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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Francisco de Arruda Furtado   12 September 1881

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)

Sept. 12th 1881

Dear Sir

Sir J. Hooker writes to me that he shall be very glad to see the mountain plants which you have collected, & will give you the names of them, if you wish it.1 The parcel shd. be directed to

“Sir J. Hooker

Royal Gardens

Kew

London.—”

Sir J. Hooker tells me one very interesting fact, which is well worth your investigating, namely that “huge trunks of Cypresses (Cupressus) have been found there (he does not say in which island) “buried in the ground; yet the Cypress is extinct in the islands”. He thinks that the remains of other plants might be found in the same sites, & this wd. be very interesting & a good description of the place where the Cypress-trunks have been found is much wanted.2 The experiment may be a foolish one, but I shd. get some of the earth from the same bed, far from the surface or the side of any little cliff, & keep this earth damp in a warm place, & most carefully covered by a bell-glass, & observe whether any plants sprung up; for I believe, contrary to the opinion of the best botanists, that seeds buried deep in the ground sometimes, retain their vitality for a long time.—

I wrote to you a few weeks ago.—3

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

P.S. Sir J. Hooker speaks in another part of his letter, of the case of the Cypress trunks being a wonderfully interesting one.

Footnotes

CD possibly refers to his comments about investigating the dispersal and viability of seeds in his letter to Francisco de Arruda Furtado, 3 and 6 July 1881.

Summary

Hooker would be very glad to see the mountain plants Fd’AF has collected.

Hooker says huge cypress trunks have been found buried in the ground [in the Azores]; the site needs to be described and investigated. CD suggests collecting earth from same bed to see whether any seeds have remained viable.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13331
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Francisco de Arruda Furtado
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Historical Archive of the Museums of the University of Lisbon (PT/MUL/FAF/C/01/0022)
Physical description
ALS 4pp †

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13331,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13331.xml

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