76 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1SC2. 



C. Darwin to T. II. Huxley. 



Down, [Jan.?] 14 [1S62]. 



My dear Huxley, — I am heartily glad of your success 

 in the North,* and thank you for your note and slip. By 

 Jove you have attacked Bigotry in its stronghold. I thought 

 you would have been mobbed. I am so glad that you will 

 publish your Lectures. You seem to have kept a due medi- 

 um between extreme boldness and caution. I am heartily 

 glad that all went off so well. I hope Mrs. Huxley is pretty 



well I must say one word on the Hybrid question. 



No doubt you are right that here is a great hiatus in the argu- 

 ment ; yet I think you overrate it — you never allude to the 

 excellent evidence of varieties of Verbascum and Nicotiana 

 being partially sterile together. It is curious to me to read 

 (as I have to-day) the greatest crossing Gardener utterly 

 pooh-poohing the distinction which Botanists make on this 

 head, and insisting how frequently crossed varieties produce 

 sterile offspring. Do oblige me by reading the latter half of 

 my Primula paper in the ' Linn. Journal,' for it leads me to 

 suspect that sterility will hereafter have to be largely viewed 

 as an acquired or selected character — a view which I wish I 

 had had facts to maintain in the ' Origin.' f 



C Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, Jan. 25 [1862]. 



My dear Hooker, — Many thanks for your last Sunday's 



letter, which was one of the pleasantest I ever received in my 



life. We are all pretty well redivivus, and I am at work 



again. I thought it best to make a clean breast to Asa Gray ; 



* This refers to two of Mr. Huxley's lectures, given before the Philo- 

 sophical Institution of Edinburgh in 1862. The substance of them is 

 given in ' Man's Place in Nature.' 



f The view here given will be discussed in the chapter on hetero-styled 

 plants. 



