My dear Hooker

I am not a fair critic for your Australian Introduct;² for I have never read any of your papers, which have not greatly interested me. Subject to this weakness(!) in simple truth I think the whole admirably good. It contains a wonderful amount of condensed thought & an equal amount, as far as my knowledge goes, of original remarks & reflexions. Such as your comparison of the relative numbers of the genera to the orders & species to the genera—widely diffused groups being common to Australia & the world; & the times or seasons of flowering of some of the great orders &c &c. But I have been astounded at what you say that SE & SW Australia differ as much as Australia from world. Are you sure that you have not momentarily forgotten your own clever remark that it is easier to be struck with differences than with similarities?³ Think what a shocking anomaly compared with all other known instances & with Australia itself compared in different directions with other quarters of the world. I hope to God you will not have to stick to this,—you do not of course refer to mere proportions of of different species,—you include the more important difference of general form.—⁴

Several years ago I asked you about the relation of S.W. Australia & the Cape & whether the relation was not merely analogical; & you then greatly relieved me by saying that you thought that the relation was carried all round northward of the Indian Ocean.⁵ I fear that you do not now think so, otherwise the statement of any direct relation between that side of Australia & the Cape is deceptive.— I am anxious about this case, because I dare not extend to this case the hypothesis, given in the Glacial chapter which you read, of the now ice-covered Antarctic islands having supported before the Glacial period a very peculiar Flora, & having by means of ice-carriage tinted the southern coasts of America & Australia. I am much inclined to believe that this is true hypothesis; I was looking the other day at a physical Atlas of S. Pole with line of drift ice marked & almost certainly during glacial epoch that line must have reached these shores.⁶

When you discuss the alpine Australian Floras you will have to enter on this subject, & how you will avoid “going the whole hog & giving up the representative species, I cannot see.—⁷

I have nothing more to say except that to the best of my judgment your Introduction is quite admirable.—

I will keep the lists for a week, till copied; I have not yet thought about them.—⁸

It is a shame that I did not at first offer to do Lyell’s eloge; but I was too selfish.—

Farewell | My dear Hooker | Ever yours | C. Darwin

I have had long letter from Sir R. Murchison about the Memorial; but as it is marked “private” perhaps I ought not even to mention it & please do not you.—⁹ He seems, I may say, hurt at the Memorial not being mentioned to him before it was sent in; & I do think that this was a great pity, & I am sorry for it. It gives the affair an underhand look. I have told him I signed only because I had reason to suppose that the Government would move; & this being the case I thought it good for Naturalists to move early; & that I highly approved of substance of scheme of Memorial.

P.S. Thursday morning | I have twice read carefully over your eloge & I think will do very well. I have made a few pencil marks & notes for your consideration, which can easily be erased or worked in.¹⁰

Henslow comes this evening.¹¹

De Vrieses letter, certainly is not much to the point, but I am glad to have it.—¹²