230 EVOLUTION [Chap. Ill 



Letter '5 6 « What is the good of writing a thundering big book, when 

 everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its 

 size?" In the name of all that is good and bad, I may as 

 well shut up shop altogether. You put capitally and most 

 simply and clearly the relation of animals and plants to each 

 other at p. 122. 



Be careful about Fantails : their tail-feathers are fixed in a 

 radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. 

 I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt 

 expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important 

 point ! P. 111 1 seems a little too strong — viz., ninety-nine 

 out of a hundred, unless you except plants. 



P. 1 18 : You say the answer to varieties when crossed being 

 at all sterile is " absolutely a negative." 2 Do you mean to say 

 that Gartner lied, after experiments by the hundred (and he 

 a hostile witness), when he showed that this was the case 

 with Verbascum and with maize (and here you have selected 

 races) : does Kolrcuter lie when he speaks about the varieties 

 of tobacco ? My God, is not the case difficult enough, without 

 its being, as I must think, falsely made more difficult ? I 

 believe it is my own fault — my d — d candour : I ought to 

 have made ten times more fuss about these most careful 

 experiments. I did put it stronger in the third edition of the 

 Origin. If you have a new edition, do consider your second 

 geological section : I do not dispute the truth of your state- 

 ment ; but I maintain that in almost every case the gravel 

 would graduate into the mud ; that there would not be a hard, 

 straight line between the mass of gravel and mud ; that the 

 gravel, in crawling inland, would be separated from the under- 

 lying beds by oblique lines of stratification. A nice idea of 

 the difficulty of Geology your section would give to a working 



1 The reference is to the original little green paper books in which 

 the lectures first appeared ; the paging in the bound volume dated 1863 

 is slightly different. The passage here is, "... If you couple a male 

 and female hybrid . . . the result is that in ninety-nine cases out of a 

 hundred you will get no offspring at all." Darwin maintains elsewhere 

 that Huxley, from not knowing the botanical evidence, made too much 

 of this point. See Life and Letters, II., p. 3S4. 



3 Huxley, p. 112: "Can we find any approximation to this [sterility 

 of hybrids] in the different races known to be produced by selective 

 breeding from a common stock ? Up to the present time the answer to 

 that question is absolutely a negative one." 



