aceae
will ultimately throw light on the subject? But the other day I came to
the conclusion that some day we shall have cases of young being produced
from spermatozoa or pollen without an ovule. Approaching the subject
from the side which attracts me most, viz., inheritance, I have
lately been inclined to speculate, very crudely and indistinctly, that
propagation by true fertilisation will turn out to be a sort of
mixture, and not true fusion, of two distinct individuals, or rather of
innumerable individuals, as each parent has its parents and ancestors.
I can understand on no other view the way in which crossed forms go back
to so large an extent to ancestral forms. But all this, of course, is
infinitely crude. I hope to be in London in the course of this month,
and there are two or three points which, for my own sake, I want to
discuss briefly with you.

LETTER 58. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, September 26th [1857].

Thanks for your very pleasant note. It amuses me to see what a bug-bear
I have made myself to you; when having written some very pungent and
good sentence it must be very disagreeable to have my face rise up like
an ugly ghost. (58/1. This probably refers to Darwin's wish to moderate
a certain pugnacity in Huxley.) I have always suspected Agassiz of
superficiality and wretched reasoning powers; but I think such men
do immense good in their way. See how he stirred up all Europe about
glaciers. By the way, Lyell has been at the glaciers, or rather their
effects, and seems to have done good work in testing and judging what
others have done...

In regard to classification and all the endless disputes about the
"Natural System," which no two authors define in the same way, I
believe it ought, in accordance to my heterodox notions, to be simply
genealogical. But as we have no written pedigrees you will, perhaps,
say this will not help much; but I think it ultimately will, whenever
heterodoxy becomes orthodoxy, for it will clear away an immense amount
of rubbish about the value of characters, and will make the difference
between analogy and homology clear. The time will come, I believe,
though I shall not live to see it, when we shall have very fairly true
genealogical trees of each great kingdom of Nature.

LETTER 59. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 16th [1857].

In my opinion your Catalogue (59/1. It appears from a letter to Sir
J.D. Hooker (December 25th, 1857) that the reference is to the proofs of
Huxley