To J. D. Hooker 15 January [1858]1
Down Bromley Kent
Jan. 15th
My dear Hooker
My note on papilionaceous flowers crossed yours on the road; & for it I am much obliged for it told me a good deal of news. Though that about Henslow I am truly grieved to hear; I had thought his heart had got quite right again.—2 I saw the death of Miss Jenyns in the paper.—3
I enclose some queries for Dr. 4 but I suppose he will think them too troublesome & trifling to be attended to.
I do not see that the musk ox, of which remains have been found in Siberia, is any great difficulty for I have never for one second doubted the possibility, nay probability of such slight changes as the union of the shallow Behring’s Straits.—5 Your Indian Mysore & Carnatic plants in tropical Australia seems to me a more curious case.6
I am very doubtful whether I shall be up for Club;7 owing to Boys holidays drawing to a close, & sickness in our house. My wife often ails, & Lenny has very frequent bad days with badly intermittent pulse.—8 We escaped a considerable anxiety in George having apparently a regular low fever, but it died away & has spoiled only a fortnight of his holidays.9 Oh health, health, you are my daily & nightly bug-bear & stop all enjoyment in life. Etty keeps very weak.—10 But I really beg pardon, it is very foolish & weak to howl this way. Everyone has got his heavy burthen in this world.—
I shd. like to come up; if it were only just to see you & Lyell, who must be brimming full of geological news.11
Farewell | My dear Hooker | Yours affecy | C. Darwin
P.S. | I have just got your letter for which thanks. The Clover case was published in the “New Zealand Journal” date not given but republished in Gardeners Chronicle Dec. 16. 1843.—12
Humble-bees, I believe, are mundane in their distribution; but I do not know how it is in small islands. Bees are more confined in their visits to particular flowers, than you seem to be aware.— I daresay the Clover case may break down, & I shd. not have thought about it, had not so many facts, all vague, all pointed in same direction.
I cannot come up so soon as Tuesday, for we have relations in House:13 I doubt much whether I shall be up for Thursday
Farewell
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bonney, T. G. 1919. Annals of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society written from its minute books. London: Macmillan.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1853–5. Flora Novæ-Zelandiæ. 2 vols. Pt 2 of The botany of the Antarctic voyage of HM discovery ships Erebus and Terror, in the years 1839–1843, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. London: Lovell Reeve.
Summary
CD has never doubted probability of Bering Strait land connection.
Family illness.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2203
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 114: 221
- Physical description
- ALS 6pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2203,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2203.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7