666 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. {1877, 
TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 
CamprinGk, April 6, 1877. 
Dear Mr. Wrigut, — What can I ever have said 
or written which President Fairchild takes to mean 
that I have the preposterous idea that “ changes of 
environment take place in distinct and definite lines”! 
He may well ask if “this is not contrary to all evi- 
dence.” Even the conception that variation takes 
place in definite, or at least not in indefinite, lines 
is an idea which is rather thrown out as tenable, and 
as inferable from a good many facts, than as anything 
to swear by. I think so, yet, I am sorry to say, it is 
no part of Darwinism, pure and simple. 
Now, in my turn, what does President F. mean by 
his “mere fact” “ species exist”? That seems to 
me no fact at all, but an inference. Individuals exist ; 
species are inferred from the relations the individuals 
are observed to sustain to each other. That species 
are distinct, in the sense of none blending, is what 
working naturalists would like to have somebody 
settle fur them in many a troublesome case. That 
they always have been as much so as they are now is 
the question under consideration. 
May 24. 
. . . Now we can’t go to see you, sorry to say. The 
reason is, that I am working against time. Hooker 
is coming over, and we are going in summer to the 
Rocky Mountains together, according to an old prom- 
ise of mine. To do it I ought to complete the print- 
ing of the part of my “ Flora” which I am upon, 
else I shall suffer in various ways, and there is great 
ota that I fail. 
. Do you notice —I know it will please you — 
q 
