MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS 121 



To Charles Darwin 



(Undated.) 



Babington is 'very much surprised at Dr. Hooker's 

 advocacy of Darwinian views at Norwich, and observes that 

 it has greatly disappointed many of Dr. Hooker's friends and 

 well-wishers.' I feel like the Parrot which was in the habit 

 of saying in a tone of great contempt after the family prayers 

 were over, ' My God,' or like the Turk in Hogarth's picture, 

 calmly smoking his pipe as he gazes in through the window 

 of a Church where the congregation are in a state of religious 

 excitement. 



Other questions arose directly from Darwin's wide-ranging 

 work. Such were the cause of variation, the transmission of 

 acquired characters, the Descent of Man (Darwin published 

 his book in February 1871), and the introduction of life to our 

 globe by meteors. 



The following are criticisms on passages in Darwin's fifth 

 edition of the ' Origin,' published in May 1869 (see especially 

 p. 151), on which he asked Hooker's assistance (December 5, 

 1868). Nageli in his ' Entstehung und Begriff der Natur- 

 historischen Arten ' objected that Darwin's 'useful adapta- 

 tions ' are exclusively o a physiological kind i.e. showing the 

 formation or transformation of an organ to a special function. 

 He knew of no morphological modification in plants which 

 could be explained on utilitarian principles. (See M.L. ii. 375, 

 where the editors point out that this is a truism, since Natural 

 Selection is assumed to work upon structures which have a 

 function, while on the other hand a difficulty arises from the 

 various meanings given to the word ' morphological.') 



To Charks Darwin 



January 15, 1869. 



I do not quite like the starting by shirking the question 

 of what is a ' morphological character ' you imply that it 

 is a term of indefinite meaning. You talk of what ' he calls 

 M. characters ' and of what ' I presume likewise to be M. 

 characters.' I think that non-scientific readers will at once 

 VOL. n i 



