34 SCIENTIFIC WORK, 1860-1865 



I have finished Lyell and am enchanted with the Glacial 

 Chapters, language, and the whole treatment of the Origin 

 and Development subjects (with above qualifications) : it 

 is certainly a grand book on the whole, and well worthy of 

 Lyell's scientific reputation. He never rises to the magnifi- 

 cence of Huxley's language, nor to the sublimity of some of 

 the passages in H.'s little book on the Position of Man, 

 which you can read 1000 times with fresh delight. 



Of his own work, indeed, as compared with Darwin's 

 whom he once apostrophised as * you facile princeps of 

 observers ' he always felt and spoke with humility. Thus 

 he writes on October 2, 1862 : 



The dismal fact you quote of hybrid transitions between 

 Verbascum Thapsus and nigrum (or whichever two it was) 

 and its bearing on my practice of lumping species through 

 intermediate specimens, is a very horrible one ; and would 

 open my eyes to my own blindness if nothing else could. I 

 have long been prepared for such a case, though I once 

 wrote much against its probability. I feel tolerably sure I 

 must have encountered many such, but have not had the tact 

 to discern them, when under my nose, and I hence feel as if 

 all my vast experience in the field has been thrown away. 

 Your Orchid Book has pretty well convinced me that such 

 cases must be abundant, and they only tend further to disturb 

 our ideas of physiological versus structural species. Perhaps 

 my intermediates between Hdbenaria chlorantha and bifolia 

 (of which I retain a lively recollection) were of this hybrid 

 nature. Certain it is, that I had only to look for Hybrid 

 Orchids in Switzerland to find two different sorts, and 

 numerous specimens of one of them. 



Besides correspondence touching Darwin's immediate 

 interests in the study of cross-fertilisation and in climbing 

 plants, many specimens of which he sent to Down for experi- 

 ments, topics discussed with Darwin include the relations 

 between Islands and Continents, the parallel between Alps 

 and Himalayas, Variation and Environment, the latter 

 leading to a curious application of Natural Selection to 

 Sociology. 



