Dear Darwin

I am vexed that I can neither go to Cambridge on Saturday to “assist.” at your Doctoration, nor to you on Saturday week.¹ I have “the” “Address” & the Kew estimates on hand, & loads of unattacked arrears—which have obliged me to refuse all engagements for this month.²

Smith is at a loss to think how the seeds of Mimosa pudica got astray.³ He says he saw them put in the envelope himself. A few more went yesterday to your address with I hope better success.

The Neptunia seeds I sent germinate in warm mud & the plant floats,— it’s leaves are very sensitive.⁴

I wonder what is the object of some Conifers being polycotyledonous— have you watched any in germination?

Did you ever hear of Apes bathing? a trustworthy friend of mine watched a group of them on a ledge of rock overhanging a pool at Chumba (near Kash[mir]) sunning themselves in the heat on the rock; & one after another deliberately go to the edge of the ledge & take a header, into the water & return to dry itself on the rock!⁵

Have you read Marsh’s wonderful Address to the American Association at Nashville?⁶ Is he not rash in supposing that all vertebrate types originated in America;⁷ it appears to me that he makes no allowance for the fact that the turn out of fossils in America is so enormously greater than Europe.— From what he told me & what I saw, some of the Miocene & Cretaceous beds would yield in a day more fossil genera species & specimens than our’s have yielded since they were explored!⁸—& that he does not consider the “imperfection of the European Geolog.^l Record” as compared with the N American. It is a splendid Essay however.

Ever affy yrs | Jos D. Hooker.