From J. D. Hooker [20 February 1864]1
Kew
Saturday—
Dear Darwin
I send the only two Corydalis we have of the things you mentioned I doubt the Tourrettia being in cultivation now, I never saw it.2 The Sikkim Corydalis is a large growing much branched rambling species, which I should think should be raised in a green house & then planted out amongst shrubs in a good soil. I found it always always scrambling over shrubs on the verge of the forest.3
How I wish you would get well.
Ever yr affec | J D Hooker.
Crugers seems to be a splendid paper—4 how I wish he were a better Botanic Gardener— he has been instructed to propagate Cinchona in Trinidad, & made a regular mess of it.—5 A German scientific man is the most impractical & impracticable pig in Christendom.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Brockway, Lucile H. 1979. Science and colonial expansion. The role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens. New York: Academic Press.
‘Climbing plants’: On the movements and habits of climbing plants. By Charles Darwin. [Read 2 February 1865.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 9 (1867): 1–118.
Crüger, Hermann. 1864. A few notes on the fecundation of orchids and their morphology. [Read 3 March 1864.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 8 (1865): 127–35.
EB: The Encyclopædia Britannica. A dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information. 11th edition. 29 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1910–11.
McCracken, Donal P. 1997. Gardens of empire: botanical institutions of the Victorian British empire. London and Washington: Leicester University Press.
Markham, Clements Robert. 1880. Peruvian bark. A popular account of the introduction of chinchona cultivation into British India. London: John Murray.
Summary
Sends a Corydalis.
Hermann Crüger’s paper [see 4394] splendid, but he has made a mess of propagating Cinchona in Trinidad.
JDH’s opinion of Germans.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-4413
- From
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Kew
- Source of text
- DAR 101: 186–7
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4413,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4413.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 12