460 PEESONALIA : 1898-1906 



welcome letter and copy of your ' Life.' The latter was, I 

 assure you, never expected, knowing as I do the demand for 

 free copies that such a work inflicts on the author. In fact 

 I had put it down as one of the annual Xmas gifts of 

 books that I receive from my own family. Coming as it 

 thus did quite unexpectedly, it is doubly welcome and I do 

 heartily thank you for this proof of your greatly valued warm 

 friendship. It will prove to be one of four works of greater 

 interest to me than any published since Darwin's ' Origin ' ; 

 the others being Waddell's ' Lhassa,' Scott's ' Antarctic 

 Voyage,' and Mill's ' Siege of the South Pole.' 



I have not seen Clodd's Edition of Bates's ' Amazon, ' 

 which I have put down as to be got, and I had no idea that 

 I should have appeared in it. 1 Your citations of my letters 

 and their contents are like dreams to me ; for to tell the 

 truth, I am getting dull of memory as well as of hearing, and 

 what is worse, in reading, what goes in at one eye goes out at 

 the other. So I am getting to realise Darwin's consolation 

 of Old Age, that it absolves me from being expected to know, 

 remember, or reason upon new facts and discoveries. And 

 this must apply to your query as to any one having as yet 

 answered De Vries. I cannot remember having seen any 

 answer, only criticisms of a discontinuous sort. I cannot for 

 a moment entertain the idea that Darwin ever assented to the 

 proposition that new species have always been produced from 

 *" mutation and never through normal variability. Possibly 

 there is some quibble as to the definition of mutation or of 

 variation. The Americans are prone to believe any new 

 things, witness their swallowing the thornless Cactus pro- 

 duced by that man in California, I forget his name (Harland ?) 2 

 which Kew exposed by asking for specimens to exhibit in 

 the Cactus House. 



I have been for years working at the Indian species of 

 Impatiens, the distribution of which is unparalleled amongst 

 Indian phanerogams. One species alone, the indigenous 

 Garden Balsam, is found in most parts of India. Of the rest, 

 some 200 species, most by far are strictly limited to geogra- 



1 It had escaped his memory that he had furnished Mr. Clodd with this 

 material. 



1 New Creations in Plant Life : an Authoritative Account of the Life and Work 

 of Luther Burbank, by W. S. Harwood, 1905. Among these ' new Creations ' 

 waa a thornless Opuntia. 



