DARWIN AND HYBRIDISM 53 



foreseen by Darwin when, in 1837, he opened 

 his first notebook and set forth the grand pro- 

 gramme which the acceptance of evolution would 

 unfold. He there said of his theory that ' it 

 would lead to study of ... heredity ', that ' it 

 would lead to closest examination of hybridity 

 and generation '. In the Origin itself the admir- 

 able researches of Kolreuter and Gartner on these 

 very subjects received the utmost attention, and 

 were brought before the world far more promi- 

 nently than they have ever been either before or 

 since. Furthermore, the only naturalist who can 

 be described as a pupil of Darwin's was strongly 

 advised by him to repeat some of Gartner's 

 experiments. 1 It is simply erroneous to explain 

 the neglect of such researches as a consequence 

 of the appearance of the Origin and the study 

 of adaptation. So far from acting as a 'numbing 

 spell ' upon any other inquiry, adaptation itself 

 has been nearly as much neglected as hybridism, 

 and for the same reason the dominant influence 

 upon biological teaching of the illustrious com- 

 parative anatomist Huxley, Darwin's great general 

 in the battles that had to be fought, but not 

 a naturalist, far less a student of living nature. 



The momentous influence of the Origin upon 

 the past half-century, as well as that strange lack 



1 Darwin's letter of Dec. 11. 1862, to John Scott, contains the 

 following words : ' If you have the means to repeat Gartner's 

 experiments on variations of Verbascum or on maize (see the 

 Origin), such experiments would be pre-eminently important.' 

 More Letters, i. 221, 222. 



