ld like to try some which interest me, I should be
truly delighted, and in this case would write in some detail. If
you have the means to repeat Gartner's experiments on variations of
Verbascum or on maize (see the "Origin"), such experiments would be
pre-eminently important. I could never get variations of Verbascum.
I could suggest an experiment on potatoes analogous with the case of
Passiflora; even the case of Passiflora, often as it has been repeated,
might be with advantage repeated. I have worked like a slave (having
counted about nine thousand seeds) on Melastoma, on the meaning of the
two sets of very different stamens, and as yet have been shamefully
beaten, and I now cry for aid. I could suggest what I believe a
very good scheme (at least, Dr. Hooker thought so) for systematic
degeneration of culinary plants, and so find out their origin; but this
would be laborious and the work of years.

LETTER 152. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 12th [December, 1862].

My good old Friend--

How kind you have been to give me so much of your time! Your letter
is of real use, and has been and shall be well considered. I am much
pleased to find that we do not differ as much as I feared. I begin my
book with saying that my chief object is to show the inordinate scale
of variation; I have especially studied all sorts of variations of the
individual. On crossing I cannot change; the more I think, the more
reason I have to believe that my conclusion would be agreed to by
all practised breeders. I also greatly doubt about variability and
domestication being at all necessarily correlative, but I have touched
on this in "Origin." Plants being identical under very different
conditions has always seemed to me a very heavy argument against what
I call direct action. I think perhaps I will take the case of 1,000
pigeons (152/1. See Letter 146.) to sum up my volume; I will not discuss
other points, but, as I have said, I shall recur to your letter. But
I must just say that if sterility be allowed to come into play, if
long-beaked be in the least degree sterile with short-beaked, my whole
case is altered. By the way, my notions on hybridity are becoming
considerably altered by my dimorphic work. I am now strongly inclined to
believe that sterility is at first a selected quality to keep incipient
species distinct. If you have looked at Lythrum you will see how pollen
can be modified merely to favour crossing; with equal readiness it could
be mo