1855-1 VITALITY OF SEEDS. 425 



seed might live in the ground. Next time you write, show 

 a bold face, and say in how many years, you think, Charlock 

 seed would probably all be dead. A man told me the other 

 day of, as I thought, a splendid instance, — and splendid it 

 was, for according to his evidence the seed came up alive out 

 of the lower part of the London Clay ! ! ! I disgusted him by 

 telling him that Palms ought to have come up. 



You ask how far I go in attributing organisms to a com- 

 mon descent ; I answer I know not ; the way in which I in- 

 tend treating the subject, is to show {as far as I can) the facts 

 and arguments for and against the common descent of the 

 species of the same genus ; and then show how far the same 

 arguments tell for or against forms, more and more widely 

 different : and when we come to forms of different orders 

 and classes, there remain only some such arguments as those 

 which can perhaps be deduced from similar rudimentary 

 structures, and very soon not an argument is left. 



[The following extract from a letter to Mr. Fox [Oct. 

 l8 55>* gives a brief mention of the last meeting of the British 

 Association which he attended :] " I really have no news : 

 the only thing we have done for a long time, was to go to 

 Glasgow ; but the fatigue was to me more than it was worth, 

 and E. caught a bad cold. On our return we stayed a single 

 day at Shrewsbury, and enjoyed seeing the old place. I saw 

 a little of Sir Philip f (whom I liked much), and he asked me 

 "why on earth I instigated you to rob his poultry-yard?" 

 The meeting was a good one, and the Duke of Argyll spoke 

 excellently."] 



* In this year he published (' Phil. Mag.' x.) a paper ' On the power of 

 icebergs to make rectilinear uniformly-directed grooves across a subma- 

 rine undulatory surface." 



f Sir P. Egerton was a neighbour of Mr. Fox. 



