From H. C. Watson to J. D. Hooker 1 January 186[8]1
Thames Ditton
Jany 1 6[8]
My dear Hooker
Thank you for the name of Cyathea affinis, & the determination to have it raised; the spores being of this year give likelihood.
As to Vicia Daunesiana, which is only a sug. name, & not well merited, possibly one of my plants may flower next summer.2 They are weakly, having been almost lost through the sharp frosts of Epsom race-week,3 just previous to which they had been turned into the open ground from a frame.
How provoking to receive the Kerguelen cabbage in its dead state!4 I suppose that plants of cold climes encounter the chance of the sun converting the cases into ovens on shipboard.
Glad to receive your good report of Mr. Darwin’s health. I have read nothing about Darwinism since his 2d. edition came out,—but thought of his theory pretty often.5 My conviction is nearly complete, either that there is a something fallacious to be eliminated from it, or else a something important to be added to it. By what process of divergent variation can you conceive your two St. Helena Umbellifers to have come into existence, so similar in characters usually looked to for distinguishing species (foliage etc) and yet so dissimilar in those resorted to for genera?6 If our technical classifications in botany & zoology refuse to harmonize with the Darwinian theory, one or other must be thoroughly unsound. My present notion is, that divergent variation is just one half of the story, and that Darwin has missed the other half, its counterbalance in nature. When anyone equally fit shall have taken like pains to shew & establish the alternate half, the theory will stand firm on two legs, instead of tottering upon one only, unable to go back, or to go forward, without a fatal fall,—a reductio ad absurdum.7
All this you will think very impudent & presumptious in me— But there was a date when you declared believers in the mutability of species, to be “superficial naturalists”;—on reading which, in Flora Indica, I resolved to remind you of it some future day!8 You don’t think them all such now!— And so we all live to learn and change.
With very good wishes for the date, Jany first— | Yours sincerely | Hewett C. Watson
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1844–7. Flora Antarctica. 1 vol. and 1 vol. of plates. Pt 1 of The botany of the Antarctic voyage of HM discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. London: Reeve Brothers.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton, ed. 1867–91. Hooker’s Icones plantarum; or, figures, with descriptive characters and remarks, of new and rare plants, selected from the Kew herbarium. 3d ser., 10 vols. London: Williams and Norgate.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Post Office directory of the six home counties: Post Office directory of the six home counties, viz., Essex, Herts, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex. London: W. Kelly & Co. 1845–78.
Watson, Hewett Cottrell. 1845. On the theory of "progressive development," applied in explanation of the origin and transmutation of species. Phytologist 2: 108–13, 140–7, 161–8, 225–8.
Watson, Hewett Cottrell. 1847–59. Cybele Britannica; or British plants and their geographical relations. 4 vols. London: Longman.
Summary
HCW’s criticisms of CD’s theory.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5077F
- From
- Hewett Cottrell Watson
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Source of text
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Directors’ Correspondence 105 f. 222
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5077F,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5077F.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16