CEITICISM BETWEEN FEIENDS 479 
being clearly an objective genus, as is Salix and a heap 
of others, whereas almost every genus of UmbelHfers is a 
subjective idea, and a confoundedly bad one too. 
Mutual criticism took the liveliest form between these 
best of friends. The allurement of paradox has already been 
referred to, p. 450 sq. 
To Asa Gray 
1857. 
Many thanks for your letter and the swishing review of 
Berkeley. It serves him right, but he certainly will not 
Hke it. He has made no remarks on my review in the 
Journal of Botany ; I suppose that hke another friend of 
mine (the last letters of whose name are Asa Gray) he thinks 
I am wi'ong when I find faults ! 
I am charmed with your criticisms on my ideas of 
Physiology, &c., &c. Your ideas remind me of a firework 
called the serpent which makes fiery circles,— ascends, makes 
more circles,— descends, then flares up and goes out. Mine 
you may compare to a similar work called a whirligig cracker, 
which does the same in a less methodical form. They both 
end as your ideas may end— in a blaze, a bang and a stink. 
We neither understand one another nor our subject in one 
another's eyes, and the stink of each alone remains to each. 
I shall be very glad to take any amount of vital force when 
I find any one else 'doing so. With me it stands in the 
same relation to other forces that magnetism does to heat, 
electricity, sound, sight ; each of which is a tertium quid 
investigated by the following up the laws of the others. 
With you Physiology = Biology, with us they have a 
totally different meaning. I mention this to show you how 
far we are at cross purposes in diction. Development = 
growth, I agree and generally use the latter term, but it 
is raw and undignified. 
Heaven defend me from my friends ! I put Bentham 
up to Eanunculanths ! I who cannot tolerate English 
names in any shape ! They are Henslow's children, and 
bad, though the best ; being infinitely better than ads, 
worts, and aceae. I think Bentham right to adopt them, 
because they are now solemnly sanctioned by her Majesty's 
Government, no less, for the delectation of National Schools ; 
