To J. D. Hooker 28 August [1864]
4 Chester Place | Regent’s Park
Aug. 28th.
My dear Hooker
I should like awfully,, as the boys say, to pay you an hours visit at Kew, but I fear I have not strength enough. For the same reason Mr. Woolner must I fear wait.1 With respect to the Bignonia, it is certainly very different from the B. unguis the latter has sensitive petioles & can hardly twine, whereas B. buxifolia has not sensitive petioles & can twine well. I suppose I must call it “an unnamed species from Kew allied to B. unguis”.2
I should have much wished to have consulted you about sending an answer to Kölliker in the Reader as a good opportunity of giving a little lecture on the points misunderstood by him.3 It would not be quarrelsome in nature.
But Lyell thinks it would not be worth the short time required to do it.4 & I quite gave up the thought On the other hand my brother & H. Wedgwood think it would.5 Have you any decided opinion for I cant make up my mind.
We shall return probably on Thursday or Friday.— If I shd. get wonderfully strong, I could not resist coming for an hour.—but I fear there is hardly a chance; for Bot. Garden in Regents Park,6 almost did for me.—
Yours affecty | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Summary
CD is not well enough to sit for Woolner.
Two Bignonia plants, which JDH does not distinguish as species, can be separated by differences in climbing and sensitivity behaviour.
Wants to write a non-quarrelsome reply to R. A. Kölliker ["Darwin’sche Schöpfungstheorie", Z. Wiss. Zool. 14 (1864): 174–86] in the Reader. Lyell opposes, but E. A. Darwin and Hensleigh Wedgwood support the idea.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-4601
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- London, Chester Place, 4
- Source of text
- DAR 115: 246
- Physical description
- LS(A) 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4601,” accessed on 11 October 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4601.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 12