Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters

"As I have a fair opportunity, I sent a letter to the Times on Vivisection, which is printed to-day. I thought it fair to bear my share of the abuse poured in so atrocious a manner on all physiologists."

C. D. to the Editor of the 'Times.'

Sir, – I do not wish to discuss the views expressed by Miss Cobbe in the letter which appeared in the Times of the 19th inst.; but as she asserts that I have "misinformed" my correspondent in Sweden in saying that "the investigation of the matter by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our English physiologists were false," I will merely ask leave to refer to some other sentences from the report of the Commission.

(1.) The sentence – "It is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists," which Miss Cobbe quotes from page 17 of the report, and which, in her opinion, "can necessarily concern English physiologists alone and not foreigners," is immediately followed by the words "We have seen that it was so in Magendie." Magendie was a French physiologist who became notorious some half century ago for his cruel experiments on living animals.

(2.) The Commissioners, after speaking of the "general sentiment of humanity" prevailing in this country, say (p. 10): —

"This principle is accepted generally by the very highly educated men whose lives are devoted either to scientific investigation and education or to the mitigation or the removal of the sufferings of their fellow-creatures; though differences of degree in regard to its practical application will be easily discernible by those who study the evidence as it has been laid before us."

Again, according to the Commissioners (p. 10): —

"The secretary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, when asked whether the general tendency of the scientific world in this country is at variance with humanity, says he believes it to be very different indeed from that of foreign physiologists; and while giving it as the opinion of the society that experiments are performed which are in their nature beyond any legitimate province of science, and that the pain which they inflict is pain which it is not justifiable to inflict even for the scientific object in view, he readily acknowledges that he does not know a single case of wanton cruelty, and that in general the English physiologists have used anæsthetics where they think they can do so with safety to the experiment."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant.

April 21.

During the later years of my father's life there was a growing tendency in the public to do him honour.257 The honours which he valued most highly were those which united the sympathy of friends with a mark of recognition of his scientific colleagues. Of this type was the article "Charles Darwin," published in Nature, June 4, 1874, and written by Asa Gray. This admirable estimate of my father's work in science is given in the form of a comparison and contrast between Robert Brown and Charles Darwin.

To Gray he wrote: —

"I wrote yesterday and cannot remember exactly what I said, and now cannot be easy without again telling you how profoundly I have been gratified. Every one, I suppose, occasionally thinks that he has worked in vain, and when one of these fits overtakes me, I will think of your article, and if that does not dispel the evil spirit, I shall know that I am at the time a little bit insane, as we all are occasionally.

"What you say about Teleology258 pleases me especially, and I do not think any one else has ever noticed the point. I have always said you were the man to hit the nail on the head."

In 1877 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Cambridge. The degree was conferred on November 17, and with the customary Latin speech from the Public Orator, concluding with the words: "Tu vero, qui leges naturæ tam docte illustraveris, legum doctor nobis esto."

The honorary degree led to a movement being set on foot in the University to obtain some permanent memorial of my father. In June 1879 he sat to Mr. W. Richmond for the portrait in the possession of the University, now placed in the Library of the Philosophical Society at Cambridge.

A similar wish on the part of the Linnean Society – with which my father was so closely associated – led to his sitting in August, 1881, to Mr. John Collier, for the portrait now in the possession of the Society. The portrait represents him standing facing the observer in the loose cloak so familiar to those who knew him, with his slouch hat in his hand. Many of those who knew his face most intimately, think that Mr. Collier's picture is the best of the portraits, and in this judgment the sitter himself was inclined to agree. According to my feeling it is not so simple or strong a representation of him as that given by Mr. Ouless. The last-named portrait was painted at Down in 1875; it is in the possession of the family,259 and is known to many through Rajon's fine etching. Of Mr. Ouless's picture my father wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker:

"I look a very venerable, acute, melancholy old dog; whether I really look so I do not know."

Besides the Cambridge degree, he received about the same time honours of an academic kind from some foreign societies.

On August 5, 1878, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the French Institute in the Botanical Section,260 and wrote to Dr. Asa Gray: —

"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."