200 
NATURE 



[Fuly 13, 1871 

tained in the volume as to the various relationships of | 
the natural orders described in it, the morphology of their 
genera, the distribution of the different types, and the 
economic products obtained from the species, is immense. 
It possesses, however, the defect so common in foreign 
scientific works, of the absence of any table of contents 
or index to the subjects treated of. Had the publishers of 
the English edition supplemented the index of genera 
and subgenera with one referring to the various topics 
discussed, they would have rendered the English edition a 
practically more useful contribution to botanical literature 

CALYCANTHUS FLORIDUS: Floriferous shoot. 
than the French original. The illustrations are profuse, 
and of that excellence which we look for in vain in works 
originally published in this country. We append one of 
the well-known “Allspice Tree,” the Calycanthus floridus. 
The small order Calycanthacez, including only the 
American Calycanthus and the Japanese Chimonanthus, 
is one the true position of which has been much disputed 
by systematists. Baillon makes it a “series” of Moni- 
miacez, with which he also unites the Australian Athero- 
spermez, bringing this order forward from its usual posi- 
tion among the Incomplete to close alliance with Magno- 
liaceze and Anonacez. A. W. B. 


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[Zhe Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his Correspondents. No notice is taken of anonymous 
communications. | 
A New View of Darwinism 
T HAVE only just seen the two letters in answer to one from 
me on Darwinism which you were good enough to insert in 
Natur, and to which I ask the favour of being allowed to 
reply. Ihave to thank Mr. Darwin for his references and for 
the tone of his letter, which is in such marked contrast to the 
angry dogmatism of Mr. Wallace. 
Mr. Wallace commences by ridiculing the phrase the Per- 
sistence of the Stronger. The phrase was not mine, it has been 
used by a better man than I, namely, by Prof. Jowett, and it 
has the advantage of not involving an identical expression, which 
the Survival of the Fittest does. ‘* That those forms of life survive 
which are best adapted or best fitted to survive,” is not a very 
profound discovery ; it might have suggested itself even to a 

child, and if Mr. Wallace means nothing more than this when 
he speaks of the theory of Natural Selection, he cannot claim to . 
have added much to the world’s philosophical opinions. 
He then complains that I have only touched one of the many 
facts relied upon by Darwinians ; I refer him to my letter, in 
which I distinctly say that it contained only one of my objections, 
and that I have many more which will follow if the Editor have 
patience with the discussion. The reply to Mr. Wallace will 
confine me, however, in this letter to the ground covered by the 
former one. Having disposed of the formal and personal mat- 
ters, I now approach the matters of fact about which we are at 
issue. 
Here, I am sorry to say, Iam met ina very different spirit by 
Mr. Wallace to that in which Mr. Darwin meets objections. 
Dogmatism, bold and unwavering, was the privilege of the 
philosophy of the Schools, but in the rgth century it is puerile. 
Mr. Wallace states boldly, without any authorities, merely as an 
imperial ise dixit, that the most vigorous plants and animals are 
the most fertile. I had, at least, the decency to quote the book 
of Mr. Doubleday, containing a magazine of facts and examples 
in support of my view, and which tells exactly the other way. 
This view has not been correctly stated by Mr. Wallace. The 
position I maintain is this, that, as a general law, those indivi- 
duals which are underfed and lead precarious lives, are more 
fertile than those whose advantages make them vigorous and 
healthy. The ringing of the bark and the pruning of the roots 
of barren fruit trees and the starving of domestic animals to 
make them fruitful were examples to this end. 
Mr. Wallace quotes only one example in his own support, and 
I will accept it as a crucial test of my position, which he will 
| acknowledge to be fair ; the case of the Red Indian and the Back- 
woodsman. The Red Indian lives entirely on flesh, the Back- 
woodsman almost entirely on vegetable food. Like meat livers 
in every part of the world, in Mexico, on the River Plate, in 
Siberia, in Turkestan, and in some parts of Russia, the Red 
Indian is not a fertile creature. The Backwoodsman, like vege- 
table feeders everywhere who are not luxurious, in India, China, 
Poland, and the Russian provinces bordering on it, Ireland, &c., 
is comparatively fertile, but only comparatively. It is a mistake 
to suppose that the Backwoodsman is specially fertile, and in a 
few years he becomes, as the inhabitants of Kentucky and 
Tennes-ee have been long known to be, diminishing in numbers, 
the population of the States being kept up by immigration. 
Mr. Chaewick, in his “ Sanitary State of the Labouring Classes,” 
observes that where mortality is the greatest there is much the 
greatest fecundity ; thus, in Manchester, where the deaths are 
one to twenty-eight, the births are one to twenty-six, while in 
Rutlandshire, where deaths are but one to fifty-two, births are one 
to thirty-three, showing that a state of debility of the population 
induces fertility. This only supports the common dicta of 
doctors that consumptive patients are generally very fertile. 
The pastoral tribes of Eastern Russia which have recently taken 
to agriculture, such as the Tchuvashes, &c., have begun to in- 
crease most rapidly. The Hottentots at the Cape, who were 
formerly a numerous race living very hard lives, are almost extinct 
now that they are carelully tended and wellfed. The Yeniseians, 
the Yukahiri, and other Siberian tribes, have disappeared like 
smoke before the advance of Russian culture ; they have suffered 
little if at all from the Russian arms. 
Let me quote a curious example in answer to Mr, Wallace 
from the very race to which he has referred. Captain Mus- 
ters, in describing his recent journey through Patagonia at 
the Anthropological Institute, told us that it was the custom for 
the Patagonian women to be bled at certain times referred to, 
as they believed ¢¢ made them fertile. Among the Patagonians, 
therefore, we meet with empirical witnesses, unsophisticated 
by our philosophy, to the truth of the position I maintain. 
But those who live in large cities need not travel to Patagonia. 
The classes among us who teem with children are not the 
well-to-do and the comfortable, but the poor and half-fed 
Irish that crowd the lowest parts of our towns. I am not 
contrasting now the fat with the lean, but the comfortable classes 
with those who lead precarious lives—the vigorous in health with 
the sickly, the half-fed, and the weak. It will be asked, why 
rely so much upon man? The answer is that I quite agree with 
Mr. Darwin that man is subject to the same natural laws as the 
animals, and further I believe that since we have studied man 
more closely and under a greater variety of conditions, facts de- 
rived from our experience of man are of greater value than those 
deduced from our examination of the other animals. 
But let us turn to these latter for a space ; and here I tread 
with much greater diffidence, for I am aware of the vast ex- 
