convinced it must be given
up in the sense you have discussed it in; but from such cases as the
Galapagos birds and from hypothetical notions on variation, I should be
very glad to know whether it must be given up in a slightly different
point of view; that is, whether the peculiar insular species are
generally well and strongly distinguishable from the species on the
nearest continent (when there is a continent near); the Galapagos,
Canary Islands, and Madeira ought to answer this. I should have
hypothetically expected that a good many species would have been
fine ones, like some of the Galapagos birds, and still more so on the
different islands of such groups.

I am going to ask you some questions, but I should really sometimes
almost be glad if you did not answer me for a long time, or not at all,
for in honest truth I am often ashamed at, and marvel at, your kindness
in writing such long letters to me. So I beg you to mind, never to
write to me when it bores you. Do you know "Elements de Teratologie (on
monsters, I believe) Vegetale," par A. Moquin Tandon"? (319/5.
Paris, 1841.) Is it a good book, and will it treat on hereditary
malconformations or varieties? I have almost finished the tremendous
task of 850 pages of A. St. Hilaire's Lectures (319/6. "Lecons de
Botanique," 1841.), which you set me, and very glad I am that you told
me to read it, for I have been much interested with parts. Certain
expressions which run through the whole work put me in a passion: thus I
take, at hazard, "la plante n'etait pas tout a fait ASSEZ AFFAIBLIE
pour produire de veritables carpelles." Every organ or part concerned in
reproduction--that highest end of all lower organisms--is, according to
this man, produced by a lesser or greater degree of "affaiblissement";
and if that is not an AFFAIBLISSEMENT of language, I don't know what is.
I have used an expression here, which leads me to ask another question:
on what sort of grounds do botanists make one family of plants higher
than another? I can see that the simplest cryptogamic are lowest, and I
suppose, from their relations, the monocotyledonous come next; but how
in the different families of the dicotyledons? The point seems to me
equally obscure in many races of animals, and I know not how to tell
whether a bee or cicindela is highest. (319/7. On use of terms "high"
and "low" see Letters 36 and 70.) I see Aug. Hilaire uses a multiplicity
of parts--several circles of stamens, etc.-