i864— 1869] GRADATIONS 259 



inserted in the Natural History Review x : whether the notice Letter 183 

 will be favourable, I do not know ; but anyhow it will call 

 attention to your views. . . . 



As you allude in your paper to the believers in change of 

 species, you will be glad to hear that very many of the very 

 best men are coming round in Germany. I have lately heard 

 of Hackel, Gegenbauer, F. Miillcr, Leuckart, Claparede, Alex. 

 Braun, Schleiden, etc. So it is, I hear, with the younger 

 Frenchmen. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 184 



Down, Jan. 19th [1865]. 



It is working hours, but I am trying to take a day's 

 holiday, for I finished and despatched yesterday my Climbing 

 paper. For the last ten days I have done nothing but correct 

 refractory sentences, and I loathe the whole subject like 

 tartar emetic. By the way, I am convinced that you want 

 a holiday, and I think so because you took the devil's name 

 in vain so often in your last note. Can you come here for 

 Sunday ? You know how I should like it, and you will be 

 quiet and dull enough here to get plenty of rest. I have been 

 thinking with regret about what you said in one of your later 

 notes, about having neglected to make notes on the gradation 

 of character in your genera ; but would it be too late ? Surely 

 if you looked over names in series the facts would come back, 

 and you might surely write a fine paper " On the gradation 

 of important characters in the genera of plants." As for 

 unimportant characters, I have made their perfect gradation 

 a very prominent point with respect to the means of 

 climbing, in my paper. I begin to think that one of the 

 commonest means of transition is the same individual plant 

 having the same part in different states : thus Corydalis 

 claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a tendril- 

 bearer ; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf- 

 climber. Now I am sure I remember some cases with plants 

 in which important parts such as the position of the ovule 

 differ : differences in the spire of leaves on lateral and terminal 

 branches, etc. 



1 Nat. Hist. Review, Jan. 1865, p. 139. A notice by/. /,. (probably 

 Lord Avebury) on Walsh's paper "On Dimorphism in the Hymeno- 

 pterous Genus Cynips," in the Proc. Entomolog. Soc. of Philadelphia, 



March, 1S64 



