2ET.52.] TO CHARLES DARWIN. 505 



and passing all your valuable time, wasting it, at a 

 water-cure. 



I have really, as you see, nothing special to write 

 of this week, and no time to read what I have hur- 

 riedly penned. 



May 26. 



Your letter on heterogeny is keen and good ; 

 Owen's rejoinder ingenious. But his dissent from 

 your well-put claims of natural selection to attention 

 and regard is good for nothing except on the ad- 

 mission of the view that species are somehow derived 

 genealogically; and this I judge, from various of 

 Owen's statements, that he really in his heart believes 

 to be the case, and was (as I long ago intimated my 

 suspicions) hunting about for some system of deri- 

 vation, when your book came down upon him like a 

 thunderclap. 



Wyman, here, is greatly pleased with Huxley's book 

 on man's place in nature. I have not even seen it. 



Did you ever notice how prettily Iris is arranged 

 for cross-fertilizing by bees, etc. ? 



Your Linum paper has long been here. But I have 

 actually not had time to read it. _. I might have 

 glanced at it. But I find it best to read only when 

 I can do so with some attention. 



Phyllotaxis : I have no notion in the world why the 

 angular divergences should be of that series of num- 

 bers and not of others. Opposite leaves give (decus- 

 sating) the angles. My puzzle has been to account 

 for this system in cycles in leaves running into the 

 system of decussating whorls in flowers (usually, 

 almost universally). You will see the question by 

 comparing in my " Botanical Text-Book " (not " Les- 



