Dear Darwin

A Gray sends enclosed & desires me to read it, before sending—² I have no opinion upon the points discussed, being very ignorant of facts—& always fearing weakness of climatic evidence drawn from animals so very different from existing specifically & even generically.

I have had another talk with Bentham who is greatly agitated by your book— evidently the stern keen intellect is aroused & he finds that it is too late to halt between two opinions—how it will go we shall see. I am intensely interested in what he shall come to, & never broach the subject to him.—³

I finished Geolog Evidence chapters yesterday—they are very fine & very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of Geol. Record—though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer & sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany & the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition 1^th of the plants that have existed, & that not 1100,000^th of those we have are recognizable specifically.

I never saw so clearly put the fact that it is not intermediates between existing species we want but between these & the unknown tertium quid.

You certainly make a hobby of Nat. Selection & probably ride it too hard— that is a necessity of your case.— If improvement of the creation by variation doctrine is conceivable it will be by unburthening your theory of Nat. Selⁿ. which at first-sight seems overstrained; ie to account for too much. I think too that some of your difficulties which you override by Nat Selection may give way before other explanations—but Oh Lord how little we do know & have known to be so advanced in knowledge by one theory— If we thought ourselves knowing dogs before you revealed Nat Selection, what d—d. ignorant ones we must surely be now we do know that law.

I hear you may be at the Club on Thursday.⁴ I hope so. Huxley will not be there so do not come on that ground.

Ever Yours affec | Jos D Hooker Kew Tuesday