WCP2299

[1]¹

Welburn. York.

28. Dec. 1873.

Dear Wallace

I hope you received a new copy of the No. of M^cMillan² which Mr. Gabb³ has had sent to you. Your own copy had got maltreated in passing through many hands. Your separate copy of the article on Law Reform⁴ has not yet been returned to me: when I get it back I will send it. I hope Mr. Gabb may send you his comments on your two articles. For myself I have not time or strength to discuss them. I can only say that you seem to me to express your views with admirable clearness; but your voice will be powerless to waken out of its trance a nation steeped in luxury & pharisaism: only some great calamity can do that.

My article on the modifications in plant-structure produced by the agency of ants was never printed. After I had been told that the MSS. was in the printer's hands, it was returned to me with the request that I would strike out of it 2 or 3 short passages, amounting altogether to hardly a page of the Linnean Journal.⁵ I declined to do this, for the obnoxious passages summarised my views on the permanent effects produced on certain species of plants by the unceasing operations of ants, extending doubtless through thousands of ages; and these views were founded on observations [2] confirmed during 8 consecutive years. The bare reading of the paper, at the Linnean, seems to have left a very erroneous impression of its scope on some of the auditors. Somebody — I believe it was at a meeting of your own Entomological Society⁶ — has credited me with the theory that plants take to climbing to get out of the way of the ants!! As I read this absurd statement, I thought that none of the plants I had commented on had a climbing habit; but on looking over the list — of some two or three hundred species —I find there is a single one that climbs.

When you go to the Brit[ish]. Museum or to the Kew herbarium ask to look at the genus Tococa or Myrmidone, in Melastomaceae, & you will see examples of the curious sacs on the leaves which are inhabited by ants. Similar sacs are found on the leaves also of certain Chrysobalaneae, Rubiaceae, &c.; and analogous ones on the branches of Cordias & other plants. I believe that in many cases these sacs have become inherited structures — as much as the spurs of orchids & columbines, and thousands of other asymmetrical structures, all of which I suppose to have originated in some long-continued external agency.

I know that I ought to have gone carefully over all my specimens again, & to have had drawings prepared to illustrate my memoir. It is the inability to do this which has kept me from writing on many subjects which engaged my attention during the course of my travels.

[3] I kept by me for a good while specimens of young leaves of Melastomes, bearing the characteristic sacs, but entirely untouched by ants, as was proved by the absence of the usual perforations for entry & exit; but the specimens got finally so maltreated by insects as to be useless, & I threw them away. Some were sent to England, but were perhaps overlooked, as merely flowerless specimens.

The ants cannot be said to be useful to the plants, any more than fleas & lice are to animals.⁷ They make their habitation in the Melastomes, &c., & suck the juice of the sweet berries; and the plants have to accomodate [sic] themselves to their parasites as they best may. But even an excrescence may be turned into "a thing of beauty", as witness the galls of the wild rose, some oak-galls, & others.

That diseased structures may become inherited — even in the human subject — there is plenty of evidence to prove. Some curious instances are given in Dr. Elam's "Physician's Problems".⁸

We have all been suffering here — for many weeks — from inveterate catarrh, which refuses to be exorcised. Is it the same in your region?

I hope you continue in fair working order, & I trust Mrs. Wallace⁹ does the same, & that the babes¹⁰ are in good playing trim. With kind regards to all, & best wishes for the New Year, believe me | Yours ever affectionately | Rich^d Spruce. [signature]

/Over

[4] Have you read a queer & clever little book — but with a very lame & impotent conclusion — called "Modern Christianity, a Civilised Heathenism["]¹¹ by the author¹² of "Dame Europa's School"?¹³