I wish that, instead of perpetually misunderstanding the theory, you English botanists would help me by pointing out _exceptions_ to these two rules, so that I might specially investigate them. It seems to me that the group you name goes to corroborate the first of them, while all Jordan's work, for instance, uniformly bears out the second. And whatever may be thought about him in other respects, I am not aware that anyone has ever refuted his observations and experiments so far as I am concerned with them. Yours ever sincerely, G. J. ROMANES. 94 St. Aldate's, Oxford: June 22. Dear Dyer,--I received a letter from ---- by the same post that brought yours of the 19th inst. From it I gather that his opinion on the subject of telegony has not changed in any material respect since our inquiry began. His opinion has always been such as you now quote ('atavism' on the one hand, with a small minority of 'dormant fertilisation' cases on the other). His has likewise always been my own view (with the addition of coincidence), and has been corroborated by the result of these inquiries. So I think we are all three pretty well in agreement, because both ---- and myself share in your doubts as to the minority of the cases being really due to dormant fertilisation--_i.e._ not to be ascribed to coincidence or mal-observation. Also, as I said before, I quite agree with you that 'neither view is any help to Herbert Spencer.' In fact, I have somewhat elaborately sought to prove this in my 'Contemporary Review' article for April, and have been in private correspondence with him ever since, but without getting any 'forerder.' But in this connection I should like to know whether you have any opinion upon the apparently analogous class of phenomena in plants which Darwin gives in the eleventh chapter of his 'Variation,' &c. Here, it seems to me, the evidence is much more cogent and of far more importance to the issue, Weismann _v._ Lamarck. Focke and Dr. Vris, however, seem to doubt the facts or their interpretation, although, as it seems to me, without presenting any adequate reasons for doing so. You need not bother with Dr. Vris, as he merely follows Focke, but I wish you would read Focke ('Die Pflanzen-Mischlinge,' p. 510, _et sq._), and compare what he says with the evidence which Darwin presents.