My dear Hooker.

You have been uncommonly kind about Scott.¹ I forwarded your note,² but told him not to mention it; it will certainly be useful to him on any future occasion. For the same post that brought your note, brought one from him, with apologies & saying that Balfour had allowed him only 24 hours to decide, & being so pressed he had declined.³ I sent him a preaching about M^r Macnab, & I daresay he is to blame, & all that you say about permitting men to experimentise is very true.⁴ He certainly has tried a stupendous number. He told me formerly he did them out of work-hours.⁵ He is evidently an eccentric man; an orphan of parents who were better off & who took to gardening as best chance of some science.⁶ If he had leisure he would make a wonderful observer; to my judgment I have come across no one like him.—

Whether I have done right or wrong I know not, but I have urged him to publish on one little point, viz the impotence of certain orchids with their own pollen,⁷ like Herbert’s Crinum case.⁸ When I get his paper in some newspaper I will send it you to read; if it seems at all worth while.⁹ He has made lots of curious observations on pollen-tubes coming out of anthers in certain orchids & travelling all the way to the stigma.¹⁰

Many thanks for Nageli,¹¹ which shall soon be returned: owing to subject & the German I cannot understand all; but there are some very important statements, enough to convince me that Falconer’s remark (which started me) on phyllotaxy being as fixed as law of gravity is much exaggerated:¹² there is, however, no explanation, as far as I can understand, why angles jump from one to another.— I suppose you have seen Asa Gray on A. Decandolle & on Falconer &c &c in Silliman;¹³ he sent me 2 copies by mistake; but I presume you have one.— What a hard worker he is, & what a clever fellow: I wish this cursed war was over; if it were only to be at peace with him.—¹⁴

What a lot of gossip you told me in your last letter;¹⁵ I am so heartily glad that you appreciate John Lubbock: I always fear that he will wear himself out.—¹⁶

If you have time & care to look at a pretty case of fertilisation in Leguminosæ, (far prettier than in that strange-looking Clianthus) look at common Broom.¹⁷ It matures its pollen very early & you will see the pistil curled like a french horn out of the keel: I have seen two accounts that all this is for self-fertilisation.¹⁸ All this is a mistake; if insects are excluded the pistil does not come out. When a bee alights to suck, the short anthers first protrude & rub & dust the under side of its thorax: then when the bee pushes harder or flies to an older flower, out flies the pistil & long anthers & strike (as as I have seen) the upper surface of thorax, where the stigma is well rubbed with its own pollen & that brought from other flowers; but here comes the pretty part, as soon as Bee flies away the pistil from its elasticity curls so much as to almost touch the shorter protruded anthers; & the stigma is now turned upwards & rubs against the under side of the thorax of the next bee dusted with pollen from many flowers. I never saw a clearer case of adaptation.— Subsequently the pistil curls uselessly still more.—¹⁹

Have you read Kinglake?²⁰ I am reading it with much amusement.

Good-night— | Ever yours | C. Darwin.