i862.] FERTILISATION OF FLOWERS. 449 



and I asked him whether he knew who had written the little 

 article in the Saturday^ smashing the [Edinburgh reviewer], 

 which we liked ; and after a little hesitation he owned he had. 

 I never knew that he wrote in the Saturday j and was it not 

 an odd chance ? " 



The ' Edinburgh ' article was written by the Duke of 

 Argyll, and has since been made use of in his ^ Reign of Law,' 

 1867. Mr. Wallace replied* to the Duke's criticisms, making 

 some specially good remarks on those which refer to orchids. 

 He shows how, by a "beautiful self-acting adjustment," the 

 nectary of the orchid Angraecum (from 10 to 14 inches in 

 length), and the proboscis of a moth sufficiently long to reach 

 the nectar, might be developed by natural selection. He goes 

 on to point out that on any other theory we must suppose 

 that the flower was created with an enormously long nectary, 

 and that then by a special act, an insect was created fitted to 

 visit the flower, which would otherwise remain sterile. With 

 regard to this point my father wrote (October 12 or 13, 

 1867) :— 



" I forgot to remark how capitally you turn the tables on 

 the Duke, when you make him create the Angraecum and 

 Moth by special creation." 



If we examine the literature relating to the fertilisation of 

 flowers, we do not find that this new branch of study showed 

 any great activity immediately after the publication of the 

 Orchid-book. There are a few papers by Asa Gray, in 1862 

 and 1863, by Hildebrand in 1864, and by Moggridge in 1865, 

 but the great mass of work by Axell, Delpino, Hildebrand, 

 and the Miillers, did not begin to appear until about 1867. 

 The period during which the new views were being assimi- 

 lated, and before they became thoroughly fruitful, was, how- 

 ever, surprisingly short. The later activity in this department 

 may be roughly gauged by the fact that the valuable ' Biblio- 

 graphy,' given by Prof. D'Arcy Thompson in his translation 



* * Quarterly Journal of Science,' October 1867. Republished in 

 ' Natural Selection,' 1871. 



