18701882] FRITZ MULLER 383 



for many years on this very point. If, as I am inclined to be- Letter 293 

 lieve, your view can be widely extended, it will be a capital gain 

 to the doctrine of evolution. I see by your various papers 

 that you are working away energetically, and, wherever 

 you look, you seem to discover something quite new and 

 extremely interesting. Your brother also continues to do fine 

 work on the fertilisation of flowers and allied subjects. 



I have little or nothing to tell you about myself. I go 

 slowly crawling on with my present subject the various and 

 complicated movements of plants. I have not been very well 

 of late, and am tired to-day, so will write no more. With the 

 most cordial sympathy in all your work, etc. 



To T. H. Huxley. Letter 294 



Down, April igth, 1879. 



Many thanks for the book. 1 I have read only the 

 preface. ... It is capital, and I enjoyed the tremendous rap 

 on the knuckles which you gave Virchow at the close. What 

 a pleasure it must be to write as you can do ! 



To E. S. Morse. Letter 295 



Down, Oct. 2ist, 1879. 



Although you are so kind as to tell me not to write, I 

 must just thank you for the proofs of your paper, 2 which has 

 interested me greatly. The increase in the number of ridges 

 in the three species of Area seems to be a very noteworthy 

 fact, as does the increase of size in so many, yet not all, 

 the species. What a constant state of fluctuation the whole 

 organic world seems to be in ! It is interesting to hear that 

 everywhere the first change apparently is in the proportional 

 numbers of the species. I was much struck with the fact 



1 Ernst Hackel's Freedom in Science and Teaching, with a prefatory 

 note by T. H. Huxley, 1879. Professor Hackel has recently published 

 (without permission) a letter in which Mr. Darwin comments severely on 

 Virchow. It is difficult to say which would have pained Mr. Darwin more 



-the affront to a colleague, or the breach of confidence in a friend. 



2 See " The Shell Mounds of Omori " in the Memoirs of the Science 

 Department of the U7iii>. of Tokio, Vol. I., Part I., 1879. The ridges on 

 Area are mentioned at p. 25. In Nature, April I5th, 1880, Mr. Darwin 

 published a letter by Mr. Morse relating to the review of the above 

 paper, which appeared in Nature, XXL, p. 350. Mr. Darwin introduces 

 Mr. Morse's letter with some prefatory remarks. The correspondence 

 is republished in the American Naturalist, Sept., 1880. 



