218 GEOEGE JOHN ROMANES issi- 



views which may be taken on the subject by other 

 minds. And most of all is this the case when anyone 

 like yourself gives me the benefit of opinions which are 

 formed by a trained experience in botany, seeing that 

 here I am myself such a sorry ignoramus. And I 

 willingly confess that your strongly expressed opinion 

 has seriously shaken my hopes for physiological selec- 

 tion, notwithstanding that some German botanists 

 think otherwise. Nevertheless, I still think that it 

 is worth while to devote some years to experimental 

 testing, and then, if the results are against me — well, 

 I shall be sorry to have spent so much time over a 

 wild flower chase, and to have kicked up so much 

 scientific dust in the process ; but I will not be 

 ashamed to acknowledge that Nature has said 

 No. 



And now for your last letter. Eead in the light 

 of subsequent experience, I have no doubt that I 

 ought to have expressed myself with more care while 

 writing my paper. But, to tell the honest truth, it 

 never once occurred to me that I of all men could be 

 suspected of trying to undermine the theories of 

 Darwin. I was entirely filled with the one idea of 

 presenting what seemed to me ' a supplementary 

 hypothesis,' which, while ' in no way opposed to 

 natural selection,' would ' release the latter from the 

 only difficulties ' which to my mind it had ever pre- 

 sented. Therefore I took it for granted that every- 

 body would go with me in recognising natural selec- 

 tion as the ' boss ' round which every ' other theory ' 

 must revolve, without my having to say so on every 

 page. So, of course, by 'other theory' I did not mean 



