28o EVOLUTION [Chap. IV 



Letter 200 To I. Anderson-Henry. 1 



May 22nd [1867]. 

 You arc so kind as to offer to lend me Maillet's 2 work, 

 which I have often heard of, but never seen. I should like 

 to have aJook at it, and would return it to you in a short 

 time. I am bound to read it, as my former friend and present 

 bitter enemy Owen generally ranks mc and Maillet as a pair 

 of equal fools. 



Letter 201 To J. D. Hooker. 



Down, April 4th [1867]. 



You have done mc a very great service in sending mc the 

 pages of the Farmer. I do not know whether you wish it 

 returned ; but I will keep it unless I hear that you want 

 it. Old I. Anderson-Henry passes a magnificent but rather 

 absurd culogium on me ; but the point of such extreme value 

 in my eyes is Mr. Traill's 3 statement that he made a mottled 

 mongrel by cutting eyes through and joining two kinds of 

 potatoes. 4 1 have written to him for full information, and 

 then I will set to work on a similar trial. It would prove, I 

 think, to demonstration that propagation by buds and by 



1 Isaac Anderson-Henry, of Edinburgh (1799? — 1884), was educated 

 as a lawyer, but devoted himself to horticulture, more particularly to 

 experimental work on grafting and hybridisation. As President of the 

 Botanical Society of Edinburgh he delivered two addresses on " Hybridi- 

 sation or Crossing of Plants," of which a full abstract was published in 

 the Gardeners' Chronicle, April 13th, 1867, p. 379, and Dec. 21st, 1867, 

 p. 1296. See obit, notice in Gardener? Chronicle, Sept. 27th, 1884, p. 400. 



* For De Maillet see Mr. Huxley's review on The Origin of Species 

 in the Westminster Review, i860, reprinted in Lay Sermons, 1870, p. 314. 

 De Maillet's evolutionary views were published after his death in 1748 

 under the name of Telliamed (De Maillet spelt backwards). 



3 Mr. Traill's results are given at p. 420 of Animals and Plants, 

 Ed. II., Vol. I. In the Life and Letters of G. J. Romanes, 1896, an 

 interesting correspondence is published with Mr. Darwin on this subject. 

 The plan of the experiments suggested to Romanes was to raise seedlings 

 from graft -hybrids : if the seminal offspring of plants hybridised by 

 grafting should show the hybrid character, it would be striking evidence 

 in favour of pangenesis. The experiment, however, did not succeed. 



4 For an account of similar experiments now in progress, see a " Note 

 on some Grafting Experiments " by R. Biffen in the Annals of Botany, 

 Vol. XVI., p. 174, 1902. 



