To J. D. Hooker 22 and 28 [October 1865]
Down
Sunday 22d & Saturday 28th.
(This letter is mere idle talk & you need not read till so inclined.) N.B.)
My dear Hooker
I hope you are established at Kew, & relieved of your stiff joints & not more overwhelmed with business than you might naturally expect—1 Mind I write to amuse myself & expect no answer beyond a line in a week or two’s time just to tell me how you are.— You wrote me a splendidly long & good letter just before you left Buxton.2 You speak with regret that the Royal Soc. never publickly honoured your Father; but do you not think that is accounted for by the fewness of the Botanists ever on the Council?3 I think it would aid in fairness of bestowal of medals; if the list of all that have received them were printed at end of List of Members, as is done by Geolog. Socy.—4 I have been wading through the Annals & Mag. of N. Hist. for last 10 years, & have been interested by several papers; chiefly, however, translations,; but none have interested me more than Carter’s on lower vegetables, infusoria & Protozoa.5 Is he is as good a workman as he appears? for if so he would deserve a Royal Medal.—6 I know it is not new; but how wonderful his account of the spermatozoa of some diœcious alga or conferva, swimming & finding the minute micropyle on a distinct plant & forcing its way in!7 Why, these zoospores must possess some sort of organ of sense to guide their locomotive powers to the small micropyle, & does not this necessarily imply something like a nervous system, in the same way as Complemental male cirripedes have organs of sense & locomotion & nothing else but a sack of spermatozoa?8
I fully agree with your remarks on Wallace’s remarks & on the man himself:9 I fear he will not do what he ought in science. As for the Anthropologists being a bête noir to scientific men, I am not suprised, for I have just skimmed through the last Anthro: Journal, & it shows, especially the long attack on Brit: Assoc: a curious spirit of insolence, conceit, dullness & vulgarity.10
I have read with uncommon interest Travers’ short paper on the Chatham I.s. I remember your pitching into me with terrible ferocity because I said I thought the seed of Edwardsia might have been floated from Chili to N. Zealand; now what do you say my young man to the three young trees of the same size on one spot alone of the Island & with the cast up pod on the shore?11 If it were not for those unlucky wingless birds, I cd believe that the group had been colonized by accidental means; but as it is, it appears by far to me the best evidence of continental extension ever observed; the distance I see is 360 miles. I wish I knew whether the sea was deeper than between N. Z. & Australia12 I fear you will not admit such a small accident as the wingless birds having been transported on ice-bergs. Do suggest, if you have a chance, to any one visiting the Islands again to look out for erratic boulders there.13 How curious his statement is about the fruit trees & bees! I wish I knew whether the clover had spread before the bees were introduced.—14
A newspaper has been sent me from N. Zealand with a savage anonymous attack on Haast for geological plagiarism;15 perhaps you have received or wd. not care to see it.— I saw in Gard. Chron. the sentence about the Origin dying in Germany, but did not know it was by Seeman.—16 I shd. not be surprised, if it were a bit of revenge; for he had the impudence to ask me for a Testimonial for some Professorship, which I felt compelled to refuse.—17 Talking of the Origin, a Yankee has called my attention to a paper attached to Dr Well’s famous Essay on Dew, which was read in 1813 to Royal Soc. but not printed, in which he applies most distinctly the principle of N. Selection to the races of man.—18 So poor old Patrick Matthew, is not the first, & he cannot or ought not any longer put on his Title pages “Discoverer of the principle of Natural Selection”!19
Do you know who wrote the article in July Quarterly on Bates, Wallace & you?20
You will like much better the 2d vol. of Palgrave:21 I hardly know why but I have liked the whole very much.— We are reading (but you will have no time now to read) Buckle, & like it extremely though we disagree with him every other page, & Emma incessantly gets into a rage with him.—22 As you do not like Silas Marner, I will not like much the Mill on the Floss;23 it is certainly most clever; but almost all the persons are odious, & there is no one so charming as Dolly.—24
You borrowed many months ago Max Wichura on Hybrid Willows: the book is of value to me, as being marked. so some time please see about it.—25
I heard only lately of the Subscription for FitzRoy & wrote to the Hon. Secretary to enquire purpose of subscription & was glad to hear it was money for his family.26 The Sec. told me that the 3000, granted by Government wd nearly all go to pay debts & his children were left penniless by his first marriage! Yet poor FitzRoy started with £20,000 as he told me. What a melancholy career he has run with all his splendid qualities.—
My health improves a little, but very slowly: I can, however, do no work & have great daily discomfort. God knows whether I shall ever do work again. On Nov. 7th we go for a week to 6 Queen Anne St to see Dr. B. Jones:27 if you are well enough, which I know is very doubtful & are in London, you must call & let me hear when.— I heard two days ago from Oliver a not very good account of you & that you wd. not return till Thursday.—28
My dear old friend | Yours affectionately | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Allan, Mea. 1967. The Hookers of Kew, 1785–1911. London: Michael Joseph.
Bates, Henry Walter. 1863. The naturalist on the River Amazons. A record of adventures, habits of animals, sketches of Brazilian and Indian life, and aspects of nature under the equator, during eleven years of travel. 2 vols. London: John Murray.
Buckle, Henry Thomas. 1857–61. History of civilization in England. 2 vols. London: John W. Parker & Son.
Carter, Henry John. 1858. On fecundation in Eudorina elegans and Cryptoglena. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 3d ser. 2: 237–53.
Columbia gazetteer of the world: The Columbia gazetteer of the world. Edited by Saul B. Cohen. 3 vols. New York: Columbia University Press. 1998.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Dempster, W. J. 1996. Natural selection and Patrick Matthew. Evolutionary concepts in the nineteenth century. Durham: Pentland Press.
Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.
Eliot, George. 1860. The mill on the Floss. 3 vols. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.
Eliot, George. 1861. Silas Marner: the weaver of Raveloe. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.
Forbes, Edward. 1846. On the connexion between the distribution of the existing fauna and flora of the British Isles, and the geological changes which have affected their area, especially during the epoch of the Northern Drift. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and of the Museum of Economic Geology in London 1: 336–432.
Foundations: The foundations of the Origin of Species. Two essays written in 1842 and 1844 by Charles Darwin. Edited by Francis Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1909. [Reprint edition. New York: Kraus Reprint Co. 1969. Also reprinted in De Beer ed. 1958.]
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.
[Houghton, William.] 1865. Gleanings from the natural history of the tropics. Quarterly Review 118: 166–93.
Living Cirripedia (1851): A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. The Lepadidæ; or, pedunculated cirripedes. By Charles Darwin. London: Ray Society. 1851.
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.
Matthew, Patrick. 1831. On naval timber and arboriculture; with critical notes on authors who have recently treated the subject of planting. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green. Edinburgh: Adam Black.
Matthew, Patrick. 1864. Schleswig-Holstein, etc. London: Spottiswoode & Co.
Natural selection: Charles Darwin’s Natural selection: being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by R. C. Stauffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.
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.
Palgrave, William Gifford. 1865. Narrative of a year’s journey through central and eastern Arabia (1862–63). 2 vols. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co.
Record of the Royal Society of London: The record of the Royal Society of London for the promotion of natural knowledge. 4th edition. London: Royal Society. 1940.
Stocking, George W., Jr. 1987. Victorian anthropology. New York: The Free Press. London: Collier Macmillan.
Travers, Henry Hammersley. 1864. Notes on the Chatham Islands (lat. 44030’ S., long. 1750 W.). [Read 3 November 1864.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 9 (1867): 135–44.
Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1853. A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an account of the native tribes, and observations on the climate, geology, and natural history of the Amazon valley. London: Reeve.
Wellesley index: The Wellesley index to Victorian periodicals 1824–1900. Edited by Walter E. Houghton et al. 5 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1966–89.
Wells, Kentwood D. 1973. William Charles Wells and the races of man. Isis 64: 215–25.
Wells, William Charles. 1818. Two essays: one upon single vision with two eyes; the other on dew. A letter to the Right Hon. Lloyd, Lord Kenyon and an account of a female of the white race of mankind, part of whose skin resembles that of a negro; with some observations on the causes of the differences in colour and form between the white and negro races of men. London: Archibald Constable and Co. [and others].
Wichura, Max Ernst. 1865. Die Bastardbefruchtung im Pflanzenreich erläutert an den Bastarden der Weiden. Breslau: E. Morgenstern.
Summary
Thinks Royal Society’s failure to honour W. J. Hooker may be due to small number of botanists on Council.
Interest in H. J. Carter’s papers in Annals and Magazine of Natural History on lower organisms.
On Wallace; anthropology.
H. H. Travers’ paper on Chatham Islands [J. Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 9 (1865): 135–44].
W. C. Wells’s paper of 1813 ["Essay on dew", Two Essays (1818)] anticipates discovery of natural selection.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-4921
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 115: 277
- Physical description
- ALS 8pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4921,” accessed on 17 August 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4921.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 13