The Entada is a beast. (48/5. The large seeds of Entada scandens are occasionally floated across the Atlantic and cast on the shores of Europe.); I have never differed from you about the growth of a plant in a new island being a FAR harder trial than transportal, though certainly that seems hard enough. Indeed I suspect I go even further than you in this respect; but it is too long a story. Thank you for the Aristolochia and Viscum cases: what species were they? I ask, because oddly these two very genera I have seen advanced as instances (I forget at present by whom, but by good men) in which the agency of insects was absolutely necessary for impregnation. In our British dioecious Viscum I suppose it must be necessary. Was there anything to show that the stigma was ready for pollen in these two cases? for it seems that there are many cases in which pollen is shed long before the stigma is ready. As in our Viscum, insects carry, sufficiently regularly for impregnation, pollen from flower to flower, I should think that there must be occasional crosses even in an hermaphrodite Viscum. I have never heard of bees and butterflies, only moths, producing fertile eggs without copulation. With respect to the Ray Society, I profited so enormously by its publishing my Cirrepedia, that I cannot quite agree with you on confining it to translations; I know not how else I could possibly have published. I have just sent in my name for 20 pounds to the Linnaean Society, but I must confess I have done it with heavy groans, whereas I daresay you gave your 20 pounds like a light-hearted gentleman... P.S. Wollaston speaks strongly about the intermediate grade between two varieties in insects and mollusca being often rarer than the two varieties themselves. This is obviously very important for me, and not easy to explain. I believe I have had cases from you. But, if you believe in this, I wish you would give me a sentence to quote from you on this head. There must, I think, be a good deal of truth in it; otherwise there could hardly be nearly distinct varieties under any species, for we should have instead a blending series, as in brambles and willows. LETTER 49. TO J.D. HOOKER. July 13th, 1856. What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! With respect to crossing, from one sentence in your letter I think you misunderstand me. I am very far from believing in hybrids: only in crossing of the same species or of close varieties. These two or three last days I have been observing wheat, and have convinced myself that L. Deslongchamps is in error about impregnation taking place in closed flowers; i.e., of course, I can judge only from external appearances. By the way, R. Brown once told me that the use of the brush on stigma of grasses was unknown. Do you know its use?...