rvice about glaciers and fish. About the succession of
forms, Pictet has given up his whole views, and no geologist now agrees
with Agassiz. I am glad that you have attacked Dana's wild notions;
[though] I have a great respect for Dana...If you have an opportunity,
read in "Trans. Linn. Soc." Bates on "Mimetic Lepidoptera of Amazons." I
was delighted with his paper.

I have got a notice of your views about the female Cynips inserted in
the "Natural History Review" (183/3. "Nat. Hist. Review," January 1865,
page 139. A notice by "J.L." (probably Lord Avebury) on Walsh's paper
"On Dimorphism in the Hymenopterous Genus Cynips," in the "Proc.
Entomolog. Soc. of Philadelphia," March, 1864.): whether the notice will
be favourable, I do not know, but anyhow it will call attention to your
views...

As you allude in your paper to the believers in change of species, you
will be glad to hear that very many of the very best men are coming
round in Germany. I have lately heard of Hackel, Gegenbauer, F. Muller,
Leuckart, Claparede, Alex. Braun, Schleiden, etc. So it is, I hear, with
the younger Frenchmen.

LETTER 184. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 19th [1865].

It is working hours, but I am trying to take a day's holiday, for I
finished and despatched yesterday my Climbing paper. For the last ten
days I have done nothing but correct refractory sentences, and I loathe
the whole subject like tartar emetic. By the way, I am convinced that
you want a holiday, and I think so because you took the devil's name in
vain so often in your last note. Can you come here for Sunday? You know
how I should like it, and you will be quiet and dull enough here to get
plenty of rest. I have been thinking with regret about what you said
in one of your later notes, about having neglected to make notes on the
gradation of character in your genera; but would it be too late? Surely
if you looked over names in series the facts would come back, and
you might surely write a fine paper "On the gradation of important
characters in the genera of plants." As for unimportant characters, I
have made their perfect gradation a very prominent point with respect
to the means of climbing, in my paper. I begin to think that one of the
commonest means of transition is the same individual plant having the
same part in different states: thus Corydalis claviculata, if you look
to one leaf, may be called a tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf
it may be called a leaf