Чарльз Дарвин
Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
"I see that we are both elected Corresponding Members of the Institute. It is rather a good joke that I should be elected in the Botanical Section, as the extent of my knowledge is little more than that a daisy is a Compositous plant and a pea a Leguminous one."
He valued very highly two photographic albums containing portraits of a large number of scientific men in Germany and Holland, which he received as birthday gifts in 1877.
In the year 1878 my father received a singular mark of recognition in the form of a letter from a stranger, announcing that the writer intended to leave to him the reversion of the greater part of his fortune. Mr. Anthony Rich, who desired thus to mark his sense of my father's services to science, was the author of a Dictionary of Roman and Greek Antiquities, said to be the best book of the kind. It has been translated into French, German, and Italian, and has, in English, gone through several editions. Mr. Rich lived a great part of his life in Italy, painting, and collecting books and engravings. He finally settled, many years ago, at Worthing (then a small village), where he was a friend of Byron's Trelawny. My father visited Mr. Rich at Worthing, more than once, and gained a cordial liking and respect for him.
Mr. Rich died in April, 1891, having arranged that his bequest261 should not lapse in consequence of the predecease of my father.
In 1879 he received from the Royal Academy of Turin the Bressa Prize for the years 1875-78, amounting to the sum of 12,000 francs. He refers to this in a letter to Dr. Dohrn (February 15th, 1880): —
"Perhaps you saw in the papers that the Turin Society honoured me to an extraordinary degree by awarding me the Bressa Prize. Now it occurred to me that if your station wanted some piece of apparatus, of about the value of £100, I should very much like to be allowed to pay for it. Will you be so kind as to keep this in mind, and if any want should occur to you, I would send you a cheque at any time."
I find from my father's accounts that £100 was presented to the Naples Station.
Two years before my father's death, and twenty-one years after the publication of his greatest work, a lecture was given (April 9, 1880) at the Royal Institution by Mr. Huxley262 which was aptly named "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species." The following characteristic letter, inferring to this subject, may fitly close the present chapter.
Abinger Hall, Dorking, Sunday, April 11, 1880.
My dear Huxley, – I wished much to attend your Lecture, but I have had a bad cough, and we have come here to see whether a change would do me good, as it has done. What a magnificent success your lecture seems to have been, as I judge from the reports in the Standard and Daily News, and more especially from the accounts given me by three of my children. I suppose that you have not written out your lecture, so I fear there is no chance of its being printed in extenso. You appear to have piled, as on so many other occasions, honours high and thick on my old head. But I well know how great a part you have played in establishing and spreading the belief in the descent-theory, ever since that grand review in the Times and the battle royal at Oxford up to the present day.
Ever, my dear Huxley,
Yours sincerely and gratefully,
Charles Darwin.
P.S. – It was absurdly stupid in me, but I had read the announcement of your Lecture, and thought that you meant the maturity of the subject, until my wife one day remarked, "it is almost twenty-one years since the Origin appeared," and then for the first time the meaning of your words flashed on me.
BOTANICAL WORK
"I have been making some little trifling observations which have interested and perplexed me much."
From a letter of June 1860.
CHAPTER XVI.
FERTILISATION OF FLOWERS
The botanical work which my father accomplished by the guidance of the light cast on the study of natural history by his own work on evolution remains to be noticed. In a letter to Mr. Murray, September 24th, 1861, speaking of his book the Fertilisation of Orchids, he says: "It will perhaps serve to illustrate how Natural History may be worked under the belief of the modification of species." This remark gives a suggestion as to the value and interest of his botanical work, and it might be expressed in far more emphatic language without danger of exaggeration.
In the same letter to Mr. Murray, he says: "I think this little volume will do good to the Origin, as it will show that I have worked hard at details." It is true that his botanical work added a mass of corroborative detail to the case for Evolution, but the chief support given to his doctrines by these researches was of another kind. They supplied an argument against those critics who have so freely dogmatised as to the uselessness of particular structures, and as to the consequent impossibility of their having been developed by means of natural selection. His observations on Orchids enabled him to say: "I can show the meaning of some of the apparently meaningless ridges and horns; who will now venture to say that this or that structure is useless?" A kindred point is expressed in a letter to Sir J. D. Hooker (May 14th, 1862): —
"When many parts of structure, as in the woodpecker, show distinct adaptation to external bodies, it is preposterous to attribute them to the effects of climate, &c., but when a single point alone, as a hooked seed, it is conceivable it may thus have arisen. I have found the study of Orchids eminently useful in showing me how nearly all parts of the flower are co-adapted for fertilisation by insects, and therefore the results of natural selection, – even the most trifling details of structure."
One of the greatest services rendered by my father to the Study of Natural History is the revival of Teleology. The evolutionist studies the purpose or meaning of organs with the zeal of the older Teleologist, but with far wider and more coherent purpose. He has the invigorating knowledge that he is gaining not isolated conceptions of the economy of the present, but a coherent view of both past and present. And even where he fails to discover the use of any part, he may, by a knowledge of its structure, unravel the history of the past vicissitudes in the life of the species. In this way a vigour and unity is given to the study of the forms of organised beings, which before it lacked. Mr. Huxley has well remarked:263 "Perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both, which his views offer. The teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man, or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that there is a wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution."
The point which here especially concerns us is to recognise that this "great service to natural science," as Dr. Gray describes it, was effected almost as much by Darwin's special botanical work as by the Origin of Species.
For a statement of the scope and influence of my father's botanical work, I may refer to Mr. Thiselton Dyer's article in 'Charles Darwin,' one of the Nature Series. Mr. Dyer's wide knowledge, his friendship with my father, and his power of sympathising with the work of others, combine to give this essay a permanent value. The following passage (p. 43) gives a true picture: —
"Notwithstanding the extent and variety of his botanical work, Mr. Darwin always disclaimed any right to be regarded as a professed botanist. He turned his attention to plants, doubtless because they were convenient objects for studying organic phenomena in their least complicated forms; and this point of view, which, if one may use the expression without disrespect, had something of the amateur about it, was in itself of the greatest importance. For, from not being, till he took up any point, familiar with the literature bearing on it, his mind was absolutely free from any prepossession. He was never afraid of his facts, or of framing any hypothesis, however startling, which seemed to explain them… In any one else such an attitude would have produced much work that was crude and rash. But Mr. Darwin – if one may venture on language which will strike no one who had conversed with him as over-strained – seemed by gentle persuasion to have penetrated that reserve of nature which baffles smaller men. In other words, his long experience had given him a kind of instinctive insight into the method of attack of any biological problem, however unfamiliar to him, while he rigidly controlled the fertility of his mind in hypothetical explanations by the no less fertility of ingeniously devised experiment."
To form any just idea of the greatness of the revolution worked by my father's researches in the study of the fertilisation of flowers, it is necessary to know from what a condition this branch of knowledge has emerged. It should be remembered that it was only during the early years of the present century that the idea of sex, as applied to plants, became firmly established. Sachs, in his History of Botany264 (1875), has given some striking illustrations of the remarkable slowness with which its acceptance gained ground. He remarks that when we consider the experimental proofs given by Camerarius (1694), and by Kölreuter (1761-66), it appears incredible that doubts should afterwards have been raised as to the sexuality of plants. Yet he shows that such doubts did actually repeatedly crop up. These adverse criticisms rested for the most part on careless experiments, but in many cases on a priori arguments. Even as late as 1820, a book of this kind, which would now rank with circle squaring, or flat-earth philosophy, was seriously noticed in a botanical journal. A distinct conception of sex, as applied to plants, had, in fact, not long emerged from the mists of profitless discussion and feeble experiment, at the time when my father began botany by attending Henslow's lectures at Cambridge.
When the belief in the sexuality of plants had become established as an incontrovertible piece of knowledge, a weight of misconception remained, weighing down any rational view of the subject. Camerarius265 believed (naturally enough in his day) that hermaphrodite266 flowers are necessarily self-fertilised. He had the wit to be astonished at this, a degree of intelligence which, as Sachs points out, the majority of his successors did not attain to.
The following extracts from a note-book show that this point occurred to my father as early as 1837:
"Do not plants which have male and female organs together [i. e. in the same flower] yet receive influence from other plants? Does not Lyell give some argument about varieties being difficult to keep [true] on account of pollen from other plants? Because this may be applied to show all plants do receive intermixture."
Sprengel,267 indeed, understood that the hermaphrodite structure of flowers by no means necessarily leads to self-fertilisation. But although he discovered that in many cases pollen is of necessity carried to the stigma of another flower, he did not understand that in the advantage gained by the intercrossing of distinct plants lies the key to the whole question. Hermann Müller268 has well remarked that this "omission was for several generations fatal to Sprengel's work… For both at the time and subsequently, botanists felt above all the weakness of his theory, and they set aside, along with his defective ideas, the rich store of his patient and acute observations and his comprehensive and accurate interpretations." It remained for my father to convince the world that the meaning hidden in the structure of flowers was to be found by seeking light in the same direction in which Sprengel, seventy years before, had laboured. Robert Brown was the connecting link between them, for it was at his recommendation that my father in 1841 read Sprengel's now celebrated Secret of Nature Displayed.269
The book impressed him as being "full of truth," although "with some little nonsense." It not only encouraged him in kindred speculation, but guided him in his work, for in 1844 he speaks of verifying Sprengel's observations. It may be doubted whether Robert Brown ever planted a more fruitful seed than in putting such a book into such hands.
A passage in the Autobiography (p. 44) shows how it was that my father was attracted to the subject of fertilisation: "During the summer of 1839, and I believe during the previous summer, I was led to attend to the cross-fertilisation of flowers by the aid of insects, from having come to the conclusion in my speculations on the origin of species, that crossing played an important part in keeping specific forms constant."
The original connection between the study of flowers and the problem of evolution is curious, and could hardly have been predicted. Moreover, it was not a permanent bond. My father proved by a long series of laborious experiments, that when a plant is fertilised and sets seeds under the influence of pollen from a distinct individual, the offspring so produced are superior in vigour to the offspring of self-fertilisation, i. e. of the union of the male and female elements of a single plant. When this fact was established, it was possible to understand the raison d'être of the machinery which insures cross-fertilisation in so many flowers; and to understand how natural selection can act on, and mould, the floral structure.
Asa Gray has well remarked with regard to this central idea (Nature, June 4, 1874): – "The aphorism, 'Nature abhors a vacuum,' is a characteristic specimen of the science of the middle ages. The aphorism, 'Nature abhors close fertilisation,' and the demonstration of the principle, belong to our age and to Mr. Darwin. To have originated this, and also the principle of Natural Selection … and to have applied these principles to the system of nature, in such a manner as to make, within a dozen years, a deeper impression upon natural history than has been made since Linnæus, is ample title for one man's fame."
The flowers of the Papilionaceæ270 attracted his attention early, and were the subject of his first paper on fertilisation.271 The following extract from an undated letter to Asa Gray seems to have been written before the publication of this paper, probably in 1856 or 1857: —
" … What you say on Papilionaceous flowers is very true; and I have no facts to show that varieties are crossed; but yet (and the same remark is applicable in a beautiful way to Fumaria and Dielytra, as I noticed many years ago), I must believe that the flowers are constructed partly in direct relation to the visits of insects; and how insects can avoid bringing pollen from other individuals I cannot understand. It is really pretty to watch the action of a humble-bee on the scarlet kidney bean, and in this genus (and in Lathyrus grandiflorus)272 the honey is so placed that the bee invariably alights on that one side of the flower towards which the spiral pistil is protruded (bringing out with it pollen), and by the depression of the wing-petal is forced against the bee's side all dusted with pollen. In the broom the pistil is rubbed on the centre of the back of the bee. I suspect there is something to be made out about the Leguminosæ, which will bring the case within our theory; though I have failed to do so. Our theory will explain why in the vegetable … kingdom the act of fertilisation even in hermaphrodites usually takes place sub jove, though thus exposed to great injury from damp and rain."
A letter to Dr. Asa Gray (September 5th, 1857) gives the substance of the paper in the Gardeners' Chronicle: —
"Lately I was led to examine buds of kidney bean with the pollen shed; but I was led to believe that the pollen could hardly get on the stigma by wind or otherwise, except by bees visiting [the flower] and moving the wing petals: hence I included a small bunch of flowers in two bottles in every way treated the same: the flowers in one I daily just momentarily moved, as if by a bee; these set three fine pods, the other not one. Of course this little experiment must be tried again, and this year in England it is too late, as the flowers seem now seldom to set. If bees are necessary to this flower's self-fertilisation, bees must almost cross them, as their dusted right-side of head and right legs constantly touch the stigma.
"I have, also, lately been reobserving daily Lobelia fulgens– this in my garden is never visited by insects, and never sets seeds, without pollen be put on the stigma (whereas the small blue Lobelia is visited by bees and does set seed); I mention this because there are such beautiful contrivances to prevent the stigma ever getting its own pollen; which seems only explicable on the doctrine of the advantage of crosses."
The paper was supplemented by a second in 1858.273 The chief object of these publications seems to have been to obtain information as to the possibility of growing varieties of Leguminous plants near each other, and yet keeping them true. It is curious that the Papilionaceæ should not only have been the first flowers which attracted his attention by their obvious adaptation to the visits of insects, but should also have constituted one of his sorest puzzles. The common pea and the sweet pea gave him much difficulty, because, although they are as obviously fitted for insect-visits as the rest of the order, yet their varieties keep true. The fact is that neither of these plants being indigenous, they are not perfectly adapted for fertilisation by British insects. He could not, at this stage of his observations, know that the co-ordination between a flower and the particular insect which fertilises it may be as delicate as that between a lock and its key, so that this explanation was not likely to occur to him.
Besides observing the Leguminosæ, he had already begun, as shown in the foregoing extracts, to attend to the structure of other flowers in relation to insects. At the beginning of 1860 he worked at Leschenaultia,274 which at first puzzled him, but was ultimately made out. A passage in a letter chiefly relating to Leschenaultia seems to show that it was only in the spring of 1860 that he began widely to apply his knowledge to the relation of insects to other flowers. This is somewhat surprising, when we remember that he had read Sprengel many years before. He wrote (May 14): —
"I should look at this curious contrivance as specially related to visits of insects; as I begin to think is almost universally the case."
Even in July 1862 he wrote to Asa Gray: —
"There is no end to the adaptations. Ought not these cases to make one very cautious when one doubts about the use of all parts? I fully believe that the structure of all irregular flowers is governed in relation to insects. Insects are the Lords of the floral (to quote the witty Athenæum) world."
This idea has been worked out by H. Müller, who has written on insects in the character of flower-breeders or flower-fanciers, showing how the habits and structure of the visitors are reflected in the forms and colours of the flowers visited.
He was probably attracted to the study of Orchids by the fact that several kinds are common near Down. The letters of 1860 show that these plants occupied a good deal of his attention; and in 1861 he gave part of the summer and all the autumn to the subject. He evidently considered himself idle for wasting time on Orchids which ought to have been given to Variation under Domestication. Thus he wrote: —
"There is to me incomparably more interest in observing than in writing; but I feel quite guilty in trespassing on these subjects, and not sticking to varieties of the confounded cocks, hens and ducks. I hear that Lyell is savage at me."
It was in the summer of 1860 that he made out one of the most striking and familiar facts in the Orchid-book, namely, the manner in which the pollen masses are adapted for removal by insects. He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker, July 12: —
"I have been examining Orchis pyramidalis, and it almost equals, perhaps even beats, your Listera case; the sticky glands are congenitally united into a saddle-shaped organ, which has great power of movement, and seizes hold of a bristle (or proboscis) in an admirable manner, and then another movement takes place in the pollen masses, by which they are beautifully adapted to leave pollen on the two lateral stigmatic surfaces. I never saw anything so beautiful."
In June of the same year he wrote: —
"You speak of adaptation being rarely visible, though present in plants. I have just recently been looking at the common Orchis, and I declare I think its adaptations in every part of the flower quite as beautiful and plain, or even more beautiful than in the woodpecker."275
He wrote also to Dr. Gray, June 8, 1860: —
"Talking of adaptation, I have lately been looking at our common orchids, and I dare say the facts are as old and well-known as the hills, but I have been so struck with admiration at the contrivances, that I have sent a notice to the Gardeners' Chronicle."
Besides attending to the fertilisation of the flowers he was already, in 1860, busy with the homologies of the parts, a subject of which he made good use in the Orchid book. He wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker (July): —
"It is a real good joke my discussing homologies of Orchids with you, after examining only three or four genera; and this very fact makes me feel positive I am right! I do not quite understand some of your terms; but sometime I must get you to explain the homologies; for I am intensely interested in the subject, just as at a game of chess."
This work was valuable from a systematic point of view. In 1880 he wrote to Mr. Bentham: —
"It was very kind in you to write to me about the Orchideæ, for it has pleased me to an extreme degree that I could have been of the least use to you about the nature of the parts."
The pleasure which his early observations on Orchids gave him is shown in such passages as the following from a letter to Sir J. D. Hooker (July 27, 1861): —
"You cannot conceive how the Orchids have delighted me. They came safe, but box rather smashed; cylindrical old cocoa-or snuff-canister much safer. I enclose postage. As an account of the movement, I shall allude to what I suppose is Oncidium, to make certain, – is the enclosed flower with crumpled petals this genus? Also I most specially want to know what the enclosed little globular brown Orchid is. I have only seen pollen of a Cattleya on a bee, but surely have you not unintentionally sent me what I wanted most (after Catasetum or Mormodes), viz., one of the Epidendreæ?! I particularly want (and will presently tell you why) another spike of this little Orchid, with older flowers, some even almost withered."
His delight in observation is again shown in a letter to Dr. Gray (1863). Referring to Crüger's letters from Trinidad, he wrote: – "Happy man, he has actually seen crowds of bees flying round Catasetum, with the pollinia sticking to their backs!"
The following extracts of letters to Sir J. D. Hooker illustrate further the interest which his work excited in him: —
"Veitch sent me a grand lot this morning. What wonderful structures!
"I have now seen enough, and you must not send me more, for though I enjoy looking at them much, and it has been very useful to me, seeing so many different forms, it is idleness. For my object each species requires studying for days. I wish you had time to take up the group. I would give a good deal to know what the rostellum is, of which I have traced so many curious modifications. I suppose it cannot be one of the stigmas,276 there seems a great tendency for two lateral stigmas to appear. My paper, though touching on only subordinate points will run, I fear, to 100 MS. folio pages! The beauty of the adaptation of parts seems to me unparalleled. I should think or guess waxy pollen was most differentiated. In Cypripedium which seems least modified, and a much exterminated group, the grains are single. In all others, as far as I have seen, they are in packets of four; and these packets cohere into many wedge-formed masses in Orchis; into eight, four, and finally two. It seems curious that a flower should exist, which could at most fertilise only two other flowers, seeing how abundant pollen generally is; this fact I look at as explaining the perfection of the contrivance by which the pollen, so important from its fewness, is carried from flower to flower"277(1861).
"I was thinking of writing to you to-day, when your note with the Orchids came. What frightful trouble you have taken about Vanilla; you really must not take an atom more; for the Orchids are more play than real work. I have been much interested by Epidendrum, and have worked all morning at them; for Heaven's sake, do not corrupt me by any more" (August 30, 1861).
He originally intended to publish his notes on Orchids as a paper in the Linnean Society's Journal, but it soon became evident that a separate volume would be a more suitable form of publication. In a letter to Sir J. D. Hooker, Sept. 24, 1861, he writes: —
"I have been acting, I fear that you will think, like a goose; and perhaps in truth I have. When I finished a few days ago my Orchis paper, which turns out one hundred and forty folio pages!! and thought of the expense of woodcuts, I said to myself, I will offer the Linnean Society to withdraw it, and publish it in a pamphlet. It then flashed on me that perhaps Murray would publish it, so I gave him a cautious description, and offered to share risks and profits. This morning he writes that he will publish and take all risks, and share profits and pay for all illustrations. It is a risk, and Heaven knows whether it will not be a dead failure, but I have not deceived Murray, and [have] told him that it would interest those alone who cared much for natural history. I hope I do not exaggerate the curiosity of the many special contrivances."
And again on September 28th: —
"What a good soul you are not to sneer at me, but to pat me on the back. I have the greatest doubt whether I am not going to do, in publishing my paper, a most ridiculous thing. It would annoy me much, but only for Murray's sake, if the publication were a dead failure."
There was still much work to be done, and in October he was still receiving Orchids from Kew, and wrote to Hooker: —
"It is impossible to thank you enough. I was almost mad at the wealth of Orchids." And again —
"Mr. Veitch most generously has sent me two splendid buds of Mormodes, which will be capital for dissection, but I fear will never be irritable; so for the sake of charity and love of heaven do, I beseech you, observe what movement takes place in Cychnoches, and what part must be touched. Mr. V. has also sent me one splendid flower of Catasetum, the most wonderful Orchid I have seen."
On October 13 he wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker: —
"It seems that I cannot exhaust your good nature. I have had the hardest day's work at Catasetum and buds of Mormodes, and believe I understand at last the mechanism of movements and the functions. Catasetum is a beautiful case of slight modification of structure leading to new functions. I never was more interested in any subject in all my life than in this of Orchids. I owe very much to you."
Again to the same friend, November 1, 1861: —
"If you really can spare another Catasetum, when nearly ready, I shall be most grateful; had I not better send for it? The case is truly marvellous; the (so-called) sensation, or stimulus from a light touch is certainly transmitted through the antennæ for more than one inch instantaneously… A cursed insect or something let my last flower off last night."
Professor de Candolle has remarked278 of my father, "Ce n'est pas lui qui aurait demandé de construire des palais pour y loger des laboratoires." This was singularly true of his orchid work, or rather it would be nearer the truth to say that he had no laboratory, for it was only after the publication of the Fertilisation of Orchids, that he built himself a greenhouse. He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker (December 24th, 1862): —
"And now I am going to tell you a most important piece of news!! I have almost resolved to build a small hot-house; my neighbour's really first-rate gardener has suggested it, and offered to make me plans, and see that it is well done, and he is really a clever follow, who wins lots of prizes, and is very observant. He believes that we should succeed with a little patience; it will be a grand amusement for me to experiment with plants."
Again he wrote (February 15th, 1863): —
"I write now because the new hot-house is ready, and I long to stock it, just like a schoolboy. Could you tell me pretty soon what plants you can give me; and then I shall know what to order? And do advise me how I had better get such plants as you can spare. Would it do to send my tax-cart early in the morning, on a day that was not frosty, lining the cart with mats, and arriving here before night? I have no idea whether this degree of exposure (and of course the cart would be cold) could injure stove-plants; they would be about five hours (with bait) on the journey home."
A week later he wrote: —
"You cannot imagine what pleasure your plants give me (far more than your dead Wedgwood-ware can give you); H. and I go and gloat over them, but we privately confessed to each other, that if they were not our own, perhaps we should not see such transcendant beauty in each leaf."
And in March, when he was extremely unwell, he wrote: —
"A few words about the stove-plants; they do so amuse me. I have crawled to see them two or three times. Will you correct and answer, and return enclosed. I have hunted in all my books and cannot find these names, and I like much to know the family." His difficulty with regard to the names of plants is illustrated, with regard to a Lupine on which he was at work, in an extract from a letter (July 21, 1866) to Sir J. D. Hooker: "I sent to the nursery garden, whence I bought the seed, and could only hear that it was 'the common blue Lupine,' the man saying 'he was no scholard, and did not know Latin, and that parties who make experiments ought to find out the names.'"
