Summary

Sends Naudin’s letter.

Pangenesis.

Benjamin Clarke is mad.

Interested in CD’s Ipomoea experiment.

Scott’s experiments are all in CD’s favour.

Clarifies a sentence in "Insular floras".

Summary

Responds to CD’s criticisms. JDH is sometimes confused as to what he has borrowed from CD.

Summary

Has been persuaded to accept BAAS Presidency.

On Charles Naudin’s discovery of seeds of Chamaerops fertilised by the date-palm.

Summary

Has declined Presidency of BAAS.

Relation of insular and continental genera will always be difficult problem.

On Providence and the "continuity theory".

Summary

Trail’s case is interesting, hopes it is true.

Has little faith in I. Anderson-Henry’s exactness.

Pleased with Paris exposition.

Summary

More on Naudin’s hybrid; the wonder lessened slightly.

JDH’s view that insular plants [distantly] related to those of continents are common came to him only after the lecture was in print; has not yet thought it out fully.

Moroccan flora may throw some light on Madeira flora.

Summary

Will be glad to have seeds of plants and CD’s climbing plant, which he has no doubt is Siphocampylus.

Anxious about his baby [Reginald Hooker].

Summary

Does not share CD’s objection to continental extension, i.e., that it must be extended to every island in every ocean.

Sends paper on domesticated animals by Brian Hodgson [J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 16 (1847): 1003–26].

Summary

Would be delighted to see CD at Kew.

Summary

Is going to Norwich again on account of his mother’s health.

Summary

Will not be inclined to challenge Pangenesis.

Admits CD’s victory over JDH’s continental hypothesis (but will not give up Greenland).

Relation of variation to circumstances is shown by discovery of endemic St Helena umbellifer having same palm-like habit as an endemic Madeiran species.

Has completed Boott’s Carices [Illustrations of the genus Carex, pt 4 (1867)],

is printing W. H. Harvey’s work [Genera of South African plants, 2d ed. (1868)],

and is revising English edition of Alphonse de Candolle’s Laws of botanical nomenclature [trans. H. A. Weddell (1868)].

Arrangements at Kew. Gardener [John Smith] is very ill; Oliver reigns supreme in the Herbarium.

Summary

His view of CD’s hypothesis that Atlantic island genera are descended from extinct European plants.

Summary

Begins to hope baby may survive; description of symptoms.

Summary

Has been too busy to write. Is leaving for Switzerland that evening.

A friend, who ran away from home as a boy, has two sons who have done the same several times. Is the case worth investigating for CD?

Summary

Would like to come to Down on 20th or 21st.

Woolner is unwell.

Summary

Plans to come to Down on Saturday.

Returned Adam Bede two years ago.

Wishes CD would return Tylor’s Early history of mankind

and his own Himalayan journal with his notes, "both of which I have lent, i.e., lost".

Lyell well and full of "Insular" difficulties which he will propound.

Summary

Has given up Scotland trip due to his mother’s illness.

Asks for Fritz Müller’s full name – "he can help us much".

Reports on self-impregnated Victoria and impregnation of Chatsworth plants. Difficult to get foreman [of gardens] to keep accurate register.

Summary

Back from Switzerland. Mrs Hooker much improved.

Summary

Has been reading [H. C. Fleeming Jenkin’s] review in North British Review. Would answer it if not so lazy.

Has read Mount Sorel [A. Marsh-Caldwell (1845)] and Disraeli’s life of Lord G. Bentinck [1852]. Bad science, bad literature, bad politics.

Summary

Baby’s situation hopeless.

E. Perceval Wright on way to Seychelles for collecting.