To Anton Kerner von Marilaun   27 October 1869

There is a copy of Kerner von Marilaun’s Die Abhängigkeit der Pflanzengestalt von Klima und Boden (The dependence of plant form on climate and soil; Kerner 1869) in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. The essay was originally published as part of a Festschrift in honour of the forty-third meeting of the Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte (German Naturalists and Physicians; Rembold and Barth eds. 1869).

Kerner von Marilaun had attempted to trace the relation of species of Cytisus (the genus of broom) and Tubocytisus (a synonym of Chamaecytisus), and described the evolutionary pattern and geographical distribution of the various species.

There is a copy of Kerner von Marilaun’s book Die Cultur der Alpenpflanzen (The cultivation of alpine plants; Kerner 1864) in the Darwin Library–CUL, and a copy of his article ‘Gute und schlechte Arten’ (Good and bad species; Kerner 1866) in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.

The page after the title page of Kerner 1869 contained a quotation, not from Origin, but from the German translation of Variation 1: 9. The text in English reads: The principle of natural selection may be looked at as a mere hypothesis, but rendered in some degree probable by what we positively know of the variability of organic beings in a state of nature,—by what we positively know of the struggle for existence, and the consequent almost inevitable preservation of favourable variations,—and from the analogical formation of domestic races. Now this hypothesis may be tested,—and this seems to me the only fair and legitimate manner of considering the whole question,—by trying whether it explains several large and independent classes of facts; such as the geological succession of organic beings, their distribution in past and present times, and their mutual affinities and homologies. If the principle of natural selection does explain these and other large bodies of facts, it ought to be received. On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation of any one of these facts.