est, as well as your articles in "Nature." The
subject seems to me as important and interesting as it is difficult.
I am much out of health, and working very hard on a very different
subject, so thus I cannot give your remarks the attention which they
deserve. I will, however, keep your letter for some later time, when I
may again take up the subject. Your letter makes it clearer to me than
it ever was before, how a part or organ which has already begun from any
cause to decrease, will go on decreasing through so-called spontaneous
variability, with intercrossing; for under such circumstances it is very
unlikely that there should be variation in the direction of increase
beyond the average size, and no reason why there should not be
variations of decrease. I think this expresses your view. I had intended
this summer subjecting plants to [illegible] conditions, and observing
the effects on variation; but the work would be very laborious, yet I am
inclined to think it will be hereafter worth the labour.

LETTER 265. TO T. MEEHAN. Down, October 9th, 1874.

I am glad that you are attending to the colours of dioecious flowers;
but it is well to remember that their colours may be as unimportant to
them as those of a gall, or, indeed, as the colour of an amethyst or
ruby is to these gems. Some thirty years ago I began to investigate
the little purple flowers in the centre of the umbels of the carrot.
I suppose my memory is wrong, but it tells me that these flowers are
female, and I think that I once got a seed from one of them; but
my memory may be quite wrong. I hope that you will continue your
interesting researches.

LETTER 266. TO G. JAGER. Down, February 3rd, 1875.

I received this morning a copy of your work "Contra Wigand," either
from yourself or from your publisher, and I am greatly obliged for
it. (266/1. Jager's "In Sachen Darwins insbesondere contra Wigand"
(Stuttgart, 1874) is directed against A. Wigand's "Der Darwinismus
und die Naturforschung Newtons und Cuviers" (Brunswick, 1874).) I had,
however, before bought a copy, and have sent the new one to our best
library, that of the Royal Society. As I am a very poor german scholar,
I have as yet read only about forty pages; but these have interested
me in the highest degree. Your remarks on fixed and variable species
deserve the greatest attention; but I am not at present quite convinced
that there are such independent of the conditions to which they are
sub