My dear Hooker

Hearty thanks about G. Chronicle.¹ I return Owen’s letter:² what a base dog he is. Some of my relations say it cannot possibly be Owen’s article, because the Reviewer speaks so very highly of Prof. Owen.³ Poor dear simple folk! My clever neighbour M^r Norman,⁴ says the article is so badly written with no definite object that no one will read it.—

What a narrow minded man Balfour must be to bring so poor an argument as St Peter, with so many good arguments which he might use.—⁵ Asa Gray has sent me an article from U. States; clever & dead against me.⁶ But one argument funny. The Reviewer says that if the doctrine were true, geological strata would be full of monsters “tentative attempts”, which had failed.— A very clear view this writer had of the Struggle for existence!

I am delighted to hear that you have begun experimentising    you will be glad of it hereafter & I daresay will go on largely.—

I am glad you like Adam Bede so much: I was charmed with it.—⁷

We think you must by mistake have taken with your own No^r of National R. my previous Number.⁸ I wish you would look.—

I shall be curious to see Huxley’s answer.— I could have pointed out falsifications of my writing, but am glad I did not.—⁹

I sh^d be infinitely obliged if you would look at a flower of the Goodenia, & look at my splendid diagram.¹⁰ I am confounded by it; for it seems to me that the stigmatic surface is outside indusium above the brush of Hairs on one side. Anyhow there were pollen-grains in one flower there immersed in humid secretion; but it is beyond me to know whether they then penetrate the surface. If this is stigmatic surface, what on earth is use of indusium? Do for Heaven-sake look at it.—

C. Darwin