Darwin Correspondence Project

[West Park, Kew]

Monday Morning | 1^st Sept.

My dear Darwin

I think that I informed you of my venerable Grandfather's death but had so many to write to on the subject, that I may have trespassed on your good nature in favor of others who would not take the neglect so well.

About a fortnight ago I was called off hurriedly to Edinbro', to canvass the Town council for the chair of Botany: & to undergo the detestable ordeal of writing to all my friends for testimonials for them to judge me by: thanks to their kindness & blindness they have supplied me with about 50 already & I expect 40 more— I had hoped that one from Brown one from Humboldt with three from Professors proving that my lectures gave complete satisfaction would have been enough, but it was not so. Balfour had 60 or 80 & I must get the same. The election comes on in 1^st week in October. I expect that the Crown and Town will come to a private understanding before—that, & let the nominated candidate be elected after telling the councillors who to support, & who not at their peril. There will be an immense deal to do at Edinbro with the Garden & to reform (between ourselves) a certain sink, called the Bot. Soc. of Edinburgh, which I must of course join & either do nothing to or remodel

I returned this day week & have been busy ever since with private affairs & snatching all moments for the unlucky Flora, Antarct.

I was reading Cosmos in the railway carriages, have you seen it? the translation is never to be sufficiently execrated, I cannot understand many pages of it at all. I can send you my copy if you have it not, for such a translation is never worth buying I should think, but I may be all wrong in my judgement.

I have been thinking more & more upon Forbes Botanico Geological remarks. I can account in no other way for the similarity of the Irish & Portuguese floras, or of the Cape Horn & Kerguelens Land; Migration as an agent is all very well, but it has been ridden to death, in atempts to account for such similarities in vegetation. Now I see what Strzelecki was at, when he told me & I told you of the identtity of the Geology & Botany of Illawarra & V. D L. or something of that sort which I told you of at the time. Cunningham long ago remarked that some Tasmanian plants suddenly appeared on the Blue M^ts but not (I think) at an elevation analagous to the differences of Latitude If we are to account for these things geologically what an antiquity it gives to vegetation & how eminently true it must be that the Geological changes must have been slow & gradual not to have obliterated all traces of vegetation during the removal of the intervening land.

Please send any thing to Hiscock's Kew boat, Hungerford stairs: he has an office there & receives all parcels for us. I want a number of your copy of Fl. Ant. or I would have sent it ere this.

I am truly sorry that Mrs Darwin does not recover, could you not come over here for a day,? my Sisters would be delighted to make her acquaintance as w^d my mother, but she is going with my Father to Norfolk tomorrow for 10 days. You live in such an impracticable part of the country that we ie. the Ladies cannot call or even send to enquire, but you are right to be down there. I fear I shall have to go to Edinburgh again.

Many thanks for your excellent testimonial & all you have done Ever most truly yours | Jos D Hooker.

Guaya villa is in Span S. Am a species of Eugenia, so I daresay the Gallapago berry called Guaya vita is my Psidium Galapageum (allied to Guava, same genus) native of Jas. Island only, found also by Scouler there.

There is an excellent paper in the Ann. Sc. Nat for April 1845 & chart, on the distrib. of Conif. in Europe, it looks rather too precise to be accurate, (a very ungenerous remark) the replacement of species along the Italian coast is curious & what I have been working out with regard to some genera of S. American plants along the Chilian coast.