To George Henslow 11 February 1879
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)
Feb 11. 1879
My dear Sir
I thank you for your kind note & for the paper hereafter to be sent.1 You have of course the most perfect right to criticise my work in any way you think fit, & indeed it is the duty of a scientific man, when he writes, to express himself with entire frankness. I am sorry that we differ so much & fear that we shall continue to do so. But as you say truth will ultimately prevail, & we are both in search of it— Now that I am growing old, whatever I am at work on drives for the time every other subject completely out of my head; so I am a very poor critic. I will, however, hazard one remark: you say in your note “no physiological benefit (from cross-fertilisation) can be proved to be permanent”; but I never heard of any one who supposed the good effects on the offspring from crossing being more than temporary, like the effects of proper diet & other highly favourable conditions of life.—2
I remain my dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin
In using the word temporary I do not mean that the good effects are necessarily confined to the first generation—
Footnotes
Bibliography
Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.
Henslow, George. 1877a. On the self-fertilization of plants. [Read 1 November 1877.] Transactions of the Linnean Society (Botany) 2d ser. 1 (1875–80): 317–98.
Summary
Disagrees with GH over the value of cross-fertilisation.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11870
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- George Henslow
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR (CD Library - G. Henslow 1888)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11870,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11870.xml