In a plant in a state of nature, does cutting off the sap tend to produce flower-buds?
I know it does in trees in orchards.

Owen has been doing some grand work in the morphology of the vertebrata: your arm and hand are parts of your head, or rather the processes (i.e.modified ribs) of the occipital vertebra! He gave me a grand lecture on a cod's head.

By the way, would it not strike you as monstrous, if in speaking of the minute and lessening jaws, palpi, etc., of an insect or crustacean, any one were to say they were produced by the affaiblissement of the less important but larger organs of locomotion.

I see from your letter (though I do not suppose it is worth referring to the subject) that I could not have expressed what I meant when I allowed you to infer that Owen's rule of single organs being of a higher order than multiple organs applied only to locomotive, etc.; it applies to every the most important organ.

I do not doubt that he would say the placentata having single wombs, whilst the marsupiata have double ones, is an instance of this law.