216 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES issi- 



the possibility of my being accused of trying to under- 

 mine natural selection ; and, therefore, I only stated 

 as briefly as possible what my relations were to it. 

 Yet it seems to me that this statement was clear 

 enough if Wallace had not come down with his pre- 

 posterous ' Romanes versus Darwin.' At all events, 

 it is not in my power or, I believe, in that of any- 

 body else to express more strongly than I now have 

 in c Nature,' in answer to Dyer, what I do hold about 

 natural selection in its relation to physiological selec- 

 tion, sexual selection, and other subordinate principles. 

 Of course, if there were a debate on these lines at the 

 B.A., I should get my part of it published somewhere. 

 As far as I can honestly see, my ' position ' is abso- 

 lutely identical with that in last editions of ' Origin ' 

 and < Descent,' with, perhaps, a ' tendency ' to lay 

 more stress on levelling influence of Panmixia. 



Re physiological selection. I have sent Correvon, 

 of Geneva, 50 to help in founding a garden in the 

 Alps, which will have the proud distinction of being 

 the highest garden in the world. He is a splendid 

 man for his knowledge of Alpine flora, and besides, is 

 strongly bitten with a desire to test physiological selec- 

 tion. Of course I shall do the hybridising experiments 

 myself, but he will collect the material from the 

 different mountains i.e. nearly allied species, topo- 

 graphically separated, and therefore, I hope, mutually 

 fertile. The converse experiments of nearly allied 

 species on common areas may be tried in England. 



I am making arrangements for repeating on an 

 extensive scale experiments on budding purple labur- 

 num on yellow, to see if it is possible to reproduce 



