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Summary
Morning with H. C. Watson; discussed problems of inferences from buried seeds.
Transcription
Down Farnborough Kent
Aug. 10th
My dear Hooker
Many thanks for your note with Dr. Lindleysf1 invitation. I had so strong a wish to accept it, in order to get to know him, that I accepted it, but the next morning I felt so unwell, together with a note from home made me give it up with great reluctance & I wrote a second note to Lindley. I almost wish I had thrown all the circumstances to the dogs & staid; but it is now too late.
My morning with H. C. W.f2 passed off very prosperously & I had much very interesting talk; but he is rather too sarcastic to my taste. He strikes me as a very clever man. Will you sometime look in your Library & see whether you have the Memoires of the Academy of Nancy 1848–1849. for Godronf3 It is not in Linnean or Royal Socy.—
I forget exactly when you start, but I shall hear nothing of you now for a long time.f4 Adios.—
Watson told me some capital stories of the caution requisite about inferring that seeds have lain long buried from their suddenly springing up: nevertheless I found that he does go a long way in believing that they do sometimes lie buried from cases which he had himself seen.—
Farewell | C. Darwin
Footnotes
- f1
- John Lindley was professor of botany at University College London, and editor of the Gardeners’ Chronicle.
- f2
- Hewett Cottrell Watson.
- f3
- Godron 1848–9. CD had been looking for Dominique Alexandre Godron’s paper ‘De l’espèce et des races’ since March. See letters to J. D. Hooker, [before 7 March 1855], and to Arthur Henfrey, 17 March [1855].
- f4
- Hooker was preparing to start on a European tour with Nathaniel Lindley, son of John Lindley. For Lindley’s recollections of the trip, see L. Huxley ed. 1918, 1: 435.