I 



* PHILOSOPHICAL BOTANY ' 451 



faradox. I know the human soul loves paradox, even to 

 miracle, and that this love of it is only one of the curses of 

 Science, but Lord bless you, my dear Darwin, it is the greatest 

 paradox in the world to think of Conifers as anything but 

 very high in the Vegetable Kingdom.^ 



April 11, 1857. 



If you knew how grateful the turning from the drudgery 

 of my * professional Botany ' to your * philosophical Botany ' 

 was, you would not fear bothering me with questions. 

 The truth in its primitive nakedness is, that I really look for 

 and count upon such questions, as the best means of keeping 

 alive a due interest in these subjects. I indulge vague hopes 

 of treating them some day, but days and years fly over my 

 head and all I do is done in correspondence to you, but for 

 which I should soon lose sight of the whole matter. 



Harvey's observations on Fucus varying much and yet in 

 some way under most different conditions goes with me for 

 a good deal and I would endorse it. . . . 



There are I think heaps of such cases, they have so often 

 struck me, that one of my sketched out methods of treating 

 the Indian plants common to W. Europe and India is by 

 dividing them into : 



1. Identical unvarying species. 



2. Identical variable species. 



(a) Variations equal and similar in both countries. 



(b) Variations unequal, or dissimilar, or both. 



In answer to Darwin's letter of June 25, 1857 (CD. ii. 102) 

 about the curious character of the seedHng leaves in young 

 Furze, after quoting some parallel cases, he proceeds : 



A great stumbhngblock in development to me has been 

 the very great differences between the cotyledonary leaves 

 of plants, even of the same Nat. Order. Leguminosae for 

 instance : this has always prevented me from understanding 

 the embryonic development in plants being so good an 

 evidence of affinity as in animals. Comparative develop- 

 ment would appear to begin with the post-Cotyledonary 

 leaves, and the Cotyledonary may be regarded as placenta ? 

 amnios ? &c., which vary in aUied animals. Is this not a 



^ See also the letter to Asa Gray, p. 480. 



