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From J. D. Hooker   [16? October 1864]1

Kew

Sunday.

Dr. Darwin

Harvey will answer you categorically from Dublin whither he goes on Thursday.2

I thought Huxley’s article splendid:3—the best in the number   Thomson wrote the article on Agardh,4 it is well done, but too favorable; Agardhs book is very curious, but full of paradox & mistakings of analogy for affinity,5 & so horridly jumbled that it is impossible to make any use of it, if use it has. The article fails to show that the book contains any really valuable novel matter.

I am not up in Oxlips, what is the true O. & what the Badsfield?.—6 What is the use of your making the Cowslip & Primrose good species by results of crossing, if Scott finds that red & yellow var: of Cowslip won’t breed!.7 We fall back on the idea of difference of species being only practicably defineable by morphological difference;—but then morphological species are d— —d uninteresting things compared with Physiological species!8

Ever yr affec | J D Hooker.

CD annotations9

Top of letter: ‘Lyell | Asa Gray | (Tyndall)’ pencil . Paragraph 3, line 2: ‘Badsfield’ sic, but in N4404, replying to this letter, CD seems to write . Bardsfield, CB Both are wrong. Bardfield is correct. FHB. (Noted for indexer.) . Who wrotte ‘Sept’ at top? ASB . Original, 3.2.95, ASB

Footnotes

1
The date is conjectured from the relationship between this letter and the letters to J. D. Hooker, 8 October [1864] and 22 October [1864]; in 1864, 9 and 16 October were the intervening Sundays. Given the date of CD’s reply to this letter, it is probable that the sixteenth was the day this letter was written.
2
The reference is to William Henry Harvey, from whom CD had been seeking information on climbing plants from South Africa. Harvey was returning to Dublin following a visit to Hooker at Kew (see letter from J. D. Hooker, [28 September 1864] and n. 7).
3
See letter to J. D. Hooker, 8 October [1864] and n. 4. Hooker refers to Thomas Henry Huxley’s article in the October 1864 issue of the Natural History Review ([T. H. Huxley] 1864a). See also letter to T. H. Huxley, 3 October [1864], and letter from T. H. Huxley, 5 October 1864.
4
See letter to J. D. Hooker, 8 October [1864] and n. 6. Hooker refers to Thomas Thomson’s anonymous review of Agardh 1858 ([Thomson] 1864).
5
The terms analogy and affinity were applied in a number of different ways by taxonomists at this time (see Macmillan dictionary of the history of science). For a discussion of early-nineteenth-century classification see Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix II, and McOuat 1996. CD discussed the importance of ‘real affinities and analogical or adaptive resemblances’ in classification in Origin, pp. 427–34. For a discussion of Jacob Georg Agardh’s taxonomic system, see DSB.
7
CD had informed Hooker that his crossing experiments indicated that the cowslip and the primrose were different species (see letter to J. D. Hooker, 8 October [1864] and n. 11). CD had drawn Hooker’s attention to Scott’s experiments with cowslips in his letter to Hooker of 13 September [1864] (see also letter to Asa Gray, 13 September [1864] and n. 13, and Scott 1864a, pp. 106–8). For CD’s reply, see letter to J. D. Hooker, 22 October [1864] and n. 8.
8
The term ‘physiological species’ had been coined by Huxley to refer to a definition of species based on reproductive barriers between life-forms (T. H. Huxley 1863b, pp. 106–8). See also letter to Asa Gray, 13 September [1864] and n. 13.
9
CD’s annotations are notes for his letter to J. D. Hooker, 22 October [1864].

Bibliography

Agardh, Jacob Georg. 1858. Theoria systematis plantarum; accedit familiarum phanerogamarum in series naturales dispositio, secundum structuræ normas et evolutionis gradus instituta. Lund, Sweden: C. W. K. Gleerup.

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Macmillan dictionary of the history of science. Edited by W. F. Bynum et al. London and Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press. 1981.

McOuat, Gordon R. 1996. Species, rules and meaning: the politics of language and the ends of definitions in nineteenth century natural history. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 27: 473–519.

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.

[Thomson, Thomas]. 1864. Agardh’s classification of plants. [Review of Theoria systematis plantarum, by J. G. Agardh.] Natural History Review n.s. 4: 536–51.

Summary

Morphological differences only partly define species; physiological differences, e.g., incompatibility results in Primula, are far more interesting.

T. Thomson’s review of Agardh’s muddled book ["Agardh’s classification of plants", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1864): 536–51].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-4638
From
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Kew
Source of text
DAR 101: 246, 246a
Physical description
ALS 3pp †

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4638,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4638.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 12

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