Dear Darwin

Enclosed seeds & note just arrived from Playfair of Algiers, I do not quite understand it. as I asked only for what you told me. & here are a whole lot of others seeds— all were in duplicate parcels, so I have kept one set; assuming that he means one for us & one for you¹

Delpino writes asking me where a Mr Curtis has published physiological observations on Dionea, I cannot guess, do you know.² I have an obscure recollection of some leaf observations by W. Curtis in his introduction to Botany, a book I have not— Have you any reference to any such observations on Dionaea Cephalotus or Nepenthes?³

Very many thanks for the Orchid papers which I will return when done with.⁴

I had a talk with the D. of Argyll last night, with whom I dined, about origin of man, & found him in a “cleft stick” about Wallace, believing him to be right in the fact about man; but allowing that he must be wrong in his argument! (he had not read that paper of Wallaces)—⁵ What a clever little beggar it is!— but I cannot follow his views about man; or quite see what he would have us to believe— His chief quarrell with the “Origin” is that you do not state that the order of evolution is preordained though he believes that you would admit this.— I told him that I did not think this was any business of your’s—that you did not pretend to go into the origin of life, only into it’s phenomena. I could not, before his wife & children especially,⁶ go into this matter, & avow my own (& I suppose your) belief that all speculations on preordination are utterly idle in the absence of better materials than theologies & cosmogonies supply us with—that in fact the whole subject is beyond the range of our conceptions:

Thanks for telling me of Sach’s Lehrbuch which I will order.⁷

Ever yr affec | J D Hooker