456 LETTEES TO DAEWIN, 1843-1859 



quite sure I should. The object of these books, you must 

 remember, is not to tell everything about a plant, and 

 perhaps least of all to tell the amount of their variation, but 

 to lead others to : — 1st, name ; 2, affinities ; 3, distribution ; 

 4, uses — and so on. As a rule the amount of variation is 

 a speciality affecting the species differently in different 

 localities, and is therefore only recorded when the omission 

 of its record might lead to the non-recognition of the plant 

 by the character. All plants are variable : see how the 

 descriptions teem with ' vel,' * aut,' ' et,' &c. 



The long and short of the matter is, that Botanists do 

 not attach that definite importance to varieties that you 

 suppose ; they do not treat large and small genera equally 

 and similarly, and the sum of inequalities thus produced 

 tends to make the species of small genera look more invariable 

 than big. 



Had I been doing the Flora Indica as I should have 

 done with an eye to making it a descriptive book of variation, 

 I should most certainly have added varieties to most of the 

 small genera, thus — 



Naravelia a and b, Ceratocephalus a, b, c, d, 



Adonis a, b, c, Caltha a, b, c, d, 



CaUianthemum a, b, Isopyrum a, 6, c, 

 Aquilegia a-z, 



to render them equivalent to the varieties in Clematis and 

 other big genera, and confounded your statistics. 



Just look and see how much more frequently we notice 

 under the monotypic genera, its variations and variabihty, 

 than we do in the polytypic (excuse the coined phrase). 



So my dear Darwin do not be in a hurry with your con- 

 clusions. I am quite sure that had monotypic genera or 

 ohgotypic been at all materially less variable than polytypic 

 it would not have escaped the sagacity of men Hke Linnaeus, 

 Brown, D. C, or Bent ham, and that it would force itself 

 on the attention of any cautious observer. 



March 18, 1858. 



You have set me thinking much on varieties in great 



versus small genera. I am obstinately incHned to take 



general monographs for data in preference to local Floras, 



for the general works alone seem to me to give a fair chance 



