* PHILOSOPHICAL BOTANY ' 451 
'paradox. I know the human soul loves paradox, even to 
miracle, and that this love of it is only one of the curses of 
Science, but Lord bless you, my dear Darwin, it is the greatest 
paradox in the world to think of Conifers as anything but 
very high in the Vegetable Kingdom.^ 
April 11, 1357. 
If you knew how grateful the turning from the drudgery 
of my ' professional Botany ' to your ' philosophical Botany ' 
was, you would not fear bothering me with questions. 
The truth in its primitive nakedness is, that I really look for 
and count upon such questions, as the best means of keeping 
alive a due interest in these subjects. I indulge vague hopes 
of treating them some day, but days and years fly over my 
head and all I do is done in correspondence to you, but for 
which I should soon lose sight of the whole matter. 
Harvey's observations on Fucus varying much and yet in 
some w^ay under most different conditions goes with me for 
a good deal and I would endorse it. . . . 
There are I think heaps of such cases, they have so often 
struck me, that one of my sketched out methods of treating 
the Indian plants common to W. Europe and India is by 
dividing them into : 
1. Identical unvarying species. 
2. Identical variable species. 
(a) Variations equal and similar in both countries. 
(h) Variations unequal, or dissimilar, or both. 
In answer to Darwin's letter of June 25, 1857 (CD. ii. 102) 
about the curious character of the seedling leaves in young 
Furze, after quoting some parallel cases, he proceeds : 
A great stumblingblock in development to me has been 
the very great differences between the cotyledonary leaves 
of plants, even of the same Nat. Order. Leguminosae for 
instance : this has always prevented me from understanding 
the embryonic development in plants being so good an 
evidence of affinity as in animals. Comparative develop- 
ment would appear to begin with the post-Cotyledonary 
leaves, and the Cotyledonary may be regarded as placenta ? 
amnios ? &c., which vary in alhed animals. Is this not a 
1 See also the letter to Asa Gray, p. 480. 
