1S70— 1SS2] SEXUALITY 349 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 259 



Down, June 28th. 1873. 



I write a line to wish you good-bye, as I hear you arc 

 off on Wednesday, and to thank you for the Dion tea, but 

 I cannot make the little creature grow well. I have this 

 day read Bentham's last address, 1 and must express my 

 admiration for it. Perhaps I ought not to do so, as he fairly 

 crushes me with honour. 



I am delighted to see how exactly I agree with him on 

 affinities, and especially on extinct forms as illustrated by his 

 flat-topped tree. 2 My recent work leads me to differ from 

 him on one point — viz., on the separation of the sexes. 3 I 

 strongly suspect that sexes were primordially in distinct 

 individuals ; then became commonly united in the same 

 individual, and then in a host of animals and some few 

 plants became again separated. Do ask Bentham to send 

 a copy of his address to " Dr. H. Midler, Lippstadt, Prussia," 

 as I am sure it will please him greatly. 



. . . When in France write me a line and tell me how you 

 get on, and how Huxley is ; but do not do so if you feel idle, 

 and writing bothers you. 



1 Presidential address to the Linnean Society, read May 24th, 1873. 



2 See p. 1 5 of separate copy : " We should then have the present 

 races represented by the countless branchlets forming the flat-topped 

 summit" of a genealogical tree, in which "all we can do is to map out 

 the summit as it were from a bird's-eye view, and under each cluster, or 

 cluster of clusters, to place as the common trunk an imaginary type of a 

 genus, order, or class according to the depth to which we would go." 



3 On the question of sexuality, see p. 10 of Bentham's address. 

 On the back of Mr. Darwin's copy he has written : "As long as lowest 

 organisms free — sexes separated : as soon as they become attached, to 

 prevent sterility sexes united — reseparated as means of fertilisation, 

 adapted [?] for distant [?] organisms, — in the case of animals by then- 

 senses and voluntary movements, — with plants the aid of insects and 

 wind, the latter always existed, and long retained." The two words 

 marked [?] are doubtful. The introduction of freedom or attachedness, 

 as a factor in the problem also occurs in Cross and Self-fertilisation, 

 p. 462. 



