My dear Darwin

I have nothing worth bothering you with a letter about, but feel impelled to write—apropos of nothing! I saw Erasmus the other evening looking as young & blithe as anything—² I never saw him looking half so well. He told me you were but poorly. I am longing to run down & see you, but not yet for some weeks, I have promised to go to Paris with Bentham for a week or so after 15^th. January about Gen. Pl.³ I throttled off Welwitschia at the Linnæan the other night. there was a good meeting & they all seemed pleased— I have sent it to press.⁴

If you want any information about Australia & its savages, a capital man is now about Kew who has collected plants well & lived amongst & observed natives shrewdly from K.G.S. to Sharks bay, & W. up to Wide bay.⁵

What shall I do with the African bees & comb?— If I hear nothing I shall send it by next Thursday’s Carrier; so do not write on purpose.⁶

I am actually reading de Tocquevilles Democracy in America,⁷ it appears to me a most able book, though I do not at all agree with it. (bigger fool you, you may so, & double big fool I am to say so) but I cannot help it. He assumes that D. in America was a success— Now I never regarded America as having cohesion enough to be pronounced either a success or a failure: there has been hitherto far too much freedom of motion there, too little “struggle for existence”—to develop any settled Govt. at all, & it is impossible to predicate what shape the existing introduced form of Govt. would take in 100 years, even if this war had not stepped in to confound all calculations. Democracy has persisted in America, because there has been no cause for its overthrow—just as Monarchies might persist indefinitely (though they persist under much greater disadvantages. Specialization I conceive to be a dominant law governing everything, & I cannot see how either a Democracy or a Republican form of Govt can resist the effects of Natural Selection— In short I regard a pure Democracy as visionary as a country peopled by one invariable species.— This with me is no question of what is good or bad, but of what must ever be.—& I do hold that a Govt must always eventually get into the hands of an individual, or a family, or a class—or there is no truth in Nat: Selection. Q.E.D. as you say.

My boy Willy⁸ is back from school, a standing protest against the “Origin of Species”   I do not know one quality of my wifes⁹ or my own that he inherits. He cares for no one thing in life, I mean naturally, as Music. or Nat Hist. or even seeing things, has neither Memory Sensation or judgement;—“Like I was” he is very young of his age, & I suspect there is a great deal in that— Per contra, he is a very good amiable generous & most conscientious child, extremely fond of us all & of his brothers & sisters especially—& is only not docile because it is impossible to fix his attention. I cannot find out any one thing he is learning at School, he can give no account of himself or his time whatever, of course he is at bottom of his classes, but that I do not mind. he has no pride, nor mischief, no vice,—no emulation no pursuit & no taste—& is quite indifferent to lollypops!— In the others I can trace everywhere family vices & virtues— The most wonderful thing to me is that not one has an atom of ear, & whereas I could sing in tune at 3 years old, I do not find that these have the smallest ear for music, or care—to hear it.

Ever Yours affec | Jos D Hooker

I send Dawsons most unsatisfactory letter¹⁰