The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.Romanes, George John
Science
The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.
Romanes, George John
Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Romanes, George John, 1848-1894
(D) I will let the question of Use-Inheritance in relation to
seemingly Passive Organs, go by default against me, as it is
rather a side issue and would need much writing to discuss. The
same applies to your remarks on Teleology. As regards both points
I agree with your observations.
(E) Touching varieties as found in different areas from parent
types, I suppose you heard how carefully Nägeli has gone into the
subject, with the result that after making allowances for defects
of isolation, change of environment, &c., only about _five per
cent. of species of plants seem to have originated on distant
areas_, while Wallace has shown that some such proportion applies
to animals.
(F) As regards plants having been brought under cultivation,
and yielding variations that prove heredity, I knew there were
innumerable cases where artificial selection had been brought
into play. But of course they are all out of court until the
question on which you are engaged has been decided in your
favour, _i.e._ until you have succeeded in _disproving natural
selection_ as analogous or parallel to artificial. It was
for this reason I mentioned the case of parsnips, where the
hereditary variations seem to have taken place in the _first
generation_ after transplanting, and therefore without leaving
time for selection of any kind to have come into play.
Hôtel Costebelle, Hyères: March 29.
Dear Mr. Henslow,--I am still terribly ill and cannot write
much. We must have a talk. Could you come to Oxford any day you
like and be our guest? I think we might derive mutual benefit. I
shall be there from the middle of April till I do not know when.
Why not come on May 2, to hear Weismann give his lecture in the
afternoon?
I much wish you would save seed of any fixed local varieties of
plants you may find to be in seed, while you are in Malta (or
bulbs), in order to see whether plants grown from them in England
will or will not prove fully fertile. This is in relation to
my own theory of physiological selection, according to which
isolation produces segregation of type; in the same way as it
does that of a language--viz. by prevention of intercourse with
the parent type and consequently with an independent history of
variation. Where the isolation is due to physical barriers (as
at Malta) there is no need for any sexual differentiation to
originate a species. But on common areas, sexual differentiation
is the only means of securing the isolation. Therefore (I say)
we can see why Jordan's French varieties all prove sterile with
their parent forms, and I should expect your Malta varieties to
prove fertile with _theirs_ elsewhere.
G. J. R.
Costebelle: April 15, 1894.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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