Dear Old Darwin

I assure you it was not my fault! I worried Lindly over & over again to notice your Orchid: book in Chronicle, by the very broadest hints man could give. At last he said, “really I cannot, you must do it. for me,” & so I did—volontiers—¹ Lindley felt that he ought to have done it himself, & my main effort was to write it “a la Lindley” & in this alone I have succeeded—that people all think it is exactly Lindley’s style!!! which diverts me vastly. The fact is between ourselves I fear that poor L. is breaking up— he said that he could not fix his mind on your book.² Miss L.³ told my wife⁴ the other day, that he had twice lately lost all consciousness of outer world, once in a shop. He works himself beyond his mental or physical powers.—⁵ His left arm is nearly disabled by an affection of the thumb (ligaments?) & the right is grumbling—all this entre nous. And now my dear Darwin, I may as well make a clean breast of it, & tell you that I wrote the Nat. Hist. Review notice too—⁶to me a very difficult task, & one I fancied I failed in, comparatively. of this you are no judge & can be none, you told me to tell Oliver it pleased you, & so I am content & happy.⁷

I am greatly relieved by your letter this morning about my Arctic Essay,⁸ for I had been conjuring up some egregious blunder (like the granitic plains of Patagonia)—⁹ Certes after what you have told me of Dawson, he will not like the letter I wrote to him days ago in which I told him that it was impossible to entertain a strong opinion against Darwinian hypothesis without its giving rise to a mental twist when viewing matters in which that hypothesis was or might be involved—¹⁰ I told him I felt that this was so with me when I opposed you, & that all minds are subject to such obliquities!— the Lord help me, & this to an L.L.D & Principal of a College!—¹¹ I proceeded to discuss his Geology with the effrontery of a novice; &, thank God, I urged the very argument of your letter about evidence of subsidence, viz, not all submerged at once, & glacial action being subærial & not oceanic— Your letter hence was a relief, for I felt I was hardly strong enough to have launched out as I did to a professed Geologist.

The main part of Dawsons criticism is I suppose in the sup to pamphlet herewith sent,¹² but A Gray tells me to expect a blast from Canada this winter.¹³

I quite see, & feel the force of your impression that Greenland may have been repeopled from Scandinavia; but if so I should think not by oceanic currents,—¹⁴ I have speculated on the probability of there having been a post glacial arctic Norwego-Greenlandian connection, which would account for the strong fact, that temperate Greenland is as Arctic as Arctic Greenland is, a fact, to me, of astounding force.— I do confess, that such a Northern migration would thus fill Greenland as it is filled, in so far as the whole Flora (temperate & arctic) would be Arctic—but then the same plants should have gone to the other polar Islands, & above all, so many common Arctic Scandinavian plants should not be absent in Greenland. still less should whole Nat Ords be absent, & above all the Arctic Leguminosæ.— It is difficult (as I have told Dawson) to conceive of the force with which arguments drawn from the absence of certain familiar ubiquitous plants strike the Botanists.— I would not throw overboard altogether Sea-transport & water transport, but I cannot realize their giving rise to such anomalies, in the distribution, as Greenland presents.

So too I have always felt the force of your objection, that Greenland should have been depopulated in the Glacial period,¹⁵ but then reflected that vegetation now ascends I forget how high (above 1000 ft) in Disco¹⁶ in 70^o. & that even in a glacial ocean there may always have been lurking places for the few hundred plants Greenland now possesses

Supposing Greenland were re-peopled from Scandinavia over ocean way, why should Carices be the chief things brought? why should there have been no Leguminosæ brought, no plants but high arctic— why no Caltha palustris—which gilds the marshes of Norway & paints the house tops of Iceland. In short to my eyes the trans oceanic migration would no more make such an assemblage than special creations will account for representative species.— & no “ingenious wriggling ¹⁷ ever satisfied me that it would!— there there.—

Say the word when you wish for Oxalis sensitiva.¹⁸

We have a Cyprid. hirsutiss. wh. we hope will flower in spring.¹⁹

I dined with Henry Christy last night who has just returned from celt hunting with Lartet, amongst Basques— they are Pyreneans.²⁰ Lubbock was there & told me that my previous speculation was one of Von Bærs,²¹ & that the Finns are supposed to have made the Kœkken middens²²

I read Max Muller a year ago—& quite agree, first part is excellent, last on origin of language fatuous & feeble, as a Scientific argument²³