Animals and Plants, Ed. II. , Vol. II., p. 395, Darwin states that in his 

 treatment of hybridism in terms of gemmules he is practically following 

 Naudin's treatment of the same theme in terms of "essences." Naudin, 

 however, does not clearly distinguish between hybrid and pure gemmules, 

 and makes the assumption that the hybrid or mixed essences tend 

 constantly to dissociate into pure parental essences, and thus lead to 

 reversion. It is to this view that Darwin refers when he says that 

 Naudin's view throws no light on the reversion to long-lost characters. 

 His own attempt at explaining this fact occurs in Variation under 

 Domest., II., Ed. II., p. 395. Mr. Bateson (MendePs Principle of Heredity, 

 Cambridge, 1902, p. 38) says : " Naudin clearly enuntiated what we 

 shall henceforth know as the Mendelian conception of the dissociation 

 of characters of cross-breds in the formation of the germ-cells, though 

 apparently he never developed this conception." It is remarkable that, 

 as far as we know, Darwin never in any way came across Mendel's work. 

 One of Darwin's correspondents, however, the late Mr. T. Laxton, of 

 Stamford, was close on the trail of Mendelian principle. Mr. Bateson 

 writes (pp. cit., p. 181) : " Had he [Laxton] with his other gifts combined 

 that penetration which detects a great principle hidden in the thin mist 

 of ' exceptions,' we should have been able to claim for him that honour 

 which must ever be Mendel's in the history of discovery." 



Versuche iiber die Bastarderzeugung tm Pflanzenreich : Stuttgart, 

 1849. 



