mon occurrence that
abrupt and considerable variations are transmitted in an unaltered
state, or not at all transmitted, to the offspring, or to some of them.
So it is with tailless or hornless animals, and with sudden and great
changes of colour in flowers. I wish I could have given you any answer.

LETTER 261. TO E.S. MORSE. [Undated.]

I must have the pleasure of thanking you for your kindness in sending me
your essay on the Brachiopoda. (261/1. "The Brachiopoda, a Division of
Annelida," "Amer. Assoc. Proc." Volume XIX., page 272, 1870, and "Annals
and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume VI., page 267, 1870.) I have just read
it with the greatest interest, and you seem to me (though I am not a
competent judge) to make out with remarkable clearness an extremely
strong case. What a wonderful change it is to an old naturalist to have
to look at these "shells" as "worms"; but, as you truly say, as far as
external appearance is concerned, the case is not more wonderful than
that of cirripedes. I have also been particularly interested by your
remarks on the Geological Record, and on the lower and older forms in
each great class not having been probably protected by calcareous valves
or a shell.

P.S.--Your woodcut of Lingula is most skilfully introduced to compel one
to see its likeness to an annelid.

LETTER 262. TO H. SPENCER.

(262/1. Mr. Spencer's book "The Study of Sociology," 1873, was published
in the "Contemporary Review" in instalments between May 1872 and October
1873.)

October 31st [1873].

I am glad to receive to-day an advertisement of your book. I have been
wonderfully interested by the articles in the "Contemporary." Those were
splendid hits about the Prince of Wales and Gladstone. (262/2. See "The
Study of Sociology," page 392. Mr. Gladstone, in protest against some
words of Mr. Spencer, had said that the appearance of great men "in
great crises of human history" were events so striking "that men would
be liable to term them providential in a pre-scientific age." On this
Mr. Spencer remarks that "in common with the ancient Greek Mr. Gladstone
regards as irreligious any explanation of Nature which dispenses with
immediate Divine superintendence." And as an instance of the
partnership "between the ideas of natural causation and of providential
interference," he instances a case where a prince "gained popularity
by outliving certain abnormal changes in his blood," and where "on the
occasion of his recovery p