To J. D. Hooker 21 [September 1862]1
Cliff Cottage | Bournemouth
Sunday 21st.
My dear Hooker
I am specially obliged to you for sending me Haasts communications.2 They are very interesting, & grand about Glacial & drift or marine glacial.— I see he alludes to whole southern hemisphere.3 I wonder whether he has read the Origin.—4 Considering your facts on the Alpine plants of N. Zealand & remarks, I am particularly glad to hear of the geological evidence of glacial action.5 I presume he is sure to collect & send over the mountain “Rat” of which he speaks; I long to know what it is.6 A Frog & Rat together would to my mind prove former connection of N. Zealand to some continent;7 for I can hardly suppose that the Polynesians introduced the Rat as game, though so esteemed in the Friendly Islands.8
Ramsay sent me his paper & asked my opinion on it.9 I agree with you & think highly of it.10 I cannot doubt that it is to large extent true: my only doubt is that in a much disturbed country, I shd. have thought that some depressions, & consequently lakes, would have almost certainly have been left— I suggested a careful consideration of mountainous Tropical countries, such as Brazil, peninsula of India &c; if lakes are there very rare, I shd. fully subscribe to Ramsay’s views.11 What presumption, as it seems to me, in the Council of Geolog. Socy.: that it hesitated to publish the paper.—12
We return home on the 30th.— I have made up my mind, if I can keep up my courage, to start on the Saturday for Cambridge & stay the last few days of the Assoc.n there.13 I do so hope that you may be there then.—
Farewell | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Buller, Walter. 1870. On the New Zealand rat. Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 3: 1–4.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Haast, Heinrich Ferdinand von. 1948. The life and times of Sir Julius von Haast, explorer, geologist, museum builder. Wellington, New Zealand: privately published.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1853–5. Flora Novæ-Zelandiæ. 2 vols. Pt 2 of The botany of the Antarctic voyage of HM discovery ships Erebus and Terror, in the years 1839–1843, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. London: Lovell Reeve.
Marginalia: Charles Darwin’s marginalia. Edited by Mario A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of Nicholas W. Gill. Vol. 1. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 1990.
Origin 4th ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 4th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1866.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Summary
Thanks for Haast’s observations. Particularly glad to get geological evidence of glacial action (in Southern Hemisphere).
Thinks Ramsay’s theory to large extent true, but thinks that in a much disturbed country some lakes would have been formed in depressions.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3735
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Bournemouth
- Source of text
- DAR 115: 161
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3735,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3735.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 10