Dear Darwin

At last I sit down to write to you—after a fortnight of the West country, one week of restless excitement at Exeter, & another of quiet in country houses, 1^st. Sir Thos Acland, 2 Symonds of Pendock, 3^d. Douglas Galtons Mothers near Droitwich—¹

Exeter was a very good meeting & Stokes made a first rate President,—whereby he agreeably disappointed his friends.² The “punctum saliens”³ of the whole meeting was decidedly Huxley’s answer to D^r M^cCann. he literally poured boiling oil over the bumptious man— you have read it of course.— McCann’s was the most conceited dogmatic sermon you ever heard preached, & was delivered with a sort of swagger that rendered it offensive to Huxley in the last degree.—⁴ Next in point of interest was Lubbock’s answer to the D. of Argyll, which I thought uncommonly good, but the bird was hardly worth the shot, & the discussion was singularly poor.⁵ & unsuggestive considering who the speaker was. Stokes address was very sound science for the most part; but no approach to novelty or originality in matter & very little in dealing with it— the last part was singularly weak—& mindless.⁶ All had expected an address on his own special pursuits in science.

Phillips lecture on Vesuvius I thought very poor, both in manner matter & style. Lockyers was far better, but he tried too much, & became obscure.⁷ There were few foreigners & fewer nobs. & the whole meeting was a very quiet one, except at the end, when the struggle between Edinburgh & Liverpool took place—a struggle which bodes no good to the Association, as showing how little the General Committee regards the matured opinion of the Council in grave matters that require calm & unprejudiced consideration⁸

I had hoped to have asked whether I could have spent a Sunday with you soon, but Prof Miquel of Utrecht is coming tomorrow to stay a fortnight with us, bringing 2 of his daughters—very nice (& pretty!) girls whose acquaintance we made in Holland— he is an old friend & has been twice in England before⁹

At Mr Galton’s I met your connections (or relations) Mrs & Miss Wheler, the latter of whom I met at your house last winter or Autumn I think.¹⁰

Do not bother to answer this, but by a line saying how you are.

Ever affec Yrs | J D Hooker