84 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV 



Hames won't let me stay here in November, and I 

 tliink we shall go to Brighton. Unless on the flat of my 

 back, in bed, I shall not have been at home a mouth all 

 this year. 



I have been utterly idle. There was a lovely case of 

 hybridism, Gentiana lutea and G. punctata, in a little 

 island in the lake of Sils ; but I fell ill and was confined 

 to bed just after I found it out. It would be very 

 interesting if somebody would work out Distribution five 

 miles round the Maloja as a centre. There are the most 

 curious local differences. 



You asked me to send you a copy of my obituary of 

 Darwin, So I put one herewith, though no doubt you 

 have seen it in Proc. B. S. 



I should like to know what you think of xviL-xxii. 

 If ever I am able to do anything again I will enlarge on 

 these heads. 



In these pages of the Obituary Notice {Proc. Boy. 

 Soc. XLIV., No. 269) he endeavours 



to separate the substance of the theory from its accidents, 

 and to show that a variety, not only of hostile comments, 

 but of friendly would-be improvements lose their raison 

 dlitre to the careful student. . . . 



It is not essential to Darwin's theory that anything 

 more should be assumed than the facts of heredity, varia- 

 tion, and unlimited multiplication ; and the validity of 

 the deductive reasoning as to the effect of the last (that 

 is, of the struggle for existence which it involves) upon 

 the varieties resulting from the operation of the former. 

 Nor is it essential tliat one should take up any particular 

 position in regard to the mode of variation, whether, for 

 example, it takes place per saltum or gradually ; whether 

 it is definite in character or indefinite. Still less are 

 those who accept the theory bound to any particular' 

 views as to the causes of heredity or of variation. 



