18431882] VARIATION 413 



me. So I beg you to mind, never to write to me when it Letter 319 

 bores you. Do you know " Elements de Teratologie (on 

 monsters, I believe) Vegetale, par A. Moquin Tandon " ? 1 Is it 

 a good book, and will it treat on hereditary malconformations 

 or varieties ? I have almost finished the tremendous task of 

 850 pages of A. St. Hilaire's Lectures, 2 which you set me, and 

 very glad I am that you told me to read it, for I have been 

 much interested with parts. Certain expressions which run 

 through the whole work put me in a passion : thus I take, 

 at hazard, " la plante n'etait pas tout a fait assez affaiblie 

 pour produire de veritables carpelles." Every organ or part 

 concerned in reproduction that highest end of all lower 

 organisms is, according to this man, produced by a lesser 

 or greater degree of " affaiblissement " ; and if that is not an 

 affaiblissement of language, I don't know what is. I have used 

 an expression here, which leads me to ask another question : 

 on what sort of grounds do botanists make one family of 

 plants higher than another? I can see that the simplest 

 cryptogamic are lowest, and I suppose, from their relations, 

 the monocotyledenous come next ; but how in the different 

 families of the dicotyledons ? The point seems to me equally 

 obscure in many races of animals, and I know not how to tell 

 whether a bee or cicindela is highest 3 I see Aug. Hilaire 

 uses a multiplicity of parts several circles of stamens, etc. as 

 evidence of the highness of the Ranunculacese ; now Owen has 

 truly, as I believe, used the same argument to show the 

 lowness of some animals, and has established the proposition, 

 that the fewer the number of any organ, as legs or wings or 

 teeth, by which the same end is gained, the higher the animal. 

 One other question. Hilaire says (p. 572) that "chez une 

 foule de plantes c'est dans le bouton," that impregnation takes 

 place. He instances only Goodeniaf and Falconer cannot 

 recollect any cases. Do you know any of this " foule " of 

 plants ? From reasons, little better than hypothetical, I 

 greatly misdoubt the accuracy of this, presumptuous as it is ; 

 that plants shed their pollen in the bud is, of course, quite 

 a different story. Can you illuminate me ? Henslow will 



1 Paris, 1841. 



2 Lemons de Botanique, 1841. 



3 On use of terms "high" and "low" see Letters 36 and 70. 



4 For letters on this point, see Index s.v. Goodenia. 



