508 LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS. [1863, 
and so believing, I think your gradual way more likely 
than Heer’s jumps. 
Apropos to Heer, you ask me if it is not impossible 
to imagine so many and nice coadaptations as we see 
in orchids being formed all by a chance blow. 
I reply, Yes, perfectly impossible to imagine (and 
much the same by any number of chance blows). 
So I turn the question back upon you. Is not the 
fact that the coadaptations are so nice next to a 
demonstration against their having been formed by 
chance blows at all, one or many ? 
Here lies, I suppose, the difference between us. 
When you bring me up to this point, I feel the cold 
ehill. 
I have been doing nothing but attend to my daily 
work, and had got so fagged that I really thought I 
was about to have softening of the brain, or some other 
breakdown. But a week of respite, caused by the 
death of an aged relative of my wife’s, —a dear old 
soul, — taking us away from here perforce, has set me 
up very disaly, and now after a week more comes my 
vacation, and we are off into the quiet country for 
three weeks. 
A little legacy of about £2,000 to my wife comes 
in opportunely to relieve us of anxiety for the future. 
We have no children (which I regret only that I have 
no son to send to the war), and this with a little in- 
come, rather precarious, of about £200 a year would 
support us in our very simple way, if I were to throw 
up my place here. But I cannot do that yet... . 
Look at Impatiens flowers; see if the most fertile 
“precociously fertilized” ones ever get crossed ! 
I have asked in three directions for seeds of the 
Specularia perfoliata. Inclosed are depauperate 
specimens. 
