Lastly, if you will look up Hilgendorf's paper about these snails of Steinheim, I think you will find it impossible to suppose that all these little changes (thus arising at long intervals in crops) can have been useful. Or, if you can still doubt, look up the closely analogous but much larger case of the ammonites investigated by Neumayr and Wurtenberger. What I meant about the sexual system being specially liable to variation is, that it is specially liable to variation in the way of sterility. In other words, changed conditions of life more readily effect variations in the primary functions of the sexual system than they do in general morphology. But at the same time, I quite agree with your view that in the last resort all changes of structure may be regarded as due to variations of this system. And, as you will see by turning to pp. 371-72 of my paper, important capital is made out of this doctrine. Now about making too much of the inutility of specific characters; if I do so, it is erring on the side of natural selection; for it clearly follows from this theory that, if there are any useless structures at all, they ought to occur with (greater?) frequency among species, where (as?) yet natural selection has not had time to remove them. But I cannot think I have here unduly favoured natural selection. For although there are not a few instances of apparently useless structures running through even an entire class (as the 'Origin' remarks), these are not only infinitely less numerous than apparently useless structures in species, but are also very much more rarely trivial. Now the latter fact, coupled with that of the greatly wider range of their occurrence, appears to me intensely to strengthen 'the argument from ignorance,' _i.e._ to give us much more justification for believing that they are now, or once were, of use. For in the case of species, the '_once were_' possibility is virtually excluded. _A propos_ to this point, I do not believe that anyone yet has half done justice to natural selection in respect of its action subsequent to the formation of species--at least, not expressly. But I must shut up. I should greatly like to see Jordan's paper. Sir J. Hooker and Professor Oliver have sent me references to literature, but neither of them mention this. Why my answer to Wallace has not appeared in this month's 'Fortnightly' I am at a loss to understand. The editor bullied me with letters and telegrams to have it ready in time, till I laid everything else aside, and sent him back the proof on the 15th. This new theory roused the public interest (so far as the scientific public were concerned) and produced much criticism. There is a scientific orthodoxy as well as a theological orthodoxy 'plus loyal que le roi,' and by the ultra-Darwinians. Mr. Romanes was regarded as being strongly tainted with heresy.