it
is your own fault.

Plants are splendid for making one believe in Natural Selection, as will
and consciousness are excluded. I have lately been experimenting on
such a curious structure for bursting open the seed-coats: I declare
one might as well say that a pair of scissors or nutcrackers had been
developed through external conditions as the structure in question.
(299/5. The peg or heel in Cucurbita: see "Power of Movement in Plants"
page 102.)

LETTER 300. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, November 5th, 1880.

On reading over your excellent review (300/1. See "Nature," November
4th, 1880, page 1, a review of Volume I. of the publications of the
"Challenger," to which Sir Wyville Thomson contributed a General
Introduction.) with the sentence quoted from Sir Wyville Thomson, it
seemed to me advisable, considering the nature of the publication, to
notice "extreme variation" and another point. Now, will you read the
enclosed, and if you approve, post it soon. If you disapprove, throw it
in the fire, and thus add one more to the thousand kindnesses which you
have done me. Do not write: I shall see result in next week's "Nature."
Please observe that in the foul copy I had added a final sentence
which I do not at first copy, as it seemed to me inferentially too
contemptuous; but I have now pinned it to the back, and you can send
it or not, as you think best,--that is, if you think any part worth
sending. My request will not cost you much trouble--i.e. to read two
pages, for I know that you can decide at once. I heartily enjoyed my
talk with you on Sunday morning.

P.S.--If my manuscript appears too flat, too contemptuous, too spiteful,
or too anything, I earnestly beseech you to throw it into the fire.

LETTER 301. CHARLES DARWIN TO THE EDITOR OF "NATURE."

(301/1. "Nature," November 11th, 1880, page 32.)

Down, November 5th, 1880.

Sir Wyville Thomson and Natural Selection.

I am sorry to find that Sir Wyville Thomson does not understand the
principle of Natural Selection, as explained by Mr. Wallace and myself.
If he had done so, he could not have written the following sentence in
the Introduction to the Voyage of the "Challenger": "The character of
the abyssal fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which
refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by
Natural Selection." This is a standard of criticism not uncommonly
reached by theologians and metaphysicians, when they write on s