Asks whether Allegheny Mountains are sufficiently continuous so that plants could travel from north to south along them.
Hopes AG's work on geographical distribution is progressing, as he has questions on plants common to Europe which do not range up to Arctic.
Are intermediate varieties less numerous in individuals than the varieties they connect?
Down Bromley Kent
My dear D
You have been so very kind in giving me information of the greatest use to
me; that I venture to trouble you with a question, which
cannot cause you much trouble.— I have been reading a paper by you on plants
on mountains of Carolina, (in London Journal of Botany) in
which you state that most are the same with the plants of the N. States
& Canada.— Now what I want to know is, whether the Alleghenies are
sufficiently continuous so that the plants could travel from the north in the course of
ages thus far south? I remember Bartram makes the same remark
with respect to several trees on the Occone
How does your memoir on Geograph. Distrib. get on? I do heartily wish it was now published; for I have been trying to make out how many plants are common to Europe, which do not range up to the Arctic shores, & they seem to be very few.—
I have just thought of one other question, connected with my subject, which I cannot
resist asking.— I have seen it remarked by entomologists, that it
often happens that the intermediate varieties connecting together two varieties
(& thus showing that such are varieties) are less common or numerous in
individuals, than the two varieties themselves. If you can
enlighten me on this head I sh
But I know I have been scandalously troublesome to you.— Can you forgive me? & believe me, Yours truly obliged | Ch. Darwin
- f1 1926.f1Dated by the relationship to the letter to Asa Gray, 2 May .
- f2 1926.f2See letter to Asa Gray, 2 May , and the letters exchanged between Gray and CD in 1855 (Correspondence vol. 5).
- f3 1926.f3A. Gray 1842. CD cited the paper in his species book (Natural selection p. 537) but later cancelled the citation when he found more extensive data in Gray's ‘Statistics of the flora of the northern United States’ (A. Gray 1856–7).
- f4 1926.f4See Natural selection, p. 537.
- f5 1926.f5William Bartram discussed the flora of Mount Oconee (now called Stratton Mountain) in South Carolina in Bartram 1791, p. 335, which was cited by CD in Natural selection, p. 537 n. 2.
- f6 1926.f6The revised edition of Gray's Manual of the botany of the northern United States was published later in the year (A. Gray 1856a).
- f7 1926.f7This point is made in Wollaston 1856, pp. 105–6. See CD's comments in letter to J. D. Hooker, 5 July .
- f8 1926.f8Letter to Asa Gray, 2 May .