From J. D. Hooker 23 October 1875
Kew
Oct 23d/75.
Dear Darwin
Thanks for the note on Gunnera it is suggestive. Its petals are so fugacious that I am sure I should not have detected the fact of certain flowers only being petaliferous from dried specimens— I had always regarded Gunnera as a degraded type of Halorageæ, & Mueller seems to take this view of the apetalous flowers.1
I remember having seen a hygrometer made of the “wild oat” when I was a boy.—2 There is a horrid grass in India that bores through your trousers & used actually to pin my “ducks”3 to my calves, (as the Ticks did the woollen trouzers to my thighs) but it never occurred to me that the twisted awn had anything to do with the operation I shall hunt up specimen & send you it was a dreadful thing
If you were to give Pfeiffer to the Linnean it would be a godsend & a piece of princely generosity—4 if not let me have it at price & I will no doubt soon get that at least, for you, perhaps more—
What an excellent drawer Mueller is. I am at a loss about the flower of Carrot5
Ever yr affec | Jos. D. Hooker
Footnotes
Bibliography
OED: The Oxford English dictionary. Being a corrected re-issue with an introduction, supplement and bibliography of a new English dictionary. Edited by James A. H. Murray, et al. 12 vols. and supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1970. A supplement to the Oxford English dictionary. 4 vols. Edited by R. W. Burchfield. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972–86. The Oxford English dictionary. 2d edition. 20 vols. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. Oxford English dictionary additional series. 3 vols. Edited by John Simpson et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993–7.
Pfeiffer, Ludwig . 1873–4. Nomenclator botanicus. 2 vols. Cassel: Theodor Fischer.
Summary
Comments on Hermann Müller’s article on the structure of Gunnera flowers.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10215
- From
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Kew
- Source of text
- DAR 104: 42–3
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10215,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10215.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23