368 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES 18»4 



(f) As regards plants having been brought under 

 cultivation, and yielding variations that prove 

 hereditary, I knew there were innumerable cases 

 where artificial selection had been brought into play. 

 But of course they are all out of court until the 

 question on which you are engaged has been de- 

 cided in your favour, i.e. until you have succeeded 

 in disproving natural selection as analogous or 

 parallel to artificial. It was for this reason I men- 

 tioned the case of parsnips, where the hereditary 

 variations seem to have taken place in the first 

 generation after transplanting, and therefore without 

 leaving time for selection of any kind to have come 

 into play. 



Hotel Costebelle, Hyeres : March 29. 



Dear Mr. Henslow, — I am still terribly ill and 

 cannot write much. We must have a talk. Could 

 you come to Oxford any day you like and be our 

 guest ? I think we might derive mutual benefit. I 

 shall be there from the middle of April till I do not 

 know when. Why not come on May 2, to hear 

 Weismann give his lecture in the afternoon ? 



I much wish you would save seed of any fixed 

 local varieties of plants you may find to be in seed, 

 while you are in Malta (or bulbs), in order to see 

 whether plants grown from them in England will or 

 will not prove fully fertile. This is in relation to my 

 own theory of physiological selection, according to 

 which isolation produces segregation of type ; in the 

 same way as it does that of a language — viz. by 

 prevention of intercourse with the parent type and 

 consequently with an independent history of varia- 



