ink? In my opinion (whether or no worth much) your paper would
have been much better if written more simply and less elaborated--more
like your letters. It is a golden rule always to use, if possible, a
short old Saxon word. Such a sentence as "so purely dependent is the
incipient plant on the specific morphological tendency" does not sound
to my ears like good mother-English--it wants translating. Here and
there you might, I think, have condensed some sentences. I go on the
plan of thinking every single word which can be omitted without actual
loss of sense as a decided gain. Now perhaps you will think me a
meddling intruder: anyhow, it is the advice of an old hackneyed
writer who sincerely wishes you well. Your remark on the two sexes
counteracting variability in product of the one is new to me. (151/2.
Scott (op. cit., page 214): "The reproductive organs of phoenogams,
as is well-known, are always products of two morphologically distinct
organs, the stamens producing the pollen, the carpels producing the
ovules...The embryo being in this case the modified resultant of two
originally distinct organs, there will necessarily be a greater tendency
to efface any individual peculiarities of these than would have been
the case had the embryo been the product of a single organ." A different
idea seems to have occurred to Mr. Darwin, for in an undated letter
to Scott he wrote: "I hardly know what to say on your view of male and
female organs and variability. I must think more over it. But I was
amused by finding the other day in my portfolio devoted to bud-variation
a slip of paper dated June, 1860, with some such words as these, 'May
not permanence of grafted buds be due to the two sexual elements
derived from different parts not having come into play?' I had utterly
forgotten, when I read your paper that any analogous notion had ever
passed through my mind--nor can I now remember, but the slip shows me
that it had." It is interesting that Huxley also came to a conclusion
differing from Scott's; and, curiously enough, Darwin confused the two
views, for he wrote to Scott (December 19th): "By an odd chance, reading
last night some short lectures just published by Prof. Huxley, I find
your observation, independently arrived at by him, on the confluence of
the two sexes causing variability." Professor Huxley's remarks are in
his "Lectures to Working Men on our Knowledge, etc." No. 4, page 90:
"And, indeed, I think that a certain a