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Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. D. Hooker   [11 January 1844]

Down. Bromley Kent

Thursday

My dear Sir

I must write to thank you for your last letter;1 I to tell you how much all your views & facts interest me.— I must be allowed to put my own interpretation on what you say of “not being a good arranger of extended views”—which is, that you do not indulge in the loose speculations so easily started by every smatterer & wandering collector.— I look at a strong tendency to generalize2 as an entire evil—

What limit shall you take on the Patagonian side—has d’Orbigny published, I believe he made a large collection at the R. Negro, where Patagonia retains its usual forlorn appearance;3 at Bahia Blanca & northward the features of Patagonia insensibly blend into the savannahs of La Plata.— The Botany of S. Patagonia (& I collected every plant in flower at the season when there) would be worth comparison with the N. Patagonian collection by d’Orbigny.— I do not know anything about King’s plants, but his birds were so inaccurately habitated, that I have seen specimen from Brazil, Tierra del & the Cape de Verde Isd all said to come from the St. Magellan.—4 What you say of Mr Brown is humiliating; I had suspected it, but cd not allow myself to believe in such heresy.— FitzRoy gave him a rap in his Preface, & made me very indignant, but it seems a much harder one wd not have been wasted.5 My crptogamic collection was sent to Berkeley; it was not large; I do not believe he has yet published an account, but he wrote to me some year ago that he had described & mislaid all his descriptions.6 Wd it not be well for you to put yourself in communication with him; as otherwise some things will perhaps be twice laboured over.— My best (though poor) collection of the Crptogam. was from the Chonos Islands.—7

Would you kindly observe one little fact for me, whether any species of plant, peculiar to any isld, as Galapagos, St. Helena or New Zealand, where there are no large quadrupeds, have hooked seeds,—such hooks as if observed here would be thought with justness to be adapted to catch into wool of animals.—

Would you further oblige me some time by informing me (though I forget this will certainly appear in your Antarctic Flora) whether in isld like St. Helena, Galapagos, & New Zealand, the number of families & genera are large compared with the number of species, as happens in coral-isld, & as I believe ? in the extreme Arctic land. Certainly this is case with Marine shells in extreme Arctic seas.— Do you suppose the fewness of species in proportion to number of large groups in Coral-islets., is owing to the chance of seeds from all orders, getting drifted to such new spots? as I have supposed.—8

Did you collect sea-shells in Kerguelen land, I shd like to know their character.?

Your interesting letters tempt me to be very unreasonable in asking you questions; but you must not give yourself any trouble about them, for I know how fully & worthily you are employed.

Besides a general interest about the Southern lands, I have been now ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work & which I know no one individual who wd not say a very foolish one.— I was so struck with distribution of Galapagos organisms &c &c & with the character of the American fossil mammifers, &c &c that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which cd bear any way on what are species.— I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts— At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a “tendency to progression” “adaptations from the slow willing of animals” &c,—but the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his—though the means of change are wholly so— I think I have found out (here’s presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.—9 You will now groan, & think to yourself ‘on what a man have I been wasting my time in writing to.’— I shd, five years ago, have thought so.— I fear you will also groan at the length of this letter—excuse me, I did not begin with malice prepense.

Believe me my dear Sir | Very truly your’s | C. Darwin

Footnotes

See Correspondence vol. 2, letter from J. D. Hooker, [12 December 1843 – 11 January 1844]. Hooker, who was preparing his Flora Antarctica (J. D. Hooker 1844–7), had agreed to describe CD’s Beagle plants.
The original reads ‘generatize’, which raises the possibility that CD intended to coin a word for the tendency of some taxonomists to proliferate genera. However, CD often crossed ‘l’s unintentionally. It occurs in words with both ‘l’ and ‘t’, as well as in words like ‘istand’ and ‘stippers’ (see Correspondence vol. 1, Manuscript alterations and comments for letters to Susan Darwin, [6 September 1831] and 17 [September 1831]). The context appears to favour a meaning of hasty or over-generalisation, whereas ‘generatize’ never occurs again.
See Correspondence vol. 1, letter to J. S. Henslow, [c. 26 October –] 24 November [1832]. Alcide Charles Victor Dessalines d’Orbigny published descriptions of the Cryptogamia of Patagonia and Bolivia in 1839, and the palms of Paraguay and Bolivia in 1847 (Orbigny 1835–47, vol. 7).
The collections made by Phillip Parker King during the first surveying expeditions of the Beagle and Adventure to South America, 1826–30.
Robert Brown, keeper of the botanical collections in the British Museum. In Narrative 1: x, Robert FitzRoy wrote: ‘Captain King took great pains in forming and preserving a botanical collection … He placed this collection in the British Museum, and was led to expect that a first-rate botanist would have examined and described it; but he has been disappointed.’
Miles Joseph Berkeley described parts of CD’s cryptogamic collection in 1839, 1842, and 1845. No letters from Berkeley during this period have been traced, but see Correspondence vol. 2, letters to M. J. Berkeley, [26 November 1840] and [March 1841].
CD recorded: ‘in these islands, within the forest, the number of species, and great abundance of mosses, lichens, and small ferns, is quite extraordinary’ (Journal of researches, p. 349).
CD first formulated his theory of natural selection in autumn 1838 (Notebook D: 134e–5e).

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.

Journal of researches: Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by HMS Beagle, under the command of Captain FitzRoy, RN, from 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin. London: Henry Colburn. 1839.

Narrative: Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty’s ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836. [Edited by Robert FitzRoy.] 3 vols. and appendix. London: Henry Colburn. 1839.

Notebook D. See de Beer 1960; de Beer and Rowlands 1961; de Beer, Rowlands, and Skramovsky 1967; Notebooks.

Orbigny, Alcide Charles Victor Dessalines d’. 1835–47. Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale (le Brésil, la République orientale de l’Uruguay, la République Argentine, la Patagonie, la République du Chili, la République de Bolivia, la République du Pérou), exécuté pendant les années 1826 … 1833. 6 vols. in 7 and 4 atlases. Paris and Strasbourg: Pitois-Levrault et Cie, P. Bertrand.

Summary

Queries on ratios of species to genera on southern islands. CD’s observations on distribution of Galapagos organisms, and on S. American fossils, and facts he has gathered since, lead him to conclusion that species are not immutable; "it is like confessing a murder".

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-729
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 114: 3
Physical description
ALS 5pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 729,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-729.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 3

letter