My dear Hooker

I had hoped that you would have had a little breathing time after your Journal, but this seems to be very far from the case; & I am the more obliged (& somewhat contrite) for the long letter received this morning, most juicy with news & most interesting to me in many ways. I am very glad indeed to hear of the reforms &c in Royal Soc^y. ¹ With respect to the Club,² I am deeply interested; only two or three days ago, I was regretting to my wife, how I was letting drop & being dropped by nearly all my acquaintances, & that I would endeavour to go oftener to London; I was not then thinking of the Club, which, as far as any one thing goes, would answer my exact object in keeping up old & making some new acquaintances. I will therefore come up to London for every (with rare exceptions) Club-day & then my head, I think, will allow me on an average to go to every other meeting. But it is grievous how often any change knocks me up. I will further pledge myself, as I told Lyell, to resign after a year if I did not attend pretty often, so that I should at worst only encumber the Club temporarily. If you can get me elected, I certainly shall be very much pleased.—³

—Very many thanks for answers about Glaciers. I am very glad to hear of the second Edit. so very soon; but am not surprised for I have heard of several, in our small circle, reading it with very much pleasure. I shall be curious to hear what Humboldt will say; it will, I sh^d. think, delight him & meet with more praise from him, than any other book of Travels, for I cannot remember one, which has so many subjects in common with him. What a wonderful old fellow he is.—⁴ I suppose you know that Sir H. Holland wrote the Quarterly Review;⁵ but very probably he w^d. not like this to be spread.—

What a very singular & striking coincidence is the result you mention in regard to the affinities of Noggerathus & Salisburia;⁶ I know the latter by sight, & am astonished to hear that it is a Conifer.—⁷ Good Heavens what work there is in you,—, to hear of your 150 pages, 4^to, in smallish print, of Introduction⁸ is enough to make me shudder; though if it is in the least like the New Zealand Introduction, it will be, I am sure, worth any amount of labour.—

By the way, I hope, when you go to Hitcham towards the end of May you will be forced to have some rest.⁹ I am grieved to hear that all the bad symptoms have not left Henslow; it is so strange & new to feel any uneasiness about his health.— I am particularly obliged to you for sending me Asa Gray’s letter;¹⁰ how very pleasantly he writes. To see his & your cautions on the species-question ought to overwhelm me in confusion & shame; it does make me feel deuced uncomfortable. I cannot quite understand why you & he think so strongly that it “does more harm than good to combat such views.”— It is delightful to hear all that he says on Agassiz:¹¹ How very singular it is that so eminently clever a man, with such immense knowledge on many branches of Natural History, should write such wonderful stuff & bosh as he does. Lyell told me that he was so delighted with one of his (Agassiz) lectures on progressive development &c &, that he went to him afterwards & told him “it was so delightful, that he could not help all the time wishing it was true”.¹² I seldom see a Zoological paper from N. America, without observing the impress of Agassiz’s doctrine’s,—another proof, by the way, of how great a man he is.— I was pleased & surprised to see A. Gray’s remarks on crossing, obliterating varieties,¹³ on which, as you know, I have been collecting facts for these dozen years.—

How awfully flat I shall feel, if I when I get my notes together on species &c &c, the whole thing explodes like an empty puff-ball.—

Do not work yourself to death

Ever yours most truly | C. Darwin

P.S. I almost forgot to say that I will return all the Books, which I have of yours.—viz “the Plant”,—“Wallace”—“Salt-Lake”,¹⁴ on Wednesday next by carrier who shall book and pay them to Kew by Parcels Delivery on Thursday. Very many thanks for this most valuable loan, than which I do not know when I have had a more interesting set.— We have kept these books an unconscionable time.