Dear Darwin

A strong plant of Drosophyllum is coming from Dublin & I will forward it on arrival.¹ Pray work your wicked will on it—root leaf & branch!— it is quite at your service. We have no difficulty in getting flowering seeding & raising it again   it is the keeping of it when full grown & after flowering & seeding that beats us— possibly it is a short-lived species at the best.

It is Sachs not Schacht that Dyer is translating— (no doubt I wrote Schacht by stupidity.)— or rather A. W. Bennett is translating it, & Dyer will revise & add notes—² he is putting on paper a few matters for your attention. He agrees with me that glands & hairs are held to be excreting only.³

I quite agree as to the awful honor of P.R.S.— & its inestimable value to me in my position, & under existing circumstances— but my dear fellow I don’t want to be crowned head of science.⁴ I dread it— “Uneasy is the head &c”⁵—& then my beloved Gen. Plant. will be grievously impeded.⁶ The dream of my later days is to be let alone, where I am & as I am— I want no higher position, no dignities, nor honors. I cannot undertake to represent science officially, & refuse the inevitables that flow from it or come with it, & stick to you for the rest of your life. This may be all very selfish— but so it is. I would fain die as I now live.

By the way have you seen the lovely compliment that R. Strachey pays us, at the end of his paper on the Scope of Scientific Geography,— in the last number of Geog. Soc. Proc. p 450.— has he not “pointed his moral & adorned his tail” with our names!⁷ I was & am astonished indeed. I hope Owen will see it.—⁸

I sent Gladstone a Wedgwood Medallion of my father’s, & he writes so nice & characteristic a letter that I must enclose it for your perusal.⁹

Ever dear old fellow | Yours | J D Hooker