ABSTRACT
You seem to expect something from the concluding volume of Cybele, & will thus be disappointed. It will simply be like a block of stone, cu t... [for] an edifice ...
Watson to Darwin, 3 January 1858
The year 1859 saw a climax to the scientific publications of both Watson and Darwin. In May, Watson published the fourth volume of Cybele Britannica, containing interpretations of phytogeographical data on individual species which he had published in the earlier volumes (1847-52). In November Darwin published On the Origin o f Species, culminating researches he had carried on since 1837. There was some similarity in their goals and strategies, since both wanted to explain the origin of species and both appreciated the relevance of plant geography to the task. Nevertheless, there was hardly any similarity in the organization of these two volumes. An unforeseen circumstance - Darwin’s receipt of Alfred Russel Wallace’s letter in 1858 - led Darwin to make a readable abridgement of the monograph on species and natural selection which he had begun in 1856, resulting in one of the great classics in the history of science. Watson was not to be deflected by a somewhat different interruption - Darwin’s inquiries about British species and genera of plants - and his fourth volume was an energetic attempt to glean insights from all the data he had published.
