flies in the year. Your eldest has the brow of an observer, if
there be the least truth in phrenology. We are all better, but we have
been of late a poor household.

LETTER 43. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1855].

I should have less scruple in troubling you if I had any confidence
what my work would turn out. Sometimes I think it will be good, at
other times I really feel as much ashamed of myself as the author of the
"Vestiges" ought to be of himself. I know well that your kindness and
friendship would make you do a great deal for me, but that is no reason
that I should be unreasonable. I cannot and ought not to forget that all
your time is employed in work certain to be valuable. It is superfluous
in me to say that I enjoy exceedingly writing to you, and that your
answers are of the greatest possible service to me. I return with
many thanks the proof on Aquilegia (43/1. This seems to refer to
the discussion on the genus Aquilegia in Hooker and Thomson's "Flora
Indica," 1855, Volume I., Systematic Part, page 44. The authors'
conclusion is that "all the European and many of the Siberian forms
generally recognised belong to one very variable species." With regard
to cirripedes, Mr. Darwin spoke of "certain just perceptible differences
which blend together and constitute varieties and not species" ("Life
and Letters," I., page 379).): it has interested me much. It is exactly
like my barnacles; but for my particular purpose, most unfortunately,
both Kolreuter and Gartner have worked chiefly on A. vulgaris and
canadensis and atro-purpurea, and these are just the species that you
seem not to have studied. N.B. Why do you not let me buy the Indian
Flora? You are too magnificent.

Now for a short ride on my chief (at present) hobbyhorse, viz. aberrant
genera. What you say under your remarks on Lepidodendron seems just the
case that I want, to give some sort of evidence of what we both believe
in, viz. how groups came to be anomalous or aberrant; and I think some
sort of proof is required, for I do not believe very many naturalists
would at all admit our view.

Thank you for the caution on large anomalous genera first catching
attention. I do not quite agree with your "grave objection to the whole
process," which is "that if you multiply the anomalous species by 100,
and divide the normal by the same, you will then reverse the names..."
For, to take an example, Ornithorhynchus and Echidna would not be less
aberrant if each had a