According to my theoretical notions, I am not satisfied with what you

say about local plants in S.W. corner of Australia (340/4. Sir Joseph

replied in an undated letter: "Thanks for your hint. I shall be very

cautious how I mention any connection between the varied flora and poor

soil of S.W. Australia...It is not by the way only that the species

are so numerous, but that these and the genera are so confoundedly well

marked. You have, in short, an incredible number of VERY LOCAL, WELL

MARKED genera and species crowded into that corner of Australia." See

"Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania," 1859, page li.), and the

seeds not readily germinating: do be cautious on this; consider lapse

of time. It does not suit my stomach at all. It is like Wollaston's

confined land-snails in Porto Santo, and confined to same spots since

a Tertiary period, being due to their slow crawling powers; and yet we

know that other shell-snails have stocked a whole country within a very

few years with the same breeding powers, and same crawling powers,

when the conditions have been favourable to the life of the introduced

species. Hypothetically I should rather look at the case as owing

to--but as my notions are not very simple or clear, and only

hypothetical, they are not worth inflicting on you.

I had vowed not to mention my everlasting Abstract (340/5. The "Origin

of Species" was abbreviated from the MS. of an unpublished book.) to you

again, for I am sure I have bothered you far more than enough about

it; but as you allude to its previous publication I may say that I

have chapters on Instinct and Hybridism to abstract, which may take

a fortnight each; and my materials for Palaeontology, Geographical

Distribution and Affinities being less worked up, I daresay each of

these will take me three weeks, so that I shall not have done at soonest

till April, and then my Abstract will in bulk make a small volume. I

never give more than one or two instances, and I pass over briefly

all difficulties, and yet I cannot make my Abstract shorter, to be

satisfactory, than I am now doing, and yet it will expand to small

volume.

LETTER 341. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [November?] 27th [1858].

What you say about the Cape flora's direct relation to Australia is a

great trouble to me. Does not Abyssinia highland, (341/1. In a letter

to Darwin, December 21st (?), 1858, Sir J.D. Hooker wrote: "Highlands of

Abyssinia will not help you to connect the Cape and Australian temperate

floras: they want all the types common to both, and, worse than that,

India notably wants them. Proteaceae, Thymeleae, Haemodoraceae, Acacia,

Rutaceae, of closely allied genera (and in some cases species), are

jammed up in S.W. Australia, and C.B.S. [Cape of Good Hope]: add to this

the Epacrideae (which are mere (paragraph symbol) of Ericaceae) and the

absence or rarity of Rasaceae, etc., etc., and you have an amount [of]

similarity in the floras and dissimilarity to that of Abyssinia and

India in the same features that does demand an explanation in any

theoretical history of Southern vegetation."), and the mountains on

W. coast in some degree connect the extra-tropical floras of Cape and

Australia? To my mind the enormous importance of the Glacial period

rises daily stronger and stronger. I am very glad to hear about S.E. and

S.W. Australia: I suspected after my letter was gone that the case must

be as it is. You know of course that nearly the same rule holds with

birds and mammals. Several years ago I reviewed in the "Annals of

Natural History," (341/2. "Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist." Volume XIX.,

1847, pages 53-56, an unsigned review of "A Natural History of the

Mammalia," by G.R. Waterhouse, Volume I. The passage referred to is

at page 55: "The fact of South Australia possessing only few peculiar

species, it having been apparently colonised from the eastern and

western coasts, is very interesting; for we believe that Mr. Robert

Brown has shown that nearly the same remark is applicable to the plants;

and Mr. Gould finds that most of the birds from these opposite shores,

though closely allied, are distinct. Considering these facts, together

with the presence in South Australia of upraised modern Tertiary

deposits and of extinct volcanoes, it seems probable that the eastern

and western shores once formed two islands, separated from each other

by a shallow sea, with their inhabitants generically, though not

specifically, related, exactly as are those of New Guinea and Northern

Australia, and that within a geologically recent period a series of

upheavals converted the intermediate sea into those desert plains which

are now known to stretch from the southern coast far northward, and

which then became colonised from the regions to the east and west." On

this point see Hooker's "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania,"

page ci, where Jukes' views are discussed. For an interesting account

of the bearings of the submergence of parts of Australia, see

Thiselton-Dyer, "R. Geogr. Soc. Jour." XXII., No. 6.) Waterhouse's

"Mammalia," and speculated that these two corners, now separated by gulf

and low land, must have existed as two large islands; but it is odd that

productions have not become more mingled; but it accords with, I think,

a very general rule in the spreading of organic beings. I agree with

what you say about Lyell; he learns more by word of mouth than by

reading.

Henslow has just gone, and has left me in a fit of enthusiastic

admiration of his character. He is a really noble and good man.

LETTER 342. TO G. BENTHAM. Down, December 1st [1858?].

I thank you for so kindly taking the trouble of writing to me, on

naturalised plants. I did not know of, or had forgotten, the clover

case. How I wish I knew what plants the clover took the place of; but

that would require more accurate knowledge of any one piece of ground

than I suppose any one has. In the case of trees being so long-lived, I

should think it would be extremely difficult to distinguish between true

and new spreading of a species, and a rotation of crop. With respect to

your idea of plants travelling west, I was much struck by a remark of

yours in the penultimate "Linnean Journal" on the spreading of plants

from America near Behring Straits. Do you not consider so many more

seeds and plants being taken from Europe to America, than in a reverse

direction, would go some way to account for comparative fewness of

naturalised American plants here? Though I think one might wildly

speculate on European weeds having become well fitted for cultivated

land, during thousands of years of culture, whereas cultivated land

would be a new home for native American weeds, and they would not

consequently be able to beat their European rivals when put in contest

with them on cultivated land. Here is a bit of wild theory! (342/1.

See Asa Gray, "Scientific Papers," 1889, Volume II., page 235, on "The

Pertinacity and Predominance of Weeds," where the view here given is

adopted. In a letter to Asa Gray (November 6th, 1862), published in the

"Life and Letters," II., page 390, Darwin wrote: "Does it not hurt your

Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray

will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more

honest downright good sort of weeds.")

But I did not sit down intending to scribble thus; but to beg a favour

of you. I gave Hooker a list of species of Silene, on which Gartner has

experimentised in crossing: now I want EXTREMELY to be permitted to say

that such and such are believed by Mr. Bentham to be true species, and

such and such to be only varieties. Unfortunately and stupidly, Gartner

does not append author's name to the species.

Thank you heartily for what you say about my book; but you will be

greatly disappointed; it will be grievously too hypothetical. It will

very likely be of no other service than collocating some facts; though

I myself think I see my way approximately on the origin of species. But,

alas, how frequent, how almost universal it is in an author to persuade

himself of the truth of his own dogmas. My only hope is that I certainly

see very many difficulties of gigantic stature.

If you can remember any cases of one introduced species beating out or

prevailing over another, I should be most thankful to hear it. I believe

the common corn-poppy has been seen indigenous in Sicily. I should like

to know whether you suppose that seedlings of this wild plant would

stand a contest with our own poppy; I should almost expect that

our poppies were in some degree acclimatised and accustomed to our

cornfields. If this could be shown to be so in this and other cases, I

think we could understand why many not-trained American plants would not

succeed in our agrarian habitats.

LETTER 343. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(343/1. Mr. Darwin used the knowledge of the spread of introduced plants

in North America and Australia to throw light on the cosmic migration

of plants. Sir J.D. Hooker apparently objected that it was not fair

to argue from agrarian to other plants; he also took a view differing

slightly from that of Darwin as to climatal and other natural conditions

favouring introduced plants in Australia.)

Down, January 28th, 1859.

Thanks about glaciers. It is a pleasure and profit to me to write to

you, and as in your last you have touched on naturalised plants of

Australia, I suppose you would not dislike to hear what I can say

in answer. At least I know you would not wish me to defer to your

authority, as long as not convinced.

I quite agree to what you say about our agrarian plants being accustomed

to cultivated land, and so no fair test. Buckman has, I think, published

this notion with respect to North America. With respect to roadside

plants, I cannot feel so sure that these ought to be excluded, as

animals make roads in many wild countries. (343/2. In the account of

naturalised plants in Australia in Sir J.D. Hooker's "Introductory Essay

to the Flora of Tasmania," 1859, page cvi, many of the plants are marked

"Britain--waste places," "Europe--cornfields," etc. In the same list

the species which have also invaded North America--a large number--are

given. On the margin of Darwin's copy is scribbled in pencil: "Very

good, showing how many of the same species are naturalised in Australia

and United States, with very different climates; opposed to your

conclusion." Sir Joseph supposed that one chief cause of the intrusion

of English plants in Australia, and not vice versa, was the great

importation of European seed to Australia and the scanty return of

Australian seed.)

I have now looked and found passage in F. Muller's (343/3. Ferdinand

Muller.) letter to me, in which he says: "In the WILDERNESSES of

Australia some European perennials are "advancing in sure progress,"

"not to be arrested," etc. He gives as instances (so I suppose there

are other cases) eleven species, viz., 3. Rumex, Poterium sanguisorba,

Potentilla anserina, Medicago sativa, Taraxacum officinale, Marrubium

vulgare, Plantago lanceolata, P. major, Lolium perenne. All these are

seeding freely. Now I remember, years and years ago, your discussing

with me how curiously easily plants get naturalised on uninhabited

islands, if ships even touch there. I remember we discussed packages

being opened with old hay or straw, etc. Now think of hides and wool

(and wool exported largely over Europe), and plants introduced, and

samples of corn; and I must think that if Australia had been the old

country, and Europe had been the Botany Bay, very few, very much

fewer, Australian plants would have run wild in Europe than have now in

Australia.

The case seems to me much stronger between La Plata and Spain.

Nevertheless, I will put in my one sentence on this head, illustrating

the greater migration during Glacial period from north to south than

reversely, very humbly and cautiously. (343/4. "Origin of Species,"

Edition I., page 379. Darwin refers to the facts given by Hooker and De

Candolle showing a stronger migratory flow from north to south than in

the opposite direction. Darwin accounts for this by the northern plants

having been long subject to severe competition in their northern homes,

and having acquired a greater "dominating power" than the southern

forms. "Just in the same manner as we see at the present day that very

many European productions cover the ground in La Plata, and in a lesser

degree in Australia, and have to a certain extent beaten the natives;

whereas extremely few southern forms have become naturalised in any part

of Europe, though hides, wool, and other objects likely to carry seeds

have been largely imported during the last two or three centuries from

La Plata, and during the last thirty or forty years from Australia.')

I am very glad to hear you are making good progress with your Australian

Introduction. I am, thank God, more than half through my chapter on

geographical distribution, and have done the abstract of the Glacial

part...

LETTER 344. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 30th, 1859.

Many thanks for your agreeable note. Please keep the geographical MS.

till you hear from me, for I may have to beg you to send it to Murray;

as through Lyell's intervention I hope he will publish, but he requires

first to see MS. (344/1. "The Origin of Species"; see a letter to Lyell

in "Life and Letters," II., page 151.)

I demur to what you say that we change climate of the world to account

for "migration of bugs, flies, etc." WE do nothing of the sort; for WE

rest on scored rocks, old moraines, arctic shells, and mammifers. I have

no theory whatever about cause of cold, no more than I have for cause of

elevation and subsidence; and I can see no reason why I should not use

cold, or elevation, or subsidence to explain any other phenomena, such

as distribution. I think if I had space and time I could make a pretty

good case against any great continental changes since the Glacial

epoch, and this has mainly led me to give up the Lyellian doctrine as

insufficient to explain all mutations of climate.

I was amused at the British Museum evidence. (344/2. This refers to the

letter to Murchison (Letter 65), published with the evidence of the 1858

enquiry by the Trustees of the British Museum.) I am made to give my

opinion so authoritatively on botanical matters!...

As for our belief in the origin of species making any difference in

descriptive work, I am sure it is incorrect, for I did all my barnacle

work under this point of view. Only I often groaned that I was not

allowed simply to decide whether a difference was sufficient to deserve

a name.

I am glad to hear about Huxley--a wonderful man.

LETTER 345. TO J.D. HOOKER. Wells Terrace, Ilkley, Otley, Yorkshire,

Thursday [before December 9th, 1859].

I have read your discussion (345/1. See "Introductory Essay," page

c. Darwin did not receive this work until December 23rd, so that the

reference is to proof-sheets.), as usual, with great interest. The

points are awfully intricate, almost at present beyond the confines

of knowledge. The view which I should have looked at as perhaps most

probable (though it hardly differs from yours) is that the whole world

during the Secondary ages was inhabited by marsupials, araucarias

(Mem.--Fossil wood so common of this nature in South America (345/2.

See Letter 6, Note.)), Banksia, etc.; and that these were supplanted and

exterminated in the greater area of the north, but were left alive in

the south. Whence these very ancient forms originally proceeded seems a

hopeless enquiry.

Your remarks on the passage of the northern forms southward, and of

the southern forms of no kinds passing northward, seem to me grand.

Admirable, also, are your remarks on the struggle of vegetation: I find

that I have rather misunderstood you, for I feared I differed from you,

which I see is hardly the case at all. I cannot help suspecting that you

put rather too much weight to climate in the case of Australia. La

Plata seems to present such analogous facts, though I suppose the

naturalisation of European plants has there taken place on a still

larger scale than in Australia...

You will get four copies of my book--one for self, and three for the

foreign botanists--in about ten days, or sooner; i.e., as soon as the

sheets can be bound in cloth. I hope this will not be too late for your

parcels.

When you read my volume, use your pencil and score, so that some time I

may have a talk with you on any criticisms.

LETTER 346. TO HUGH FALCONER. Down, December 17th, [1859].

Whilst I think of it, let me tell you that years ago I remember seeing

in the Museum of the Geological Society a tooth of hippopotamus from

Madagascar: this, on geographical and all other grounds, ought to be

looked to. Pray make a note of this fact. (346/1. At a meeting of the

Geological Society, May 1st, 1833, a letter was read from Mr. Telfair

to Sir Alex. Johnstone, accompanying a specimen of recent conglomerate

rock, from the island of Madagascar, containing fragments of a tusk, and

part of a molar tooth of a hippopotamus ("Proc. Geol. Soc." 1833, page

479). There is a reference to these remains of hippopotamus in a paper

by Mr. R.B. Newton in the "Geol. Mag." Volume X., 1893; and in Dr.

Forsyth Major's memoir on Megaladapis Madagascariensis ("Phil. Trans. R.

Soc." Volume 185, page 30, 1894).

Since this letter was written, several bones belonging to two or

possibly three species of hippopotamus have been found in Madagascar.

See Forsyth Major, "On the General Results of a Zoological Expedition to

Madagascar in 1894-96" ("Proc. Zool. Soc." 1896, page 971.))

We have returned a week ago from Ilkley, and it has done me some decided

good. In London I saw Lyell (the poor man who has "rushed into the

bosom of two heresies"--by the way, I saw his celts, and how intensely

interesting), and he told me that you were very antagonistic to my views

on species. I well knew this would be the case. I must freely confess,

the difficulties and objections are terrific; but I cannot believe that

a false theory would explain, as it seems to me it does explain, so

many classes of facts. Do you ever see Wollaston? He and you would agree

nicely about my book (346/2. "Origin of Species," 1859.)--ill luck to

both of you. If you have anything at all pleasant for me to hear, do

write; and if all that you can say is very unpleasant, it will do you

good to expectorate. And it is well known that you are very fond of

writing letters. Farewell, my good old friend and enemy.

Do make a note about the hippopotamus. If you are such a gentleman as to

write, pray tell me how Torquay agrees with your health.

(PLATE: DR. ASA GRAY, 1867.)

LETTER 347. TO ASA GRAY. Down, December 24th [1859].

I have been for ten weeks at Water-cure, and on my return a fortnight

ago through London I found a copy of your Memoir, and heartily do I

thank you for it. (347/1. "Diagnostic Characters of New Species

of Phaenogamous Plants collected in Japan by Charles Wright...with

Observations upon the Relations of the Japanese Flora to that of North

America and of other parts of the Northern Temperate Zone" ("Mem.

American Acad. Arts and Sci." Volume VI., page 377, 1857).) I have not

read it, and shall not be able very soon, for I am much overworked, and

my stomach has got nearly as bad as ever.

With respect to the discussion on climate, I beg you to believe that I

never put myself for a moment in competition with Dana; but when one

has thought on a subject, one cannot avoid forming some opinion. What

I wrote to Hooker I forget, after reading only a few sheets of your

Memoir, which I saw would be full of interest to me. Hooker asked me

to write to you, but, as I told him, I would not presume to express an

opinion to you without careful deliberation. What he wrote I know not:

I had previously several years ago seen (by whom I forget) some

speculation on warmer period in the U. States subsequent to Glacial

period; and I had consulted Lyell, who seemed much to doubt, and Lyell's

judgment is really admirably cautious. The arguments advanced in your

paper and in your letter seem to me hardly sufficient; not that I

should be at all sorry to admit this subsequent and intercalated warmer

period--the more changes the merrier, I think. On the other hand, I

do not believe that introduction of the Old World forms into New

World subsequent to the Glacial period will do for the modified or

representative forms in the two Worlds. There has been too much change

in comparison with the little change of isolated alpine forms; but you

will see this in my book. (347/2. "Origin of Species" (1859), Chapter

XI., pages 365 et seq.) I may just make a few remarks why at first sight

I do not attach much weight to the argument in your letter about the

warmer climate. Firstly, about the level of the land having been lower

subsequently to Glacial period, as evidenced by the whole, etc., I

doubt whether meteorological knowledge is sufficient for this deduction:

turning to the S. hemisphere, it might be argued that a greater extent

of water made the temperature lower; and when much of the northern land

was lower, it would have been covered by the sea and intermigration

between Old and New Worlds would have been checked. Secondly, I doubt

whether any inference on nature of climate can be deduced from extinct

species of mammals. If the musk-ox and deer of great size of your

Barren-Grounds had been known only by fossil bones, who would have

ventured to surmise the excessively cold climate they lived under? With

respect to food of large animals, if you care about the subject will you

turn to my discussion on this subject partly in respect to the Elephas

primigenius in my "Journal of Researches" (Murray's Home and Colonial

Library), Chapter V., page 85. (347/3. "The firm conviction of the

necessity of a vegetation possessing a character of tropical luxuriance

to support such large animals, and the impossibility of reconciling this

with the proximity of perpetual congelation, was one chief cause of

the several theories of sudden revolutions of climate...I am far from

supposing that the climate has not changed since the period when these

animals lived, which now lie buried in the ice. At present I only wish

to show that as far as quantity of food alone is concerned, the ancient

rhinoceroses might have roamed over the steppes of Central Siberia

even in their present condition, as well as the living rhinoceroses and

elephants over the karoos of Southern Africa" ("Journal of Researches,"

page 89, 1888).) In this country we infer from remains of Elephas

primigenius that the climate at the period of its embedment was very

severe, as seems countenanced by its woolly covering, by the nature

of the deposits with angular fragments, the nature of the co-embedded

shells, and co-existence of the musk-ox. I had formerly gathered from

Lyell that the relative position of the Megatherium and Mylodon with

respect to the Glacial deposits, had not been well made out; but perhaps

it has been so recently. Such are my reasons for not as yet admitting

the warmer period subsequent to Glacial epoch; but I daresay I may be

quite wrong, and shall not be at all sorry to be proved so.

I shall assuredly read your essay with care, for I have seen as yet

only a fragment, and very likely some parts, which I could not formerly

clearly understand, will be clear enough.

LETTER 348. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [December] 26th, [1859].

I have just read with intense interest as far as page xxvi (348/1. For

Darwin's impression of the "Introductory Essay to the Tasmanian Flora"

as a whole, see "Life and Letters," II., page 257.), i.e. to where you

treat of the Australian Flora itself; and the latter part I remember

thinking most of in the proof-sheets. Either you have altered a good

deal, or I did not see all or was purblind, for I have been much more

interested with all the first part than I was before,--not that I did

not like it at first. All seems to me very clearly written, and I have

been baulked at only one sentence. I think, on the whole, I like the

geological, or rather palaeontological, discussion best: it seems to me

excellent, and admirably cautious. I agree with all that you say as far

as my want of special knowledge allows me to judge.

I have no criticisms of any importance, but I should have liked more

facts in one or two places, which I shall not ask about. I rather demur

to the fairness of your comparison of rising and sinking areas (348/2.

Hooker, op. cit., page xv, paragraph 24. Hooker's view was that sinking

islands "contain comparatively fewer species and fewer peculiar generic

types than those which are rising." In Darwin's copy of the Essay is

written on the margin of page xvi: "I doubt whole case."), as in the

Indian Ocean you compare volcanic land with exclusively coral islands,

and these latter are very small in area and have very peculiar soil,

and during their formation are likely to have been utterly submerged,

perhaps many times, and restocked with existing plants. In the Pacific,

ignorance of Marianne and Caroline and other chief islands almost

prevent comparison (348/3. Gambier Island would be an interesting case.

[Note in original.]); and is it right to include American islands like

Juan Fernandez and Galapagos? In such lofty and probably ancient islands

as Sandwich and Tahiti it cannot make much difference in the flora

whether they have sunk or risen a few thousand feet of late ages.

I wish you could work in your notion of certain parts of the Tropics

having kept hot, whilst other parts were cooled; I tried this scheme in

my mind, and it seemed to fail. On the whole, I like very much all that

I have read of your Introduction, and I cannot doubt that it will

have great weight in converting other botanists from the doctrine of

immutable creation. What a lot of matter there is in one of your pages!

There are many points I wish much to discuss with you.

How I wish you could work out the Pacific floras: I remember ages

ago reading some of your MS. In Paris there must be, I should think,

materials from French voyages. But of all places in the world I

should like to see a good flora of the Sandwich Islands. (348/4. See

Hillebrand, "Flora of the Hawaiian Islands," 1888.) I would subscribe

50 pounds to any collector to go there and work at the islands. Would

it not pay for a collector to go there, especially if aided by any

subscription? It would be a fair occasion to ask for aid from the

Government grant of the Royal Society. I think it is the most isolated

group in the world, and the islands themselves well isolated from each

other.

LETTER 349. TO ASA GRAY. Down, January 7th [1860].

I have just finished your Japan memoir (349/1. "Diagnostic Characters of

New Species of Phaenogamous Plants collected in Japan by Charles Wright.

With observations upon the Relations of the Japanese Flora to that of

North America, etc.: 1857-59."--"Memoirs of Amer. Acad." VI.), and I

must thank you for the extreme interest with which I have read it. It

seems to me a most curious case of distribution; and how very well you

argue, and put the case from analogy on the high probability of single

centres of creation. That great man Agassiz, when he comes to reason,

seems to me as great in taking a wrong view as he is great in observing

and classifying. One of the points which has struck me as most

remarkable and inexplicable in your memoir is the number of monotypic

(or nearly so) genera amongst the representative forms of Japan and

N. America. And how very singular the preponderance of identical and

representative species in Eastern, compared with Western, America. I

have no good map showing how wide the moderately low country is on the

west side of the Rocky Mountains; nor, of course, do I know whether

the whole of the low western territory has been botanised; but it has

occurred to me, looking at such maps as I have, that the eastern area

must be larger than the western, which would account to a certain small

extent for preponderance on eastern side of the representative species.

Is there any truth in this suspicion? Your memoir sets me marvelling and

reflecting. I confess I am not able quite to understand your Geology at

pages 447, 448; but you would probably not care to hear my difficulties,

and therefore I will not trouble you with them.

I was so grieved to get a letter from Dana at Florence, giving me a very

poor (though improved) account of his health.

LETTER 350. TO T.H. HUXLEY. 15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, November 1st

[1860].

Your note has been wonderfully interesting. Your term, "pithecoid man,"

is a whole paper and theory in itself. How I hope the skull of the new

Macrauchenia has come. It is grand. I return Hooker's letter, with very

many thanks. The glacial action on Lebanon is particularly interesting,

considering its position between Europe and Himalaya. I get more and

more convinced that my doctrine of mundane Glacial period is correct

(350/1. In the 1st edition of the "Origin," page 373, Darwin argues in

favour of a Glacial period practically simultaneous over the globe. In

the 5th edition, 1869, page 451, he adopted Mr. Croll's views on the

alternation of cold periods in the northern and southern hemispheres. An

interesting modification of the mundane Glacial period theory is given

in Belt's "The Naturalist in Nicaragua," 1874, page 265. Mr. Belt's

views are discussed in Wallace's "Geogr. Distribution," 1876, Volume I.,

page 151.), and that it is the most important of all late phenomena

with respect to distribution of plants and animals. I hope your Review

(350/2. The history of the foundation of the "Natural History Review"

is given in Huxley's "Life and Letters," Volume I., page 209. See Letter

107.) progresses favourably. I am exhausted and not well, so write

briefly; for we have had nine days of as much misery as man can endure.

My poor daughter has suffered pitiably, and night and day required three

persons to support her. The crisis of extreme danger is over, and she

is rallying surprisingly, but the doctors are yet doubtful of ultimate

issue. But the suffering was so pitiable I almost got to wish to see her

die. She is easy now. When she will be fit to travel home I know not.

I most sincerely hope that Mrs. Huxley keeps up pretty well. The work

which most men have to do is a blessing to them in such cases as yours.

God bless you.

Sir H. Holland came here to see her, and was wonderfully kind.

LETTER 351. TO C. LYELL. Down, November 20th [1860].

I quite agree in admiration of Forbes' Essay (351/1. "Memoir of the

Geolog. Survey of the United Kingdom," Volume I., 1846.), yet, on my

life, I think it has done, in some respects, as much mischief as good.

Those who believe in vast continental extensions will never investigate

means of distribution. Good heavens, look at Heer's map of Atlantis!

I thought his division and lines of travel of the British plants very

wild, and with hardly any foundation. I quite agree with what you say

of almost certainty of Glacial epoch having destroyed the Spanish

saxifrages, etc., in Ireland. (351/2. See Letter 20.) I remember well

discussing this with Hooker; and I suggested that a slightly different

or more equable and humid climate might have allowed (with perhaps some

extension of land) the plants in question to have grown along the entire

western shores between Spain and Ireland, and that subsequently they

became extinct, except at the present points under an oceanic climate.

The point of Devonshire now has a touch of the same character.

I demur in this particular case to Forbes' transportal by ice. The

subject has rather gone out of my mind, and it is not worth looking to

my MS. discussion on migration during the Glacial period; but I remember

that the distribution of mammalia, and the very regular relation of the

Alpine plants to points due north (alluded to in "Origin"), seemed to

indicate continuous land at close of Glacial period.

LETTER 352. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 18th [1861].

I have been recalling my thoughts on the question whether the Glacial

period affected the whole world contemporaneously, or only one

longitudinal belt after another. To my sorrow my old reasons for

rejecting the latter alternative seem to me sufficient, and I should

very much like to know what you think. Let us suppose that the cold

affected the two Americas either before or after the Old World. Let

it advance first either from north or south till the Tropics became

slightly cooled, and a few temperate forms reached the Silla of Caracas

and the mountains of Brazil. You would say, I suppose, that nearly all

the tropical productions would be killed; and that subsequently, after

the cold had moderated, tropical plants immigrated from the other

non-chilled parts of the world. But this is impossible unless you bridge

over the tropical parts of the Atlantic--a doctrine which you know I

cannot admit, though in some respects wishing I could. Oswald Heer would

make nothing of such a bridge. When the Glacial period affected the

Old World, would it not be rather rash to suppose that the meridian

of India, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia were refrigerated, and

Africa not refrigerated? But let us grant that this was so; let us

bridge over the Red Sea (though rather opposed to the former almost

certain communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean); let

us grant that Arabia and Persia were damp and fit for the passage of

tropical plants: nevertheless, just look at the globe and fancy the cold

slowly coming on, and the plants under the tropics travelling towards

the equator, and it seems to me highly improbable that they could escape

from India to the still hot regions of Africa, for they would have to go

westward with a little northing round the northern shores of the Indian

Ocean. So if Africa were refrigerated first, there would be considerable

difficulty in the tropical productions of Africa escaping into the

still hot regions of India. Here again you would have to bridge over the

Indian Ocean within so very recent a period, and not in the line of

the Laccadive Archipelago. If you suppose the cold to travel from the

southern pole northwards, it will not help us, unless we suppose that

the countries immediately north of the northern tropic were at the same

time warmer, so as to allow free passage from India to Africa, which

seems to me too complex and unsupported an hypothesis to admit.

Therefore I cannot see that the supposition of different longitudinal

belts of the world being cooled at different periods helps us much.

The supposition of the whole world being cooled contemporaneously (but

perhaps not quite equally, South America being less cooled than the

Old World) seems to me the simplest hypothesis, and does not add to

the great difficulty of all the tropical productions not having been

exterminated. I still think that a few species of each still existing

tropical genus must have survived in the hottest or most favourable

spots, either dry or damp. The tropical productions, though much

distressed by the fall of temperature, would still be under the same

conditions of the length of the day, etc., and would be still exposed

to nearly the same enemies, as insects and other animals; whereas the

invading temperate productions, though finding a favouring temperature,

would have some of their conditions of life new, and would be exposed to

many new enemies. But I fully admit the difficulty to be very great.

I cannot see the full force of your difficulty of no known cause of

a mundane change of temperature. We know no cause of continental

elevations and depressions, yet we admit them. Can you believe, looking

to Europe alone, that the intense cold, which must have prevailed when

such gigantic glaciers extended on the plains of N. Italy, was due

merely to changed positions of land within so recent a period? I cannot.

It would be far too long a story, but it could, I think, be clearly

shown that all our continents existed approximately in their present

positions long before the Glacial period; which seems opposed to such

gigantic geographical changes necessary to cause such a vast fall of

temperature. The Glacial period endured in Europe and North America

whilst the level of the land oscillated in height fully 3,000 feet,

and this does not look as if changed level was the cause of the Glacial

period. But I have written an unreasonably long discussion. Do not

answer me at length, but send me a few words some time on the subject.

I have had this copied, that it might not bore you too much to read it.

A few words more. When equatorial productions were dreadfully distressed

by fall of temperature, and probably by changed humidity, and changed

proportional numbers of other plants and enemies (though they might

favour some of the species), I must admit that they all would be

exterminated if productions exactly fitted, not only for the climate,

but for all the conditions of the equatorial regions during the Glacial

period existed and could everywhere have immigrated. But the productions

of the temperate regions would have probably found, under the equator,

in their new homes and soils, considerably different conditions of

humidity and periodicity, and they would have encountered a new set of

enemies (a most important consideration); for there seems good reason

to believe that animals were not able to migrate nearly to the extent to

which plants did during the Glacial period. Hence I can persuade

myself that the temperate productions would not entirely replace and

exterminate the productions of the cooled tropics, but would become

partially mingled with them.

I am far from satisfied with what I have scribbled. I conclude that

there must have been a mundane Glacial period, and that the difficulties

are much the same whether we suppose it contemporaneous over the world,

or that longitudinal belts were affected one after the other. For

Heaven's sake forgive me!

LETTER 353. TO H.W. BATES. March 26th [1861].

I have been particularly struck by your remarks on the Glacial period.

(353/1. In his "Contributions to the Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley,"

"Trans. Entom. Soc." Volume V., page 335 (read November 24th, 1860),

Mr. Bates discusses the migration of species from the equatorial regions

after the Glacial period. He arrives at a result which, he points

out, "is highly interesting as bearing upon the question of how far

extinction is likely to have occurred in equatorial regions during

the time of the Glacial epoch."..."The result is plain, that there

has always (at least throughout immense geological epochs) been an

equatorial fauna rich in endemic species, and that extinction cannot

have prevailed to any extent within a period of time so comparatively

modern as the Glacial epoch in geology." This conclusion does not

support the view expressed in the "Origin of Species" (Edition I.,

chapter XI., page 378) that the refrigeration of the earth extended to

the equatorial regions. (Bates, loc. cit., pages 352, 353.)) You seem

to me to have put the case with admirable clearness and with crushing

force. I am quite staggered with the blow, and do not know what to

think. Of late several facts have turned up leading me to believe more

firmly that the Glacial period did affect the equatorial regions; but I

can make no answer to your argument, and am completely in a cleft

stick. By an odd chance I have only a few days ago been discussing

this subject, in relation to plants, with Dr. Hooker, who believes to a

certain extent, but strongly urged the little apparent extinction in the

equatorial regions. I stated in a letter some days ago to him that the

tropics of S. America seem to have suffered less than the Old World.

There are many perplexing points; temperate plants seem to have migrated

far more than animals. Possibly species may have been formed more

rapidly within tropics than one would have expected. I freely confess

that you have confounded me; but I cannot yet give up my belief that the

Glacial period did to certain extent affect the tropics.

LETTER 354. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 25th [1862].

I have almost finished your Arctic paper, and I must tell you how I

admire it. (354/1. "Outlines of the Distribution of Arctic Plants"

[Read June 21st, 1860], "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXIII., 1862, page 251. The

author's remarks on Mr. Darwin's theories of Geographical Distribution

are given at page 255: they are written in a characteristically

generous spirit.) The subject, treated as you have treated it, is really

magnificent. Good Heaven, what labour it must have cost you! And what a

grand prospect there is for the future. I need not say how much pleased

I am at your notice of my work; for you know that I regard your opinion

more than that of all others. Such papers are the real engine to compel

people to reflect on modification of species; any one with an enquiring

mind could hardly fail to wish to consider the whole subject after

reading your paper. By Jove! you will be driven, nolens volens, to a

cooled globe. Think of your own case of Abyssinia and Fernando Po, and

South Africa, and of your Lebanon case (354/2. See "Origin," Edition

VI., page 337.); grant that there are highlands to favour migration, but

surely the lowlands must have been somewhat cooled. What a splendid new

and original evidence and case is that of Greenland: I cannot see how,

even by granting bridges of continuous land, one can understand the

existing flora. I should think from the state of Scotland and America,

and from isothermals, that during the coldest part of Glacial period,

Greenland must have been quite depopulated. Like a dog to his vomit, I

cannot help going back and leaning to accidental means of transport

by ice and currents. How curious also is the case of Iceland. What a

splendid paper you have made of the subject. When we meet I must ask you

how much you attribute richness of flora of Lapland to mere climate; it

seems to me very marvellous that this point should have been a sort of

focus of radiation; if, however, it is unnaturally rich, i.e. contains

more species than it ought to do for its latitude, in comparison with

the other Arctic regions, would it not thus falsely seem a focus of

radiation? But I shall hereafter have to go over and over again your

paper; at present I am quite muddy on the subject. How very odd, on any

view, the relation of Greenland to the mountains of E. N. America; this

looks as if there had been wholesale extinction in E. N. America. But I

must not run on. By the way, I find Link in 1820 speculated on relation

of Alpine and Arctic plants being due to former colder climate, which he

attributed to higher mountains cutting off the warm southern winds.

LETTER 355. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, November 2nd, 1862.

Did I tell you how deeply pleased I was with Gray's notice of my Arctic

essay? (355/1. "American Journal of Science and Arts," XXXIV., and in

Gray's "Scientific Papers," Volume I., page 122.) It was awfully good of

him, for I am sure he must have seen several blunders. He tells me that

Dr. Dawson (355/2. A letter (No. 144) by Sir J.D. Hooker, dated November

7th, 1862, on this subject occurs in the Evolutionary section.) is down

on me, and I have a very nice lecture on Arctic and Alpine plants from

Dr. D., with a critique on the Arctic essay--which he did not see till

afterwards. He has found some mares' nests in my essay, and one very

venial blunder in the tables--he seems to HATE Darwinism--he accuses me

of overlooking the geological facts, and dwells much on my overlooking

subsidence of temperate America during Glacial period--and my asserting

a subsidence of Arctic America, which never entered into my head. I

wish, however, if it would not make your head ache too much, you would

just look over my first three pages, and tell me if I have outraged

any geological fact or made any oversights. I expounded the whole thing

twice to Lyell before I printed it, with map and tables, intending to

get (and I thought I had) his imprimatur for all I did and said; but

when here three nights ago, I found he was as ignorant of my having

written an Arctic essay as could be! And so I suppose he either did not

take it in, or thought it of little consequence. Hector approved of it

in toto. I need hardly say that I set out on biological grounds, and

hold myself as independent of theories of subsidence as you do of the

opinions of physicists on heat of globe! I have written a long [letter]

to Dawson.

By the way, did you see the "Athenaeum" notice of L. Bonaparte's Basque

and Finnish language?--is it not possible that the Basques are Finns

left behind after the Glacial period, like the Arctic plants? I have

often thought this theory would explain the Mexican and Chinese national

affinities. I am plodding away at Welwitschia by night and Genera

Plantarum by day. We had a very jolly dinner at the Club on Thursday. We

are all well.

LETTER 356. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 4th [1862].

I have read the pages (356/1. The paper on Arctic plants in Volume

XXIII. of the Linnean Society's "Transactions," 1860-62.) attentively

(with even very much more admiration than the first time) and cannot

imagine what makes Dr. D. accuse you of asserting a subsidence of Arctic

America. (356/2. The late Sir J.W. Dawson wrote a review (signed J.W.D)

of Hooker's Arctic paper which appeared in the "Canadian Naturalist,"

1862, Volume VII., page 334. The chief part of the article is made up of

quotations from Asa Gray's article referred to below. The remainder is

a summary of geological arguments against Hooker's views. We do not

find the accusation referred to above, which seems to have appeared in

a lecture.) No doubt there was a subsidence of N. America during

the Glacial period, and over a large part, but to maintain that the

subsidence extended over nearly the whole breadth of the continent, or

lasted during the whole Glacial period, I do not believe he can support.

I suspect much of the evidence of subsidence during the Glacial period

there will prove false, as it largely rests on ice-action, which is

becoming, as you know, to be viewed as more and more subaerial. If

Dawson has published criticisms I should like to see them. I have heard

he is rabid against me, and no doubt partly in consequence, against

anything you write in my favour (and never was anything published more

favourable than the Arctic paper). Lyell had difficulty in preventing

Dawson reviewing the "Origin" (356/3. Dawson reviewed the "Origin" in

the "Canadian Naturalist," 1860.) on hearsay, without having looked at

it. No spirit of fairness can be expected from so biassed a judge.

All I can say is that your few first pages have impressed me far more

this reading than the first time. Can the Scandinavian portion of the

flora be so potent (356/4. Dr. Hooker wrote: "Regarded as a whole the

Arctic flora is decidedly Scandinavian; for Arctic Scandinavia, or

Lapland, though a very small tract of land, contains by far the richest

Arctic flora, amounting to three-fourths of the whole"; he pointed out

"that the Scandinavian flora is present in every latitude of the globe,

and is the only one that is so" (quoted by Gray, loc. cit. infra).) from

having been preserved in that corner, warmed by the Gulf Stream, and

from now alone representing the entire circumpolar flora, during the

warmer pre-Glacial period? From the first I have not been able to resist

the impression (shared by Asa Gray, whose Review (356/5. Asa Gray's

"Scientific Papers," Volume I., page 122.) on you pleased me much) that

during the Glacial period there must have been almost entire extinction

in Greenland; for depth of sea does not favour former southerly

extension of land there. (356/6. In the driving southward of the

vegetation by the Glacial epoch the Greenland flora would be "driven

into the sea, that is, exterminated." (Hooker quoted by Gray, loc. cit.

page 124.) I must suspect that plants have been largely introduced by

sea currents, which bring so much wood from N. Europe. But here we shall

split as wide as the poles asunder. All the world could not persuade me,

if it tried, that yours is not a grand essay. I do not quite understand

whether it is this essay that Dawson has been "down on." What a curious

notion about Glacial climate, and Basques and Finns! Are the Basques

mountaineers--I hope so. I am sorry I have not seen the "Athenaeum," but

I now take in the "Parthenon." By the way, I have just read with much

interest Max Muller (356/7. Probably his "Lectures on the Science of

Language," 1861-64.); the last part, about first origin of language,

seems the least satisfactory part.

Pray thank Oliver heartily for his heap of references on poisons.

(356/8. Doubtless in connection with Darwin's work on Drosera: he was

working at this subject during his stay at Bournemouth in the autumn of

1862.) How the devil does he find them out?

I must not indulge [myself] with Cypripedium. Asa Gray has made out

pretty clearly that, at least in some cases, the act of fertilisation is

effected by small insects being forced to crawl in and out of the flower

in a particular direction; and perhaps I am quite wrong that it is ever

effected by the proboscis.

I retract so far that if you have the rare C. hirsutissimum, I should

very much like to examine a cut single flower; for I saw one at a flower

show, and as far as I could see, it seemed widely different from other

forms.

P.S.--Answer this, if by chance you can. I remember distinctly having

read in some book of travels, I am nearly sure in Australia, an account

of the natives, during famines, trying and cooking in all sorts of ways

various vegetable productions, and sometimes being injured by them. Can

you remember any such account? I want to find it. I thought it was in

Sir G. Grey, but it is not. Could it have been in Eyre's book?

LETTER 357. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. [November 1862].

...I have speculated on the probability of there having been a

post-Glacial Arctic-Norwego-Greenland in connection, which would account

for the strong fact, that temperate Greenland is as Arctic as Arctic

Greenland is--a fact, to me, of astounding force. I do confess, that a

northern migration would thus fill Greenland as it is filled, in so far

as the whole flora (temperate and Arctic) would be Arctic,--but then the

same plants should have gone to the other Polar islands, and above all,

so many Scandinavian Arctic plants should not be absent in Greenland,

still less should whole Natural Orders be absent, and above all the

Arctic Leguminosae. It is difficult (as I have told Dawson) to conceive

of the force with which arguments drawn from the absence of certain

familiar ubiquitous plants strike the botanists. I would not throw over

altogether ice-transport and water-transport, but I cannot realise

their giving rise to such anomalies, in the distribution, as Greenland

presents. So, too, I have always felt the force of your objection, that

Greenland should have been depopulated in the Glacial period, but then

reflected that vegetation now ascends I forget how high (about 1,000

feet) in Disco, in 70 deg, and that even in a Glacial ocean there may

always have been lurking-places for the few hundred plants Greenland

now possesses. Supposing Greenland were repeopled from Scandinavia over

ocean way, why should Carices be the chief things brought? Why should

there have been no Leguminosae brought, no plants but high Arctic?--why

no Caltha palustris, which gilds the marshes of Norway and paints the

housetops of Iceland? In short, to my eyes, the trans-oceanic migration

would no more make such an assemblage than special creations would

account for representative species--and no "ingenious wriggling" ever

satisfied me that it would. There, then!

I dined with Henry Christy last night, who was just returned from celt

hunting with Lartet, amongst the Basques,--they are Pyreneans. Lubbock

was there, and told me that my precious speculation was one of Von

Baer's, and that the Finns are supposed to have made the Kjokken

moddings. I read Max Muller a year ago--and quite agree, first part

is excellent; last, on origin of language, fatuous and feeble as a

scientific argument.

LETTER 358. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 12th [1862].

I return by this post Dawson's lecture, which seems to me interesting,

but with nothing new. I think he must be rather conceited, with his "If

Dr. Hooker had known this and that, he would have said so and so." It

seems to me absurd in Dawson assuming that North America was under sea

during the whole Glacial period. Certainly Greenland is a most curious

and difficult problem. But as for the Leguminosae, the case, my dear

fellow, is as plain as a pike-staff, as the seeds are so very quickly

killed by the sea-water. Seriously, it would be a curious experiment to

try vitality in salt water of the plants which ought to be in Greenland.

I forget, however, that it would be impossible, I suppose, to get hardly

any except the Caltha, and if ever I stumble on that plant in seed I

will try it.

I wish to Heaven some one would examine the rocks near sea-level at the

south point of Greenland, and see if they are well scored; that would

tell something. But then subsidence might have brought down higher

rocks to present sea-level. I am much more willing to admit your

Norwego-Greenland connecting land than most other cases, from the nature

of the rocks in Spitzbergen and Bear Island. You have broached and

thrown a lot of light on a splendid problem, which some day will be

solved. It rejoices me to think that, when a boy, I was shown an erratic

boulder in Shrewsbury, and was told by a clever old gentleman that till

the world's end no one would ever guess how it came there.

It makes me laugh to think of Dr. Dawson's indignation at your sentence

about "obliquity of vision." (358/1. See Letter 144.) By Jove, he will

try and pitch into you some day. Good night for the present.

To return for a moment to the Glacial period. You might have asked

Dawson whether ibex, marmot, etc., etc., were carried from mountain to

mountain in Europe on floating ice; and whether musk ox got to England

on icebergs? Yet England has subsided, if we trust to the good evidence

of shells alone, more during Glacial period than America is known to

have done.

For Heaven's sake instil a word of caution into Tyndall's ears. I saw

an extract that valleys of Switzerland were wholly due to glaciers. He

cannot have reflected on valleys in tropical countries. The grandest

valleys I ever saw were in Tahiti. Again, if I understand, he supposes

that glaciers wear down whole mountain ranges; thus lower their height,

decrease the temperature, and decrease the glaciers themselves. Does

he suppose the whole of Scotland thus worn down? Surely he must forget

oscillation of level would be more potent one way or another during such

enormous lapses of time. It would be hard to believe any mountain range

has been so long stationary.

I suppose Lyell's book will soon be out. (358/2. "The Antiquity of Man,"

1863.) I was very glad to see in a newspaper that Murray sold 4,000.

What a sale!

I am now working on cultivated plants, and rather like my work; but I

am horribly afraid I make the rashest remarks on value of differences. I

trust to a sort of instinct, and, God knows, can seldom give any reason

for my remarks. Lord, in what a medley the origin of cultivated plants

is. I have been reading on strawberries, and I can find hardly two

botanists agree what are the wild forms; but I pick out of horticultural

books here and there queer cases of variation, inheritance, etc., etc.

What a long letter I have scribbled; but you must forgive me, for it is

a great pleasure thus talking to you.

Did you ever hear of "Condy's Ozonised Water"? I have been trying

it with, I think, extraordinary advantage--to comfort, at least. A

teaspoon, in water, three or four times a day. If you meet any poor

dyspeptic devil like me, suggest it.

LETTER 359. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 26th [March 1863].

I hope and think you are too severe on Lyell's early chapters. Though

so condensed, and not well arranged, they seemed to me to convey with

uncommon force the antiquity of man, and that was his object. (359/1.

"The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man": London, 1863.) It

did not occur to me, but I fear there is some truth in your criticism,

that nothing is to be trusted until he [Lyell] had observed it.

I am glad to see you stirred up about tropical plants during Glacial

period.

Remember that I have many times sworn to you that they coexisted; so,

my dear fellow, you must make them coexist. I do not think that greater

coolness in a disturbed condition of things would be required than the

zone of the Himalaya, in which you describe some tropical and temperate

forms commingling (359/2. "During this [the Glacial period], the coldest

point, the lowlands under the equator, must have been clothed with a

mingled tropical and temperate vegetation, like that described by Hooker

as growing luxuriantly at the height of from four to five thousand feet

on the lower slopes of the Himalaya, but with perhaps a still greater

preponderance of temperate forms" ("Origin of Species," Edition VI.,

page 338).); and as in the lower part of the Cameroons, and as Seemann

describes, in low mountains of Panama. It is, as you say, absurd to

suppose that such a genus as Dipterocarpus (359/3. Dipterocarpus,

a genus of the Dipterocarpaceae, a family of dicotyledonous plants

restricted to the tropics of the Old World.) could have been developed

since the Glacial era; but do you feel so sure, as to oppose (359/4.

The meaning seems to be: "Do you feel so sure that you can bring in

opposition a large body of considerations to show, etc.") a large body

of considerations on the other side, that this genus could not have been

slowly accustomed to a cooler climate? I see Lindley says it has

not been brought to England, and so could not have been tried in the

greenhouse. Have you materials to show to what little height it ever

ascends the mountains of Java or Sumatra? It makes a mighty difference,

the whole area being cooled; and the area perhaps not being in all

respects, such as dampness, etc., etc., fitted for such temperate

plants as could get in. But, anyhow, I am ready to swear again that

Dipterocarpus and any other genus you like to name did survive during a

cooler period.

About reversion you express just what I mean. I somehow blundered, and

mentally took literally that the child inherited from his grandfather.

This view of latency collates a lot of facts--secondary sexual

characters in each individual; tendency of latent character to appear

temporarily in youth; effect of crossing in educing talent, character,

etc. When one thinks of a latent character being handed down, hidden for

a thousand or ten thousand generations, and then suddenly appearing, one

is quite bewildered at the host of characters written in invisible ink

on the germ. I have no evidence of the reversion of all characters in a

variety. I quite agree to what you say about genius. I told Lyell that

passage made me groan.

What a pity about Falconer! (359/5. This refers to Falconer's claim

of priority against Lyell. See "Life and Letters," III., page 14; also

Letters 166 and 168.) How singular and how lamentable!

Remember orchid pods. I have a passion to grow the seeds (and other

motives). I have not a fact to go on, but have a notion (no, I have a

firm conviction!) that they are parasitic in early youth on cryptogams!

(359/6. In an article on British Epiphytal Orchids ("Gard. Chron." 1884,

page 144) Malaxis paludosa is described by F.W. Burbidge as being a true

epiphyte on the stems of Sphagnum. Stahl states that the difficulty of

cultivating orchids largely depends on their dependence on a mycorhizal

fungus,--though he does not apply his view to germination. See

Pringsheim's "Jahrbucher," XXXIV., page 581. We are indebted to Sir

Joseph Hooker for the reference to Burbidge's paper.) Here is a fool's

notion. I have some planted on Sphagnum. Do any tropical lichens or

mosses, or European, withstand heat, or grow on any trees in hothouse at

Kew? If so, for love of Heaven, favour my madness, and have some scraped

off and sent me.

I am like a gambler, and love a wild experiment. It gives me great

pleasure to fancy that I see radicles of orchid seed penetrating the

Sphagnum. I know I shall not, and therefore shall not be disappointed.

LETTER 360. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [September 26th 1863].

...About New Zealand, at last I am coming round, and admit it must have

been connected with some terra firma, but I will die rather than admit

Australia. How I wish mountains of New Caledonia were well worked!...

LETTER 361. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(361/1. In the earlier part of this letter Mr. Darwin refers to a review

on Planchon in the "Nat. History Review," April 1865. There can be

no doubt, therefore, that "Thomson's article" must be the review of

Jordan's "Diagnoses d'especes nouvelles ou meconnues," etc., in the

same number, page 226. It deals with "lumpers" and "splitters," and a

possible trinomial nomenclature.)

April 17th [1865].

I have been very much struck by Thomson's article; it seems to me quite

remarkable for its judgment, force, and clearness. It has interested me

greatly. I have sometimes loosely speculated on what nomenclature would

come to, and concluded that it would be trinomial. What a name a

plant will formally bear with the author's name after genus (as some

recommend), and after species and subspecies! It really seems one of

the greatest questions which can be discussed for systematic Natural

History. How impartially Thomson adjusts the claims of "hair-splitters"

and "lumpers"! I sincerely hope he will pretty often write reviews or

essays. It is an old subject of grief to me, formerly in Geology and of

late in Zoology and Botany, that the very best men (excepting those who

have to write principles and elements, etc.) read so little, and give

up nearly their whole time to original work. I have often thought that

science would progress more if there was more reading. How few read any

long and laborious papers! The only use of publishing such seems to be

as a proof that the author has given time and labour to his work.

LETTER 362. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 22nd and 28th, 1865.

As for the anthropologists being a bete noire to scientific men, I

am not surprised, for I have just skimmed through the last "Anthrop.

Journal," and it shows, especially the long attack on the British

Association, a curious spirit of insolence, conceit, dullness, and

vulgarity. I have read with uncommon interest Travers' short paper on

the Chatham Islands. (362/1. See Travers, H.H., "Notes on the Chatham

Islands," "Linn. Soc. Journ." IX., October 1865. Mr. Travers says he

picked up a seed of Edwardsia, evidently washed ashore. The stranded

logs indicated a current from New Zealand.) I remember your pitching

into me with terrible ferocity because I said I thought the seed of

Edwardsia might have been floated from Chili to New Zealand: now what do

you say, my young man, to the three young trees of the same size on one

spot alone of the island, and with the cast-up pod on the shore? If it

were not for those unlucky wingless birds I could believe that the group

had been colonised by accidental means; but, as it is, it appears by

far to me the best evidence of continental extension ever observed. The

distance, I see, is 360 miles. I wish I knew whether the sea was deeper

than between New Zealand and Australia. I fear you will not admit such

a small accident as the wingless birds having been transported on

icebergs. Do suggest, if you have a chance, to any one visiting the

Islands again, to look out for erratic boulders there. How curious

his statement is about the fruit-trees and bees! (362/2. "Since the

importation of bees, European fruit-trees and bushes have produced

freely." Travers, "Linn. Soc. Journal," IX., page 144.) I wish I knew

whether the clover had spread before the bees were introduced...

I saw in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" the sentence about the "Origin"

dying in Germany, but did not know it was by Seemann.

LETTER 363. TO C. LYELL. Down, February 7th [1866].

I am very much obliged for your note and the extract, which have

interested me extremely. I cannot disbelieve for a moment Agassiz on

Glacial action after all his experience, as you say, and after that

capital book with plates which he early published (363/1. "Etudes sur

les Glaciers"; Neuchatel, 1840.); as for his inferences and reasoning on

the valley of the Amazon that is quite another question, nor can he have

seen all the regions to which Mrs. A. alludes. (363/2. A letter from

Mrs. Agassiz to Lady Lyell, which had been forwarded to Mr. Darwin. The

same letter was sent also to Sir Charles Bunbury, who, in writing to

Lyell on February 3rd, 1866, criticises some of the statements. He

speaks of Agassiz's observations on glacial phenomena in Brazil as "very

astonishing indeed; so astonishing that I have very great difficulty in

believing them. They shake my faith in the glacial system altogether; or

perhaps they ought rather to shake the faith in Agassiz...If Brazil

was ever covered with glaciers, I can see no reason why the whole earth

should not have been so. Perhaps the whole terrestrial globe was once

'one entire and perfect icicle.'" (From the privately printed "Life" of

Sir Charles Bunbury, edited by Lady Bunbury, Volume ii., page 334).) Her

letter is not very clear to me, and I do not understand what she means

by "to a height of more than three thousand feet." There are no erratic

boulders (to which I particularly attended ) in the low country round

Rio. It is possible or even probable that this area may have subsided,

for I could detect no evidence of elevation, or any Tertiary formations

or volcanic action. The Organ Mountains are from six to seven thousand

feet in height; and I am only a little surprised at their bearing the

marks of glacial action. For some temperate genera of plants, viz.,

Vaccinium, Andromeda, Gaultheria, Hypericum, Drosera, Habenaria, inhabit

these mountains, and I look at this almost as good evidence of a cold

period, as glacial action. That there are not more temperate plants can

be accounted for by the isolated position of these mountains. There are

no erratic boulders on the Pacific coast north of Chiloe, and but few

glaciers in the Cordillera, but it by no means follows, I think, that

there may not have been formerly gigantic glaciers on the eastern and

more humid side.

In the third edition of "Origin," page 403 (363/3. "Origin," Edition

VI., page 335, 1882. "Mr. D. Forbes informs me that he found in various

parts of the Cordillera, from lat. 13 deg W. to 30 deg S., at about the

height of twelve thousand feet, deeply furrowed rocks...and likewise

great masses of detritus, including grooved pebbles. Along this whole

space of the Cordillera true glaciers do not now exist, even at much

more considerable height. "), you will find a brief allusion, on

authority of Mr. D. Forbes, on the former much lower extension of

glaciers in the equatorial Cordillera. Pray also look at page 407 at

what I say on the nature of tropical vegetation (which I could now much

improve) during the Glacial period. (363/4. "During this, the coldest

period, the lowlands under the Equator must have been clothed with a

mingled tropical and temperate vegetation..." ("Origin," Edition VI.,

1882, page 338).)

I feel a strong conviction that soon every one will believe that the

whole world was cooler during the Glacial period. Remember Hooker's

wonderful case recently discovered of the identity of so many temperate

plants on the summit of Fernando Po, and on the mountains of Abyssinia.

(363/5. "Dr. Hooker has also lately shown that several of the plants

living in the upper parts of the lofty island of Fernando Po, and in

the neighbouring Cameroon Mountains, in the Gulf of Guinea, are closely

related to those on the mountains of Abyssinia, and likewise to those of

temperate Europe" (loc. cit., page 337).) I look at [it] as certain that

these plants crossed the whole of Africa from east to west during the

same period. I wish I had published a long chapter written in full, and

almost ready for the press, on this subject, which I wrote ten years

ago. It was impossible in the "Origin" to give a fair abstract.

My health is considerably improved, so that I am able to work nearly two

hours a day, and so make some little progress with my everlasting book

on domestic varieties. You will have heard of my sister Catherine's easy

death last Friday morning. (363/6. Catherine Darwin died in February

1866.) She suffered much, and we all look at her death as a blessing,

for there was much fear of prolonged and greater suffering. We are

uneasy about Susan, but she has hitherto borne it better than we could

have hoped. (363/7. Susan Darwin died in October 1866.)

Remember glacial action of Lebanon when you speak of no glacial action

in S. on Himalaya, and in S.E. Australia.

P.S.--I have been very glad to see Sir C. Bunbury's letter. (363/8. The

letter from Bunbury to Lyell, already quoted on this subject. Bunbury

writes: "There is nothing in the least NORTHERN, nothing that is not

characteristically Brazilian, in the flora of the Organ Mountains.") If

the genera which I name from Gardner (363/9. "Travels in the Interior

of Brazil," by G. Gardner: London, 1846.) are not considered by him as

usually temperate forms, I am, of course, silenced; but Hooker looked

over the MS. chapter some ten years ago and did not score out my remarks

on them, and he is generally ready enough to pitch into my ignorance

and snub me, as I often deserve. My wonder was how any, ever so few,

temperate forms reached the mountains of Brazil; and I supposed they

travelled by the rather high land and ranges (name forgotten) which

stretch from the Cordillera towards Brazil. Cordillera genera of plants

have also, somehow, reached the Silla of Caracas. When I think of

the vegetation of New Zealand and west coast of South America, where

glaciers now descend to or very near to the sea, I feel it rash to

conclude that all tropical forms would be destroyed by a considerably

cooler period under the Equator.

LETTER 364. TO C. LYELL. Down, Thursday, February 15th [1866].

Many thanks for Hooker's letter; it is a real pleasure to me to read his

letters; they are always written with such spirit. I quite agree that

Agassiz could never mistake weathered blocks and glacial action; though

the mistake has, I know, been made in two or three quarters of the

world. I have often fought with Hooker about the physicists putting

their veto on the world having been cooler; it seems to me as irrational

as if, when geologists first brought forward some evidence of elevation

and subsidence, a former Hooker had declared that this could not

possibly be admitted until geologists could explain what made the earth

rise and fall. It seems that I erred greatly about some of the plants on

the Organ Mountains. (364/1. "On the Organ Mountains of Brazil some few

temperate European, some Antarctic, and some Andean genera were found

by Gardner, which did not exist in the low intervening hot countries"

("Origin," Edition VI., page 336).) But I am very glad to hear about

Fuchsia, etc. I cannot make out what Hooker does believe; he seems to

admit the former cooler climate, and almost in the same breath to spurn

the idea. To retort Hooker's words, "it is inexplicable to me" how he

can compare the transport of seeds from the Andes to the Organ Mountains

with that from a continent to an island. Not to mention the much greater

distance, there are no currents of water from one to the other; and

what on earth should make a bird fly that distance without resting

many times? I do not at all suppose that nearly all tropical forms were

exterminated during the cool period; but in somewhat depopulated areas,

into which there could be no migration, probably many closely allied

species will have been formed since this period. Hooker's paper in the

"Natural History Review" (364/2. Possibly an unsigned article, entitled

"New Colonial Floras" (a review of Grisebach's "Flora of the

British West Indian Islands" and Thwaites' "Enumeratio Plantarum

Zeylaniae").--"Nat. Hist. Review," January 1865, page 46. See Letter

184.) is well worth studying; but I cannot remember that he gives good

grounds for his conviction that certain orders of plants could not

withstand a rather cooler climate, even if it came on most gradually.

We have only just learnt under how cool a temperature several tropical

orchids can flourish. I clearly saw Hooker's difficulty about the

preservation of tropical forms during the cool period, and tried my best

to retain one spot after another as a hothouse for their preservation;

but it would not hold good, and it was a mere piece of truckling on my

part when I suggested that longitudinal belts of the world were cooled

one after the other. I shall very much like to see Agassiz's letter,

whenever you receive one. I have written a long letter; but a squabble

with or about Hooker always does me a world of good, and we have been

at it many a long year. I cannot understand whether he attacks me as a

wriggler or a hammerer, but I am very sure that a deal of wriggling has

to be done.

LETTER 365. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, July 30th [1866].

Many thanks about the lupin. Your letter has interested me extremely,

and reminds me of old times. I suppose, by your writing, you would like

to hear my notions. I cannot admit the Atlantis connecting Madeira and

Canary Islands without the strongest evidence, and all on that side

(365/1. Sir J.D. Hooker lectured on "Insular Floras" at the Nottingham

meeting of the British Association on August 27th, 1866. His lecture is

given in the "Gardeners' Chronicle," 1867, page 6. No doubt he was at

this time preparing his remarks on continental extension, which take the

form of a judicial statement, giving the arguments and difficulties on

both sides. He sums up against continental extension, which, he says,

accounts for everything and explains nothing; "whilst the hypothesis

of trans-oceanic migration, though it leaves a multitude of facts

unexplained, offers a rational solution of many of the most puzzling

phenomena." In his lecture, Sir Joseph wrote that in ascending the

mountains in Madeira there is but little replacement of lowland species

by those of a higher northern latitude. "Plants become fewer and fewer

as we ascend, and their places are not taken by boreal ones, or by but

very few."): the depth is so great; there is nothing geologically in

the islands favouring the belief; there are no endemic mammals or

batrachians. Did not Bunbury show that some Orders of plants were

singularly deficient? But I rely chiefly on the large amount of specific

distinction in the insects and land-shells of P. Santo and Madeira:

surely Canary and Madeira could not have been connected, if Madeira and

P. Santo had long been distinct. If you admit Atlantis, I think you are

bound to admit or explain the difficulties.

With respect to cold temperate plants in Madeira, I, of course, know

not enough to form an opinion; but, admitting Atlantis, I can see their

rarity is a great difficulty; otherwise, seeing that the latitude

is only a little north of the Persian Gulf, and seeing the long

sea-transport for seeds, the rarity of northern plants does not seem to

me difficult. The immigration may have been from a southerly direction,

and it seems that some few African as well as coldish plants are common

to the mountains to the south.

Believing in occasional transport, I cannot feel so much surprise at

there being a good deal in common to Madeira and Canary, these being

the nearest points of land to each other. It is quite new and very

interesting to me what you say about the endemic plants being in so

large a proportion rare species. From the greater size of the workshop

(i.e., greater competition and greater number of individuals, etc.)

I should expect that continental forms, as they are occasionally

introduced, would always tend to beat the insular forms; and, as in

every area, there will always be many forms more or less rare tending

towards extinction, I should certainly have expected that in islands

a large proportion of the rarer forms would have been insular in their

origin. The longer the time any form has existed in an island into which

continental forms are occasionally introduced, by so much the chances

will be in favour of its being peculiar or abnormal in nature, and at

the same time scanty in numbers. The duration of its existence will

also have formerly given it the best chance, when it was not so rare, of

being widely distributed to adjoining archipelagoes. Here is a wriggle:

the older a form is, the better the chance will be of its having become

developed into a tree! An island from being surrounded by the sea will

prevent free immigration and competition, hence a greater number of

ancient forms will survive on an island than on the nearest continent

whence the island was stocked; and I have always looked at Clethra

(365/2. Clethra is an American shrubby genus of Ericaceae, found nowhere

nearer to Madeira than North America. Of this plant and of Persea, Sir

Charles Lyell ("Principles," 1872, Volume II., page 422) says: "Regarded

as relics of a Miocene flora, they are just such forms as we should

naturally expect to have come from the adjoining Miocene continent." See

also "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 83, where a similar view is

quoted from Heer.) and the other extra-European forms as remnants of

the Tertiary flora which formerly inhabited Europe. This preservation of

ancient forms in islands appears to me like the preservation of ganoid

fishes in our present freshwaters. You speak of no northern plants on

mountains south of the Pyrenees: does my memory quite deceive me that

Boissier published a long list from the mountains in Southern Spain? I

have not seen Wollaston's, "Catalogue," (365/4. Probably the "Catalogue

of the Coleopterous Insects of the Canaries in the British Museum,"

1864.) but must buy it, if it gives the facts about rare plants which

you mention.

And now I have given more than enough of my notions, which I well know

will be in flat contradiction with all yours.

Wollaston, in his "Insecta Maderensia" (365/5. "Insecta Maderensia,"

London, 1854.), 4to, page 12, and in his "Variation of Species," pages

82-7, gives the case of apterous insects, but I remember I worked out

some additional details.

I think he gives in these same works the proportion of European insects.

LETTER 366. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(366/1. Sir Joseph had asked (July 31st, 1866): "Is there an evidence

that the south of England and of Ireland were not submerged during the

Glacial epoch, when the W. and N. of England were islands in a glacial

sea? And supposing they were above water, could the present Atlantic

and N.W. of France floras we now find there have been there during the

Glacial epoch?--Yet this is what Forbes demands, page 346. At page 347

he sees this objection, and wriggles out of his difficulty by putting

the date of the Channel 'towards the close of the Glacial epoch.' What

does Austen make the date of the Channel?--ante or post Glacial?" The

changes in level and other questions are dealt with in a paper by R.A.C.

Austen (afterwards Godwin-Austen), "On the Superficial Accumulations

of the Coasts of the English Channel and the Changes they indicate."

"Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." VII., 1851, page 118. Obit. notice by Prof.

Bonney in the "Proc. Geol. Soc." XLI., page 37, 1885.)

Down, August 3rd [1866].

I will take your letter seriatim. There is good evidence that S.E.

England was dry land during the Glacial period. I forget what Austen

says, but Mammals prove, I think, that England has been united to the

Continent since the Glacial period. I don't see your difficulty about

what I say on the breaking of an isthmus: if Panama was broken through

would not the fauna of the Pacific flow into the W. Indies, or vice

versa, and destroy a multitude of creatures? Of course I'm no judge, but

I thought De Candolle had made out his case about small areas of trees.

You will find at page 112, 3rd edition "Origin," a too concise allusion

to the Madeira flora being a remnant of the Tertiary European flora.

I shall feel deeply interested by reading your botanical difficulties

against occasional immigration. The facts you give about certain plants,

such as the heaths, are certainly very curious. (366/2. In Hooker's

lecture he gives St. Dabeoc's Heath and Calluna vulgaris as the most

striking of the few boreal plants in the Azores. Darwin seems to have

been impressed by the boreal character of the Azores, thus taking the

opposite view to that of Sir Joseph. See Letter 370, note.) I thought

the Azores flora was more boreal, but what can you mean by saying that

the Azores are nearer to Britain and Newfoundland than to Madeira?--on

the globe they are nearly twice as far off. (366/3. See Letter 368.)

With respect to sea currents, I formerly made enquiries at Madeira,

but cannot now give you the results; but I remember that the facts were

different from what is generally stated: I think that a ship wrecked on

the Canary Islands was thrown up on the coast of Madeira.

You speak as if only land-shells differed in Madeira and Porto Santo:

does my memory deceive me that there is a host of representative

insects?

When you exorcise at Nottingham occasional means of transport, be

honest, and admit how little is known on the subject. Remember how

recently you and others thought that salt water would soon kill seeds.

Reflect that there is not a coral islet in the ocean which is not pretty

well clothed with plants, and the fewness of the species can hardly

with justice be attributed to the arrival of few seeds, for coral islets

close to other land support only the same limited vegetation. Remember

that no one knew that seeds would remain for many hours in the crops of

birds and retain their vitality; that fish eat seeds, and that when the

fish are devoured by birds the seeds can germinate, etc. Remember that

every year many birds are blown to Madeira and to the Bermudas. Remember

that dust is blown 1,000 miles over the Atlantic. Now, bearing all this

in mind, would it not be a prodigy if an unstocked island did not in the

course of ages receive colonists from coasts whence the currents flow,

trees are drifted and birds are driven by gales. The objections to

islands being thus stocked are, as far as I understand, that certain

species and genera have been more freely introduced, and others less

freely than might have been expected. But then the sea kills some sorts

of seeds, others are killed by the digestion of birds, and some would

be more liable than others to adhere to birds' feet. But we know so very

little on these points that it seems to me that we cannot at all tell

what forms would probably be introduced and what would not. I do not for

a moment pretend that these means of introduction can be proved to

have acted; but they seem to me sufficient, with no valid or heavy

objections, whilst there are, as it seems to me, the heaviest objections

on geological and on geographical distribution grounds (pages 387, 388,

"Origin" (366/4. Edition III., or Edition VI., page 323.) to Forbes'

enormous continental extensions. But I fear that I shall and have bored

you.

LETTER 367. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(367/1. In a letter of July 31st, Sir J.D. Hooker wrote, "You must not

suppose me to be a champion of continental connection, because I am not

agreeable to trans-oceanic migration...either hypothesis appears to

me well to cover the facts of oceanic floras, but there are grave

objections to both, botanical to yours, geological to Forbes'.")

The following interesting letters give some of Sir Joseph's

difficulties.)

Kew, August 4th, 1866.

You mention ("Journal") no land-birds, except introduced, upon St.

Helena. Beatson (Introduction xvii) mentions one (367/2. Aegialitis

sanctae-helenae, a small plover "very closely allied to a species found

in South Africa, but presenting certain differences which entitle it to

the rank of a peculiar species" (Wallace, "Island Life," page 294).

In the earlier editions of the "Origin" (e.g. Edition III., page 422)

Darwin wrote that "Madeira does not possess one peculiar bird."

In Edition IV., 1866, page 465, the mistake was put right.) "in

considerable numbers," resembles sand-lark--is called "wire bird," has

long greenish legs like wires, runs fast, eyes large, bill moderately

long, is rather shy, does not possess much powers of flight. What was

it? I have written to ask Sclater, also about birds of Madeira and

Azores. It is a very curious thing that the Azores do not contain the

(non-European) American genus Clethra, that is found in Madeira and

Canaries, and that the Azores contain no trace of American element

(beyond what is common to Madeira), except a species of Sanicula, a

genus with hooked bristles to the small seed-vessels. The European

Sanicula roams from Norway to Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde, Cameroons,

Cape of Good Hope, and from Britain to Japan, and also is, I think, in

N. America; but does not occur in the Azores, where it is replaced by

one that is of a decidedly American type.

This tells heavily against the doctrine that joins Atlantis to America,

and is much against your trans-oceanic migration--for considering how

near the Azores are to America, and in the influence of the Gulf-stream

and prevalent winds, it certainly appears marvellous. Not only are the

Azores in a current that sweeps the coast of U. States, but they are in

the S.W. winds, and in the eye of the S.W. hurricanes!

I suppose you will answer that the European forms are prepotent, but

this is riding prepotency to death.

R.T. Lowe has written me a capital letter on the Madeiran, Canarian, and

Cape Verde floras.

I misled you if I gave you to understand that Wollaston's Catalogue said

anything about rare plants. I am worked and worried to death with this

lecture: and curse myself as a soft headed and hearted imbecile to have

accepted it.

LETTER 368. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, Monday [August 6th,

1866].

Again thanks for your letter. You need not fear my not doing justice to

your objections to the continental hypothesis!

Referring to page 344 again (368/1. "Origin of Species," Edition III.,

pages 343-4: "In some cases, however, as by the breaking of an isthmus

and the consequent irruption of a multitude of new inhabitants, or

by the final subsidence of an island, the extinction may have been

comparatively rapid."), it never occurred to me that you alluded to

extinction of marine life: an isthmus is a piece of land, and you go on

in the same sentence about "an island," which quite threw me out, for

the destruction of an isthmus makes an island!

I surely did not say Azores nearer to Britain and Newfoundland "than to

Madeira," but "than Madeira is to said places."

With regard to the Madeiran coleoptera I rely very little on local

distribution of insects--they are so local themselves. A butterfly is

a great rarity in Kew, even a white, though we are surrounded by market

gardens. All insects are most rare with us, even the kinds that abound

on the opposite side of Thames.

So with shells, we have literally none--not a Helix even, though they

abound in the lanes 200 yards off the Gardens. Of the 89 Dezertas

insects [only?] 11 are peculiar. Of the 162 Porto Santan 113 are

Madeiran and 51 Dezertan.

Never mind bothering Murray about the new edition of the "Origin" for

me. You will tell me anything bearing on my subject.

LETTER 369. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, August 7th, 1866.

Dear old Darwin,

You must not let me worry you. I am an obstinate pig, but you must not

be miserable at my looking at the same thing in a different light from

you. I must get to the bottom of this question, and that is all I can

do. Some cleverer fellow one day will knock the bottom out of it, and

see his way to explain what to a botanist without a theory to support

must be very great difficulties. True enough, all may be explained, as

you reason it will be--I quite grant this; but meanwhile all is not so

explained, and I cannot accept a hypothesis that leaves so many facts

unaccounted for. You say the temperate parts of N. America [are] nearly

two and a half times as distant from the Azores as Europe is. According

to a rough calculation on Col. James' chart I make E. Azores to Portugal

850, West do. to Newfoundland 1500, but I am writing to a friend at

Admiralty to have the distance calculated (which looks like cracking

nuts with Nasmyth's hammer!)

Are European birds blown to America? Are the Azorean erratics an

established fact? I want them very badly, though they are not of much

consequence, as a slight sinking would hide all evidence of that sort.

I do want to sum up impartially, leaving the verdict to jury. I cannot

do this without putting all difficulties most clearly. How do you know

how you would fare with me if you were a continentalist! Then too we

must recollect that I have to meet a host who are all on the continental

side--in fact, pretty nearly all the thinkers, Forbes, Hartung, Heer,

Unger, Wollaston, Lowe (Wallace, I suppose), and now Andrew Murray. I do

not regard all these, and snap my fingers at all but you; in my inmost

soul I conscientiously say I incline to your theory, but I cannot accept

it as an established truth or unexceptionable hypothesis.

The "Wire bird" being a Grallator is a curious fact favourable to

you...How I do yearn to go out again to St. Helena.

Of course I accept the ornithological evidence as tremendously strong,

though why they should get blown westerly, and not change specifically,

as insects, shells, and plants have done, is a mystery.

LETTER 370. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, August 8th [1866].

It would be a very great pleasure to me if I could think that my letters

were of the least use to you. I must have expressed myself badly for you

to suppose that I look at islands being stocked by occasional transport

as a well-established hypothesis. We both give up creation, and

therefore have to account for the inhabitants of islands either by

continental extensions or by occasional transport. Now, all that

I maintain is that of these two alternatives, one of which must be

admitted, notwithstanding very many difficulties, occasional transport

is by far the most probable. I go thus far further--that I maintain,

knowing what we do, that it would be inexplicable if unstocked islands

were not stocked to a certain extent at least by these occasional means.

European birds are occasionally driven to America, but far more rarely

than in the reverse direction: they arrive via Greenland (Baird); yet a

European lark has been caught in Bermuda.

By the way, you might like to hear that European birds regularly migrate

via the northern islands to Greenland.

About the erratics in the Azores see "Origin," page 393. (370/1.

"Origin," Edition VI., page 328. The importance of erratic blocks on the

Azores is in showing the probability of ice-borne seeds having stocked

the islands, and thus accounting for the number of European species

and their unexpectedly northern character. Darwin's delight in the

verification of his theory is described in a letter to Sir Joseph of

April 26th, 1858, in the "Life and Letters," II., page 112.) Hartung

could hardly be mistaken about granite blocks on a volcanic island.

I do not think it a mystery that birds have not been modified in

Madeira. (370/2. "Origin," Edition VI., page 328. Madeira has only one

endemic bird. Darwin accounts for the fact from the island having been

stocked with birds which had struggled together and become mutually

co-adapted on the neighbouring continents. "Hence, when settled in their

new homes, each kind will have been kept by the others in its proper

place and habits, and will consequently have been but little liable to

modification." Crossing with frequently arriving immigrants will also

tend to keep down modification.) Pray look at page 422 of "Origin"

[Edition III.]. You would not think it a mystery if you had seen the

long lists which I have (somewhere) of the birds annually blown, even in

flocks, to Madeira. The crossed stock would be the more vigorous.

Remember if you do not come here before Nottingham, if you do not come

afterwards I shall think myself diabolically ill-used.

LETTER 371. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, August 9th, 1866.

If my letters did not gene you it is impossible that you should suppose

that yours were of no use to me! I would throw up the whole thing were

it not for correspondence with you, which is the only bit of silver

in the affair. I do feel it disgusting to have to make a point of a

speciality in which I cannot see my way a bit further than I could

before I began. To be sure, I have a very much clearer notion of the

pros and cons on both sides (though these were rather forgotten facts

than rediscoveries). I see the sides of the well further down more

distinctly, but the bottom is as obscure as ever.

I think I know the "Origin" by heart in relation to the subject, and

it was reading it that suggested the queries about Azores boulders and

Madeira birds. The former you and I have talked over, and I thought I

remembered that you wanted it confirmed. The latter strikes me thus: why

should plants and insects have been so extensively changed and birds not

at all? I perfectly understand and feel the force of your argument in

reference to birds per se, but why do these not apply to insects and

plants? Can you not see that this suggests the conclusion that the

plants are derived one way and the birds another?

I certainly did take it for granted that you supposed the stocking [by]

occasional transport to be something even more than a "well-established

hypothesis," but disputants seldom stop to measure the strength of their

antagonist's opinion.

I shall be with you on Saturday week, I hope. I should have come before,

but have made so little progress that I could not. I am now at St.

Helena, and shall then go to, and finish with, Kerguelen's land.

(371/1. After giving the distances of the Azores, etc., from America,

Sir Joseph continues:--)

But to my mind [it] does not mend the matter--for I do not ask why

Azores have even proportionally (to distance) a smaller number of

American plants, but why they have none, seeing the winds and currents

set that way. The Bermudas are all American in flora, but from what

Col. Munro informs me I should say they have nothing but common American

weeds and the juniper (cedar). No changed forms, yet they are as far

from America as Azores from Europe. I suppose they are modern and out of

the pale.

...There is this, to me, astounding difference between certain oceanic

islands which were stocked by continental extension and those stocked

by immigration (following in both definitions your opinion), that

the former [continental] do contain many types of the more distant

continent, the latter do not any! Take Madagascar, with its many

Asiatic genera unknown in Africa; Ceylon, with many Malayan types not

Peninsular; Japan, with many non-Asiatic American types. Baird's fact of

Greenland migration I was aware of since I wrote my Arctic paper. I wish

I was as satisfied either of continental [extensions] or of transport

means as I am of my Greenland hypothesis!

Oh, dear me, what a comfort it is to have a belief (sneer away).

LETTER 372. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, December 4th, 1866.

I have just finished the New Zealand "Manual" (372/1. "Handbook of

the New Zealand Flora."), and am thinking about a discussion on the

geographical distribution, etc., of the plants. There is scarcely a

single indigenous annual plant in the group. I wish that I knew more of

the past condition of the islands, and whether they have been rising or

sinking. There is much that suggests the idea that the islands were

once connected during a warmer epoch, were afterwards separated and

much reduced in area to what they now are, and lastly have assumed their

present size. The remarkable general uniformity of the flora, even of

the arboreous flora, throughout so many degrees of latitude, is a very

remarkable feature, as is the representation of a good many of the

southern half of certain species of the north, by very closely allied

varieties or species; and, lastly, there is the immense preponderance of

certain genera whose species all run into one another and vary horribly,

and which suggest a rising area. I hear that a whale has been found some

miles inland.

LETTER 373. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, December 14th, 1866.

I do not see how the mountains of New Zealand, S. Australia, and

Tasmania could have been peopled, and [with] so large an extent of

antarctic (373/1. "Introductory Essay to Flora of New Zealand," page xx.

"The plants of the Antarctic islands, which are equally natives of New

Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia, are almost invariably found only

on the lofty mountains of these countries.") forms common to Fuegia,

without some intercommunication. And I have always supposed this was

before the immigration of Asiatic plants into Australia, and of

which plants the temperate and tropical plants of that country may be

considered as altered forms. The presence of so many of these temperate

and cold Australian and New Zealand genera on the top of Kini Balu in

Borneo (under the equator) is an awful staggerer, and demands a very

extended northern distribution of Australian temperate forms. It is

a frightful assumption that the plains of Borneo were covered with a

temperate cold vegetation that was driven up Kini Balu by the returning

cold. Then there is the very distant distribution of a few Australian

types northward to the Philippines, China, and Japan: that is a fearful

and wonderful fact, though, as these plants are New Zealand too for the

most part, the migration northward may have been east of Australia.

LETTER 374. TO J.D. HOOKER. December 24th [1866].

...One word more about the flora derived from supposed Pleistocene

antarctic land requiring land intercommunication. This will depend much,

as it seems to me, upon how far you finally settle whether Azores, Cape

de Verdes, Tristan d'Acunha, Galapagos, Juan Fernandez, etc., etc.,

etc., have all had land intercommunication. If you do not think this

necessary, might not New Zealand, etc., have been stocked during

commencing Glacial period by occasional means from antarctic land? As

for lowlands of Borneo being tenanted by a moderate number of temperate

forms during the Glacial period, so far [is it] from appearing a

"frightful assumption" that I am arrived at that pitch of bigotry that I

look at it as proved!

LETTER 375. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, December 25th, 1866.

I was about to write to-day, when your jolly letter came this morning,

to tell you that after carefully going over the N.Z. Flora, I find that

there are only about thirty reputed indigenous Dicot. annuals, of

which almost half, not being found by Banks and Solander, are probably

non-indigenous. This is just 1/20th of the Dicots., or, excluding the

doubtful, about 1/40th, whereas the British proportion of annuals is

1/4.6 amongst Dicots.!!! Of the naturalised New Zealand plants one-half

are annual! I suppose there can be no doubt but that a deciduous-leaved

vegetation affords more conditions for vegetable life than an evergreen

one, and that it is hence that we find countries characterised by

uniform climates to be poor in species, and those to be evergreens. I

can now work this point out for New Zealand and Britain. Japan may be

an exception: it is an extraordinary evergreen country, and has many

species apparently, but it has so much novelty that it may not be so

rich in species really as it hence looks, and I do believe it is very

poor. It has very few annuals. Then, again, I think that the number of

plants with irregular flowers, and especially such as require insect

agency, diminishes much with evergreenity. Hence in all humid temperate

regions we have, as a rule, few species, many evergreens, few annuals,

few Leguminosae and orchids, few lepidoptera and other flying

insects, many Coniferae, Amentaceae, Gramineae, Cyperaceae, and other

wind-fertilised trees and plants, etc. Orchids and Leguminosae are

scarce in islets, because the necessary fertilising insects have not

migrated with the plants. Perhaps you have published this.

LETTER 376. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 9th [1867].

I like the first part of your paper in the "Gard. Chronicle" (376/1.

The lecture on Insular Floras ("Gard. Chron." January 1867).) to an

extraordinary degree: you never, in my opinion, wrote anything better.

You ask for all, even minute criticisms. In the first column you speak

of no alpine plants and no replacement by zones, which will strike

every one with astonishment who has read Humboldt and Webb on Zones on

Teneriffe. Do you not mean boreal or arctic plants? (376/2. The passage

which seems to be referred to does mention the absence of BOREAL

plants.) In the third column you speak as if savages (376/3. "Such

plants on oceanic islands are, like the savages which in some islands

have been so long the sole witnesses of their existence, the last

representatives of their several races.") had generally viewed the

endemic plants of the Atlantic islands. Now, as you well know, the

Canaries alone of all the archipelagoes were inhabited. In the third

column have you really materials to speak of confirming the proportion

of winged and wingless insects on islands?

Your comparison of plants of Madeira with islets of Great Britain is

admirable. (376/4. "What should we say, for instance, if a plant so

totally unlike anything British as the Monizia edulis...were found

on one rocky islet of the Scillies, or another umbelliferous plant,

Melanoselinum...on one mountain in Wales; or if the Isle of Wight and

Scilly Islands had varieties, species, and genera too, differing from

anything in Britain, and found nowhere else in the world!")

I must allude to one of your last notes with very curious case of

proportion of annuals in New Zealand. (376/5. On this subject see

Hildebrand's interesting paper "Die Lebensdauer der Pflanzen" (Engler's

"Botanische Jahrbucher," Volume II., 1882, page 51). He shows that

annuals are rare in very dry desert-lands, in northern and alpine

regions. The following table gives the percentages of annuals, etc., in

various situations in Freiburg (Baden):--

Annuals. Biennials. Perennials. Trees and

Shrubs.

Sandy, dry, and

stony places: 21 11 65 3

Dry fields: 6 4 90

Damp fields: 12 2 77 9

Woods and copses: 3 2 65 31

Water: 3 97

Cultivated land: 89 11

Are annuals adapted for short seasons, as in arctic regions, or tropical

countries with dry season, or for periodically disturbed and cultivated

ground? You speak of evergreen vegetation as leading to few or confined

conditions; but is not evergreen vegetation connected with humid and

equable climate? Does not a very humid climate almost imply (Tyndall) an

equable one?

I have never printed a word that I can remember about orchids and

papilionaceous plants being few in islands on account of rarity of

insects; and I remember you screamed at me when I suggested this a

propos of Papilionaceae in New Zealand, and of the statement about

clover not seeding there till the hive-bee was introduced, as I stated

in my paper in "Gard. Chronicle." (376/6. "In an old number of the

"Gardeners' Chronicle" an extract is given from a New Zealand newspaper

in which much surprise is expressed that the introduced clover never

seeded freely until the hive-bee was introduced." "On the Agency of Bees

in the Fertilisation of Papilionaceous Flowers..." ("Gard. Chron." 1858,

page 828). See Letter 362, note.) I have been these last few days vexed

and annoyed to a foolish degree by hearing that my MS. on Domestic

Animals, etc., will make two volumes, both bigger than the "Origin." The

volumes will have to be full-sized octavo, so I have written to Murray

to suggest details to be printed in small type. But I feel that the size

is quite ludicrous in relation to the subject. I am ready to swear at

myself and at every fool who writes a book.

LETTER 377. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 15th [1867].

Thanks for your jolly letter. I have read your second article (377/1.

The lecture on Insular Floras was published in instalments in the

"Gardeners' Chronicle," January 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, 1867.), and like

it even more than the first, and more than this I cannot say. By mere

chance I stumbled yesterday on a passage in Humboldt that a violet grows

on the Peak of Teneriffe in common with the Pyrenees. If Humboldt is

right that the Canary Is. which lie nearest to the continent have a much

stronger African character than the others, ought you not just to allude

to this? I do not know whether you admit, and if so allude to, the view

which seems to me probable, that most of the genera confined to the

Atlantic islands (I do not say the species) originally existed in, and

were derived from, Europe, [and have] become extinct on this continent.

I should thus account for the community of peculiar genera in the

several Atlantic islands. About the Salvages is capital. (377/2. The

Salvages are rocky islets about midway between Madeira and the Canaries;

and they have an Atlantic flora, instead of, as might have been

expected, one composed of African immigrants. ("Insular Floras," page 5

of separate copy.)) I am glad you speak of LINKING, though this sounds

a little too close, instead of being continuous. All about St. Helena is

grand. You have no faith, but if I knew any one who lived in St. Helena

I would supplicate him to send me home a cask or two of earth from a few

inches beneath the surface from the upper part of the island, and from

any dried-up pond, and thus, as sure as I'm a wriggler, I should receive

a multitude of lost plants.

I did suggest to you to work out proportion of plants with irregular

flowers on islands; I did this after giving a very short discussion

on irregular flowers in my Lythrum paper. (377/3. "Linn. Soc. Journ."

VIII., 1865, page 169.) But what on earth has a mere suggestion like

this to do with meum and tuum? You have comforted me much about the

bigness of my book, which yet turns me sick when I think of it.

End of Project Gutenberg's More Letters of Charles Darwin, by Charles Darwin