Volume 3

More letters of Charles Darwin : a record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters / edited by Francis Darwin ... and A.C. Seward.

  • Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: More letters of Charles Darwin : a record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters / edited by Francis Darwin ... and A.C. Seward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    80/544 (page 48)
    Letter 16 With respect to the word “ sterile ” as used for male or polleniferous flowers, it has always offended my ears dread¬ fully ; on the same principle that it would to hear a potent stallion, ram or bull called sterile, because they did not bear, as well as beget, young. With respect to your geological-map suggestion, I wish with all my heart I could follow it; but just reflect on the number of measurements requisite: why, at present it could not be done even in England, even with the assumption of the land having simply risen any exact number of feet But subsidence in most cases has hopelessly complexed the problem: see what Jordanhill-Smith^ says of the dance up and down, many times, which Gibraltar has had all within the recent period. Such maps as Lyell ^ has published of sea and land at the beginning of the Tertiary period must be excessively inaccurate : it assumes that every part on which Tertiary beds have not been deposited, must have then been dry land,—a most doubtful assumption. I have been amused by Chambers v. Hooker on the K. Cabbage. I see in the Explanations ^ (the spirit of which, ^ James Smith, of Jordan Hill, author of a paper “On the Geology of Gibraltar” {Quart. Joiirn. Geol. Soc..^ Vol. II., p. 41, 1846). ^ Principles of Geology.^ 1875, Vol. I., Plate i, p. 254. ^ Explanations : A Sequel to the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published in 1845, after the appearance of the fourth edition of the Vestiges, by way of reply to the criticisms on the original book. The “ K. cabbage ” referred to at the beginning of the paragraph is Pringlea antiscorbutica, the “ Kerguelen Cabbage ” described by Sir J. D. Hooker in his Flora Antarctica. What Chambers wrote on this subject we have not discovered. The mention of Sedgwick is a refer¬ ence to his severe review of the Vestiges in the Edinbu7gh Review, 1845, vol. 82, p. I. Darwin described it as savouring “of the dogmatism of the pulpit” {Life and Letters, I., p. 344). Mr. Ireland’s edition of the Vestiges (1884), in which Robert Chambers was first authentically an¬ nounced as the author, contains (p. xxix) an extract from a letter written by Chambers in i860, in which the following passage occurs, “The April number of the Edinburgh Review (i860) makes all but a direct ainende for the abuse it poured upon my work a number of years ago.” This is the well-known review by Owen, to which references occur in the Life a?id Letters, II., p. 300. The amende to the Vestiges is not so full as the author felt it to be ; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the Origin; it also gave the reviewer (p. 511) an opportunity for a hit at Sedgwick and his 1845 review.