Dear Sir,

your very kindly letter was to me a source of great gratification.¹

I have much pleasure in sending you a box of AEgilops ovata² but there is one drawback; last season was so wet, and enlivened with so little sunshine, that the majority of these seeds which I have planted, or decorticated, and laid down in saucers to germinate, have failed to germinate   I merely suggest the nature of the season as the cause of death in so many of the embryos. The stock from which they were grown was procured partly from Mr. W. T. Thiselton Dyer, of Kew, and partly from Carter the Seedsman;³ and the central seeds were almost all alive. The spikelet consists of usually four florets, frequently all fertile; but I found that while the one or two central seeds were almost invariably alive and germinated, by far the greater number of the two lateral seeds never germinated, even though decorticated. These side seeds are very much compressed, apparently by the pressure of the strong glumes; perhaps this pressure kills the embryo— a slight pressure of the fingers will kill the embryo of a barley and prevent it from malting—

I shall feel very much obliged by a look at Herr Rimpau’s papers and shall duly return them to you.⁴ So far as my observations went, I did not find the different wheats fertilising in different ways, but there may be one or two forms I have not observed, although I have grown all the ordinary forms, also the spelts, compositum, Polish &c. for the purpose of observing— The AEgilops also seems to me to fertilise in the same way as wheat; opening the pales and glumes for about 30 minutes and then closing.⁵ I attached the loop of a thread to a newly closed glume, and found that it took a weight of two ounc⁠⟨⁠es⁠⟩⁠ to open the floret to the width it had been open for fertilisation. A great force must therefore be brought into temporary action for fertilisation; is there not something analogous in animal fertilisation?

I take the liberty of stating that my convictions are in favour of the Theory of Evolution, to which your labours have given form, and beg your acceptance of a small work which bears on some points of this theory— Tho’ published more than twenty years ago, I have not seen reason to ⁠⟨⁠  ⁠⟩⁠den the two main contentions: that light, instead of being an isolated medium, is one of the forms of ordinary matter; and that the “creation” of the earth (and other planets) is the very work which is going on here before us at this moment.⁶ The decomposing materials of the sun are being transferred to the planets and built up into their structures— This is what the system keeps going for the purpose of performing— The motions of the planets are no dead motions, but living, organic evolutions. The unmaking of suns and the making of planets is the very work that is on hand. What do we want with nebular hypotheses, till we explain what it is which is being done at this moment?⁷ This view, gives force and cogency to all minor evolution   People look away to the past and the distant for what is at their doors.

I am | Dear Sir, | yours most sincerely | A. Stephen Wilson.