My dear Hooker

Your letter contained two capital pieces of news, that M^rs. Hooker’s troubles are safely over which is a real blessing,² & that the Admiralty should have been liberal.³ I truly rejoice at this, though of course the remuneration is as nothing to the labour expended.—   Many thanks for Harvey’s letter,⁴ which I will keep a little longer & then return.—   I will write to him & try to make clear, from analogy of domestic productions, the part which I believe Selection has played.⁵ I have been reworking my pigeons & other domestic animals & I am sure that anyone is right in saying that Selection is the efficient cause, though as you truly say variation is the base of all.—

Why I do not believe so much as you do in Physical agencies, is that I see in almost every organism (though far more clearly in animals than in plants) adaptation, & this except in rare instance must, I sh^d. think, be due to selection.—

Do not forget the Pyrolas when in flower. My blessed little Scævola has come into flower & I will try artificial fertilisation on it.—

Yours ever affect | C. Darwin

I have looked over Harvey’s letter & have assumed (I hope rightly) that he could not object to knowing that you had forwarded it to me.—