round and radiating from them on all sides. Thus if Australia were
destroyed, Didelphys in S. America would be wonderfully anomalous (this is
your case with Proteaceae), whereas now there are so many genera and little
sub-families of Marsupiata that the group cannot be called aberrant or
anomalous. Sagitta (and the earwig) is one of the most anomalous animals
in the world, and not a bit the less because there are a dozen species.
Now, my point (which, I think is a slightly new point of view) is, if it is
extinction which has made the genus anomalous, as a general rule the same
causes of extinction would allow the existence of only a few species in
such genera. Whenever we meet (which will be on the 23rd [at the] Club) I
shall much like to hear whether this strikes you as sound. I feel all the
time on the borders of a circle of truism. Of course I could not think of
such a request, but you might possibly:--if Bentham does not think the
whole subject rubbish, ask him some time to pick out the dozen most
anomalous genera in the Leguminosae, or any great order of which there is a
monograph by which I could calculate the ordinary percentage of species to
genera. I am the more anxious, as the more I enquire, the fewer are the
cases in which it can be done. It cannot be done in birds, or, I fear, in
mammifers. I doubt much whether in any other class of insects [other than
Curculionidae].

I saw your nice notice of poor Forbes in the "Gardeners' Chronicle," and I
see in the "Athenaeum" a notice of meeting on last Saturday of his friends.
Of course I shall wish to subscribe as soon as possible to any memorial...

I have just been testing practically what disuse does in reducing parts. I
have made [skeletons] of wild and tame duck (oh the smell of well-boiled,
high duck!), and I find the tame duck ought, according to scale of wild
prototype, to have its two wings 360 grains in weight; but it has only 317,
or 43 grains too little, or 1/7 of [its] own two wings too little in