published in 1869.)) is a good hit against my talking so much of the
insensibly fine gradations; and certainly it has astonished me that I
should be pelted with the fact, that I had not allowed abrupt and great
enough variations under nature. It would take a good deal more evidence to
make me admit that forms have often changed by saltum.

Have you seen Wollaston's attack in the 'Annals'? ('Annals and Magazine of
Natural History,' 1860.) The stones are beginning to fly. But Theology
has more to do with these two attacks than Science...


[In the above letter a paper by Harvey in the "Gardeners' Chronicle",
February 18, 1860, is alluded to. He describes a case of monstrosity in
Begonia frigida, in which the "sport" differed so much from a normal
Begonia that it might have served as the type of a distinct natural order.
Harvey goes on to argue that such a case is hostile to the theory of
natural selection, according to which changes are not supposed to take
place per saltum, and adds that "a few such cases would overthrow it [Mr.
Darwin's hypothesis] altogether." In the following number of the
"Gardeners' Chronicle" Sir J.D. Hooker showed that Dr. Harvey had
misconceived the bearing of the Begonia case, which he further showed to be
by no means calculated to shake the validity of the doctrine of
modification by means of natural selection. My father mentions the Begonia
case in a letter to Lyell (February 18, 1860):--

"I send by this post an attack in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", by Harvey (a
first-rate Botanist, as you probably know). It seems to me rather strange;
he assumes the permanence of monsters, whereas, monsters are generally
sterile, and not often inheritable. But grant his case, it comes that I
have been too cautious in not admitting great and sudden variations. Here