ETTER 310. TO R. MELDOLA. Down, February 2nd, 1882.

I am very sorry that I can add nothing to my very brief notice, without
reading again Weismann's work and getting up the whole subject by
reading my own and other books, and for so much labour I have not
strength. I have now been working at other subjects for some years, and
when a man grows as old as I am, it is a great wrench to his brain to go
back to old and half-forgotten subjects. You would not readily believe
how often I am asked questions of all kinds, and quite lately I have
had to give up much time to do a work, not at all concerning myself,
but which I did not like to refuse. I must, however, somewhere draw the
line, or my life will be a misery to me.

I have read your preface, and it seems to me excellent. (310/1. "Studies
in the Theory of Descent." By A. Weismann. Translated and Edited by
Raphael Meldola; with a Prefatory Notice by C. Darwin and a Translator's
Preface. See Letter 291.) I am sorry in many ways, including the honour
of England as a scientific country, that your translation has as yet
sold badly. Does the publisher or do you lose by it? If the publisher,
though I shall be sorry for him, yet it is in the way of business; but
if you yourself lose by it, I earnestly beg you to allow me to subscribe
a trifle, viz., ten guineas, towards the expense of this work, which you
have undertaken on public grounds.

LETTER 311. TO W. HORSFALL. Down, February 8th, 1882.

In the succession of the older Formations the species and genera of
trilobites do change, and then they all die out. To any one who believes
that geologists know the dawn of life (i.e., formations contemporaneous
with the first appearance of living creatures on the earth) no doubt
the sudden appearance of perfect trilobites and other organisms in the
oldest known life-bearing strata would be fatal to evolution. But I for
one, and many others, utterly reject any such belief. Already three or
four piles of unconformable strata are known beneath the Cambrian; and
these are generally in a crystalline condition, and may once have been
charged with organic remains.

With regard to animals and plants, the locomotive spores of some algae,
furnished with cilia, would have been ranked with animals if it had not
been known that they developed into algae.

LETTER 312. TO JOHN COLLIER. Down, February 16th, 1882.

I must thank you for the gift of your Art Primer, which I have read with
much p