Dear Darwin

Have you got Zizania aquatica—¹ we have lost ours through keeping it too warm during the winter.

I was indeed vexed to find that you were in London when I was at Lyells yesterday week—² Lyell never told me of it till we had got down to Wilton place on my way home, & my wife did not tell me that she had seen your’s at the H Lyells the previous night.³

Well, here I am back, as usual, like a bad shilling! after a very pleasant cruise— I must get up a readable account of it in a small volume, & shall publish The Bot Geog. in Linn Soc., I hope with Ball. The results are mainly negative, the Atlas being the dying out of the European Flora—⁴

I tried hard for Beetles above 8000 ft & got but 2 or 3—which I shall take to Bates—⁵

I have really very little to say about the country— it is the most difficult to get reliable information about that I ever travelled in, & the travelling itself in this case took up so much time that little was left for other work but collecting plants. Still I am happier for knowing what Marocco is & what the Atlas is not. Botanically I mean.

The total absence of Canarian specialities was rather a disappointment: it adds antiquity to the latter however   You will be interested however to know that an ocean current from the N. runs perennially along the Marocco coast, & that it sometimes reaches Madeira & I believe the Canaries— this would help the immigration of Spanish & Portuguese & the Marocco seeds into those Islands.— if I remember aught, both winds & currents are quoted as opposed to peopling. Mad. & Can. from the European continent.

I shall assuredly run down to see you the very first opportunity but I doubt if that can be before you go North.⁶

I am much puzzled with Lyells state, & cling to the hope that it is a mere muscular affection of the jaws produced by the Neuralgia; but it is awfully like the speech of incipient paralysis.! & made me very unhappy to hear   He went with me in a cab to Wilton Place, & we walked a little in the Park⁷ after that, & I must say I could detect no unfavorable symptom in mind or in muscular powers— he proceeded to walk home alone, all the way from where I left him.— I do not quite like his going so far from home & travelling in his present state, but did not like to alarm them by hinting at caution—

Ever yr affec | J D Hooker

When you write—if you have any opinion as to Lyells case different from mine, please tell me the symptoms. I hope he is not under the homeopathists, I dreaded to ask.—⁸