STYLE AND SUBSTANCE 477 



I entirely agree with all you say about representative 

 species, and groan over the hitch in deciding what we are to 

 agree to call a species in such cases. I also fully agree that 

 the fundamentally of the argument derived from generic 

 resemblance is not fully appreciated by myself ; one is apt 

 to overlook its real whole weight, from being accustomed 

 to bear it, like atmospheric pressure. It is per se unanswer- 

 able, and hence put aside for less valuable facts that afford 

 scope for reasoning and debate. I am hence the more glad 

 that I wound up my chapter with the quotation from you ; 

 for which I do not deserve the credit which I hope others 

 will attach to its introduction. I put it in as much for the 

 sake of strengthening my argument by quoting one known 

 to be so able to judge as you are, as for what it said. I 

 believed in you in short, quite as much as in what you 

 wrote. 



To Asa Gray 



March 29, 1857. 



My Father has just asked me to review Berkeley's Intro- 

 duction to Cryptogamic Botany for him a little in detail. It 

 is no joke to read it to begin with. It is a wonderful book, 

 chock full of observations, full of reflections, full of able 

 thought, accurate analysis, as carefully and honestly done 

 as a book can be, and a result of a mastery of the subject 

 which I believe no other man living possesses. Unfortu- 

 nately it is abominably written and arranged, and the really 

 admirable correlations of facts and phenomena in the 

 different organs and orders of plants dealt with in the most 

 higgledy piggledy fashion. It is like a country parson's 

 sermon all over, without a beginning, middle, or end, the 

 leading ideas are here, there, and everywhere, bound together 

 by the jolliest rigmarole of conjunctions, prepositions and 

 adverbs. These parsons are so in the habit of dealing with 

 the abstractions of doctrines as if there was no difficulty 

 about them whatever, so confident, from the practice of 

 having the talk all to themselves for an hour at least every 

 week with no one to gainsay a syllable they utter, be it ever 

 so loose or bad, that they gallop over the course when their 

 field is Botany or Geology as if we were in the pews and 

 they in the pulpit. 



