124 DARWINIAN INTERESTS 



The following answers Darwin's letter of August 7 (M.L. i. 

 314, where it is partly quoted in a footnote) apropos of Hallett 

 having found some varieties of wheat which could not be im- 

 proved in certain desirable qualities as quickly as at first. 



August 13, 1869. 



I did not mean to imply that Hallett affirmed that all 

 variation stopped, far from it, he maintains the contrary, 

 but, if I understand him aright, he soon arrives at a point 

 beyond which any further accumulation in the direction 

 sought is so small and so slow that practically a fixity of 

 type (not absolute fixity however) is the result. Also that 

 coincident with this point is that the plant is also very slow 

 to vary in other directions than that it was bred to accumu-* 

 late. This, I supposed, correlation would account for, viz. 

 that while you are knowingly accumulating in one direction, 

 correlation obliges you unknowingly to be accumulating in 

 others. 



To Charles Darwin 



July 17, 1869. 



I have had a queer Strasburg Mathematician here with 

 me this morning about Phyllotaxy, &c., and we have had 

 a long chat, during which he has expounded certain queer 

 aspects of scientific theories .g. that the original primor- 

 dial cell, from which all Organized creatures were developed, 

 was that of Man, inasmuch as it has attained its highest 

 development in Man. I told him that Pangenesis would 

 demand this, for the original cell must have contained the 

 original gemmules which enter into the composition of every 

 cell of Man. 



To Charles Darwin 



July 18, 1870. 



I had a long talk with the D. of Argyll last night, with 

 whom I dined, about origin of man, and found him a ' cleft 

 stick ' about Wallace, believing him to be right in the fact 

 about man, but allowing that he must be wrong in his 

 argument ! (he had not read that paper of Wallace's). 

 What a clever little beggar it is ! But I cannot follow his 

 views about man, or quite see what he would have us believe. 

 His chief quarrel with the ' Origin ' is that you do not state 



