I think I have (135/3.

See note, Letter 16.) got cases of slight change in alpine plants transplanted.

All these subjects have rather gone out of my head owing to orchids, but I shall soon have to enter on them in earnest when I come again to my volume on variation under domestication.
...In the lifetime of an animal you would, I think, find it very difficult to show effects of external condition on animals more than shade and light, good and bad soil, produce on a plant.
You speak of "an inherent tendency to vary wholly independent of physical conditions"! This is a very simple way of putting the case (as Dr.Prosper Lucas also puts it) (135/4.

Prosper Lucas, the author of "Traite philosophique et physiologique de l'heredite naturelle dans les etats de sante et de maladie du systeme nerveux": 2 volumes, Paris, 1847-50.): but two great classes of facts make me think that all variability is due to change in the conditions of life: firstly, that there is more variability and more monstrosities (and these graduate into each other) under unnatural domestic conditions than under nature; and, secondly, that changed conditions affect in an especial manner the reproductive organs--those organs which are to produce a new being.

But why one seedling out of thousands presents some new character transcends the wildest powers of conjecture.