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Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. D. Hooker   1 July 1878

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

July 1. 1878

My dear Hooker

I shall be very glad to take a part in any scheme which you wish for.—1 Will you therefore put my name down for £200. But I think rather strongly that it would be only fair to the subscribers to state that the subscriptions would not be called for, unless £10,000 is promised, so that the Socy. may be enabled to reduce by a sensible amount the cost of being elected a member.2

Your life must now be one of great fatigue,

Ever yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S. | Do you possess Porliera hygrometrica & if so could you lend me the plant? Frank sends me a wonderful account of its being almost always asleep, night & day, & I shd. much like to observe it.3

Footnotes

Hooker had proposed setting up a fund to cover the costs of Royal Society of London publications so that the fees for fellows of the society could be reduced (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 9 June 1878 and n. 1). No more recent letter from Hooker requesting a subscription from CD has been found.
William Spottiswoode, treasurer of the Royal Society, had stated that a fund of £10,000 for publications would suffice to reduce the fees of the Royal Society to the amount charged by other societies; he suggested that donations be sought from the fellows of the society (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 9 June 1878 and n. 3).
On the identification of Porlieria hygrometrica, see the letter from Francis Darwin, [22 June 1878] and n. 6.

Summary

JDH may put CD’s name down for £200 for the proposed fund.

Does JDH have a plant of Porlieria hygrometrica he could lend to CD?

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11581
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Royal Society Letters, c. 1875 – c. 1905, JDH/2/18: f.36)
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11581,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11581.xml

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