By Jove you have attacked Bigotry in its stronghold. I thought you would have been mobbed. I am so glad that you will publish your Lectures. You seem to have kept a due medium between extreme boldness and caution. I am heartily glad that all went off so well. I hope Mrs. Huxley is pretty well...I must say one word on the Hybrid question. No doubt you are right that here is a great hiatus in the argument; yet I think you overrate it--you never allude to the excellent evidence of VARIETIES of Verbascum and Nicotiana being partially sterile together. It is curious to me to read (as I have to-day) the greatest crossing GARDENER utterly pooh-poohing the distinction which BOTANISTS make on this head, and insisting how frequently crossed VARIETIES produce sterile offspring. Do oblige me by reading the latter half of my Primula paper in the 'Linn. Journal,' for it leads me to suspect that sterility will hereafter have to be largely viewed as an acquired or SELECTED character--a view which I wish I had had facts to maintain in the 'Origin.' (The view here given will be discussed in the chapter on hetero-styled plants.)
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 25 [1862].
My dear Hooker,
Many thanks for your last Sunday's letter, which was one of the pleasantest I ever received in my life. We are all pretty well redivivus, and I am at work again. I thought it best to make a clean breast to Asa Gray; and told him that the Boston dinner, etc. etc., had quite turned my stomach, and that I almost thought it would be good for the peace of the world if the United States were split up; on the other hand, I said that I groaned to think of the slave-holders being triumphant, and that the difficulties of making a line of separation were fearful. I wonder what he will say...Your notion of the Aristocrat being kenspeckle, and the best men of a good lot being thus easily selected is new to me, and striking. The 'Origin' having made you in fact a jolly old Tory, made us all laugh heartily. I have sometimes speculated on this subject; primogeniture (My father had a strong feeling as to the injustice of primogeniture, and in a similar spirit was often indignant over the unfair wills that appear from time to time. He would declare energetically that if he were law-giver no will should be valid that was not published in the testator's lifetime; and this he maintained would prevent much of the monstrous injustice and meanness apparent in so many wills.) is dreadfully opposed to selection; suppose the first-born bull was necessarily made by each farmer the begetter of his stock! On the other hand, as you say, ablest men are continually raised to the peerage, and get crossed with the older Lord-breeds, and the Lords continually select the most beautiful and charming women out of the lower ranks; so that a good deal of indirect selection improves the Lords. Certainly I agree with you the present American row has a very Torifying influence on us all. I am very glad to hear you are beginning to print the 'Genera;' it is a wonderful satisfaction to be thus brought to bed, indeed it is one's chief satisfaction, I think, though one knows that another bantling will soon be developing...
CHARLES DARWIN TO MAXWELL MASTERS. (Dr. Masters is a well-known vegetable teratologist, and has been for many years the editor of the "Gardeners' Chronicle".) Down, February 26 [1862].
My dear Sir,
I am much obliged to you for sending me your article (Refers to a paper on "Vegetable Morphology," by Dr. Masters, in the 'British and Foreign Medico- Chirurgical Review' for 1862), which I have just read with much interest. The history, and a good deal besides, was quite new to me. It seems to me capitally done, and so clearly written. You really ought to write your larger work. You speak too generously of my book; but I must confess that you have pleased me not a little; for no one, as far as I know, has ever remarked on what I say on classification--a part, which when I wrote it, pleased me.