WELWITSCHIA 25 



fancy my joy at discovering the key to the development of 

 this hypertrophical embryo taking to become a plant after 

 the fashion it does : and at my being able to show that 

 though neither Dicot, Monocot, nor Gymnosperm in flower 

 or Exogen or Endogen in structure of axis, wood or bark 

 (its cambium ring is facetious in the extreme), it is still 

 undoubtedly a member of the family Gnetaceae amongst 

 Gymnosperms, as the structure of the ovule and develop- 

 ment of the seed and embryo clearly show. It is out of all 

 question the most wonderful plant ever brought to this 

 country and the very ugliest. It re-opens the whole 

 question of Gymnosperms as a class, will (in the eyes of 

 most) raise these, as I always said they would be raised (by 

 its hermaph. state and perianth) to equivalence in these 

 respects with Angiosperms, assuming (which I do not) that 

 such unisexuality is a sign of low type in Phaenogams, 

 strikes at the root of Brown's placentation theory and of 

 that which ranks the radicle of embryo as an internode : 

 and is a strong argument in favour of a new French doc- 

 trine that the Gymnospermous ovule is all a delusion and 

 a snare. 



There then having bepraised myself I will turn the 

 cock on you. I am very much obliged for the Edinburgh 

 paper slip, which is very gratifying ; the outline seems capital, 

 and I do not wonder that you found sinners enough in 

 ' Saintly Edinburgh ' to go and hear [it]. 1 



By August 4 he could tell Dr. Anderson that he had spent 

 fully seventy hours already over the microscope, and yet had 

 all the wood and leaf anatomy to do ; and on the 20th arouses 

 Darwin's admiring envy at such a feat by having 



sat 5 hours together at microscope at least 6 times lately, 

 besides all the odd days and hours I have spent over it ; 

 and am very far from finished yet. Every part is so 

 curious. 



He was deep in all the ' horrid complexity of Gymno- 

 spermous embryology.' At this moment he was fortunate 



1 On January 4 and 7, 1862, Huxley lectured in Edinburgh ' On the Relation 

 of Man to the Lower Animals.' A furious outcry followed in the local religious 

 papers. See Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, i. 278 seq. 



VOL. II c 



