My dear Hooker

Lecoq is a miserable book—, dreadfully spun out, with maudlin speculations & a great dearth of precise facts: I do not believe it would be worth your having, & as here & there, miles apart, I find a reference or fact worth keeping, I will keep the monstrous work.—¹

Bates writes he spent with you 3 or 4 of the most agreeable hours he ever spent in his life.—²

C. Darwin

You were, of course, quite right. Bonatea does not at all favour the splitting & subsequent fusion of sepals & petals— The vessels run in Bonatea as in Habenearia.

I cannot get out of my head that these cases throw great doubt on value of vessels in regard to homologies.³