i860.] DR. HARVEY. 5^ 



tions ; and certainly it has astonished me that I should be 

 pelted with the fact, that I had not allowed abrupt and great 

 enough variations under nature. It would take a good deal 

 more evidence to make me admit that forms have often 

 changed by saltum. 



Have you seen Wollaston's attack in the * Annals ' ? * The 

 stones are beginning to fly. But Theology has more to do 

 with these two attacks than Science. . . . 



[In the above letter a paper by Harvey in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, Feb. 18, 1860, is alluded to. He describes a case 

 of monstrosity in Begonia frigida, in which the " sport " dif- 

 fered so much from a normal Begonia that it might have 

 served as the type of a distinct natural order. Harvey goes 

 on to argue that such a case is hostile to the theory of natural 

 selection, according to which changes are not supposed to 

 take place per saltum, and adds that "a few such cases would 

 overthrow it [Mr. Darwin's hypothesis] altogether." In the 

 following number of the Gardeners' Chronicle Sir J. D. Hooker 

 showed that Dr. Harvey had misconceived the bearing of the 

 Begonia case, which he further showed to be by no means 

 calculated to shake the validity of the doctrine of modification 

 by means of natural selection. My father mentions the Be- 

 gonia case in a letter to Lyell (Feb. 18, 1860) : 



" I send by this post an attack in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 by Harvey (a first-rate Botanist, as you probably know). It 

 seems to me rather strange ; he assumes the permanence of 

 monsters, whereas, monsters ar6 generally sterile, and not 



to England for a time ; in 1840 he returned to Cape Town, to be again 

 compelled by illness to leave. In 1843 he obtained the appointment of 

 Botanical Professor at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1854, 1855, and 1856 

 he visited Australia, New Zealand, the Friendly and Fiji Islands. In 

 1857 Dr. Harvey reached home, and was appointed the successor of Pro- 

 fessor Allman to the Chair of Botany in Dublin University. He was 

 author of several botanical works, principally on Algae. (From a Memoir 

 published in 1869.) 



* 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' 1860. 



