return lent weighty support to evolutionary theory from the botanical
side. He sent his proofs for Huxley to read.

14 Waverley Place, N.W., April 22, 1859.

My dear Hooker,

I have read your proofs with a great deal of attention and interest. I
was greatly struck with the suggestions in the first page, and the
exposure of the fallacy "that cultivated forms recur to wild types if
left alone" is new to me and seems of vast importance.

The argument brought forward in the note is very striking and as simple
as the egg of Columbus, when one sees it. I have marked one or two
passages which are not quite clear to me...

I have been accused of writing papers composed of nothing but heads of
chapters, and I think you tend the same way. Please take the trouble to
make the two lines I have scored into a paragraph, so that poor devils
who are not quite so well up in the subject as yourself may not have to
rack their brains for an hour to supply all the links of your chain of
argument...

You see that I am in a carping humour, but the matter of the essays
seems to me to be so very valuable that I am jealous of the manner of
it.

I had a long visit from Greene of Cork yesterday. He is very Irish, but
very intelligent and well-informed, and I am in hopes he will do good
service. He is writing a little book on the Protozoa, which (so far as I