I86l LETTER TO HOOKER 245 



you put your view rather too strongly when you seem to ques- 

 tion the position " that, as a rule, resemblances prevail over dif- 

 ferences " between parent and offspring. Surely, as a rule, re- 

 semblances do prevail over differences, though I quite agree 

 with you that the latter have been far too much overlooked. The 

 great desideratum for the species question at present seems to 

 me to be the determination of the law of variation. Because 

 no law has yet been made out, Darwin is obliged to speak of 

 variation as if it were spontaneous or a matter of chance, so 

 that the bishops and superior clergy generally (the only real 

 atheists and believers in chance left in the world) gird at him 

 as if he were another Lucretius. 



It is [in] the recognition of a tendency to variation apart 

 from the variation of what are ordinarily understood as ex- 

 ternal conditions that Darwin's view is such an advance 

 on Lamarck. Why does not somebody go to work experi- 

 mentally, and get at the law of variation for some one species 

 of plant ? 



What a capital article that was in the Athenccum the other 

 day apud the Schlagintweits.* Don Roderigo is very wroth at 



* The brothers Schlagintweit (four of whom were ultimately 

 employed), who had gained some reputation for their work on the 

 Physical Geography of the Alps, were, on Humboldt's recommenda- 

 tion, despatched by the East India Company in 1854-55-56 to the 

 Deccan, and especially to the Himalayan region (where they were the 

 first Europeans to cross the Kuenlun Mountains), in order to correlate 

 the instruments and observations of the several magnetic surveys of 

 India. But they enlarged the scope of their mission by professing to 

 correct the great trigonometrical survey, while the contract with them 

 was so loosely drawn up that they had practically a roving commis- 

 sion in science, to make researches and publish the results — up to 

 nine volumes — in all manner of subjects, which in fact ranged from 

 the surveying work to ethnology, and were crowned by an additional 

 volume on Buddhism ! The original cost to the Indian Government 

 was estimated at ;£'i5,ooo ; the allowances from the English Govern- 

 ment during the inordinately prolonged period of arranging and pub- 

 lishing materials, including payment for sixty copies of each volume, 

 atlas, and so forth, as well as personal payments, came to as much 

 more. 



Unfortunately the results were of less value than was expected. 

 The attempt to correct the work done with the large instruments of 

 the trigonometrical survey by means of far smaller instruments was 

 absurd ; away from the ground covered by the great survey the fig- 

 ures proved to be very inaccurate. The most annoying part of the 



