P.S.--I forgot to ask you if there would be any facilities in spring at Kew for repeating Adam's graft of purple on yellow laburnum. I want to try this experiment in budding on a large scale because of its importance on Weismannism, should the result of any of the grafts go to corroborate Adam's account of the way in which he produced the hybrid. If you agree to the experiments being tried at Kew, perhaps you might let me know whether there are any purple laburnums already in the gardens, or whether I should get the material over from France. But in that case you might also let me know to whom in France or elsewhere I had best apply. However, do not bother to answer any other parts of this tremendous letter, these we can discuss in conversation hereafter. A postcard to answer this postscript, however, is desirable, as then it might be possible to get matters in train for next budding season. G. J. R. I should much like to meet Churchill. Will you remember to tell me when he comes? _To F. Darwin, Esq._ 18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, N.W.: January 20, 1889. Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for your long letter. I thought you might have had some notes or memories of conversations, to show in a general way what the 'line' would have been.[63] If so, of course I should not have said that my sayings were inspired, but should myself have known that I was not going astray. The line I am going to take is: 1st. Even assuming, for sake of argument, that heightened colour is correlated with increased vigour, Wallace everywhere fails to distinguish between brilliancy and ornament; yet it is the disposition of colours in patterns, &c., that is the chief thing to be explained. 2nd. In many cases (_e.g._ peacock's tail) the pattern is only revealed when unfolded during courtship. Besides natural selection could not be such a fool as to develope large (physiologically expressive) and weighty (impeding flight) structures like this--stags' antlers, &c., merely as correlates of vigour. 3rd. There is not much in Wallace's merely negative difficulty about our not knowing what goes on in the mind of a hen, when we set against that difficulty the positive fact that we can see what does go on in the mind of a cock--display, antics, song, &c. 4th. To say that 'each bird finds a mate under any circumstances' is merely to beg the whole question. 5th. There remains Wallace's jealousy of natural selection. He will not have any other 'factor,' and therefore says natural selection must eat up sexual selection like the lean kine have the fat kine. But natural selection alone does not explain all the phenomena of sexual colouring, courtship, &c., and sexual selection is exactly the theory that does. Wallace's jealousy, therefore, is foolish and inimical to natural selection theory itself, by forcing it into explanations which are plainly false.