To J. D. Hooker 31 May [1866]1
Leith Hill Place May 31
returning home on Saturday2
My dear H.
Your list of Books & Papers seems to me very good; but my Orchid paper & Primula has too indirect a bearing to be worth noticing.—3
The Eozoon is one of most important facts,4 & in much lesser degree the Archeopteryx5 “Fritz Müller Fur Darwin” is perhaps the most important contribution.—6
I have worked into new Edit. of Origin the more important new facts & views known to me & if Grove thought it worth while, I could send him soon clean sheets by half-dozens with pencil marks to passages.7 I thought of this when I saw him in London,8 but hardly liked to offer this, nor do I now like to do so, as it seems pushing myself so forward.—
The new Edit. of Origin has caused me two great vexations; I forgot Bates’ paper on variation, but I remembered in time his mimetic work, & now strange to say I find I have forgotten your Arctic paper.!!9 I know how it arose. I indexed for my bigger work10 & never expected that a new Edition of Origin, wd. be wanted. I cannot say how all this has vexed me. Everything which I have read during last 4 years I find is quite washy in my mind.
I am not well today so farewell. | Yours affect. | C. Darwin
I now find that Owen claims to have been the originator of Natural Selection:11—Asa Gray always said he wd. do so.—12
I liked Caspary very much.—13
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bates, Henry Walter. 1860. Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Diurnal Lepidoptera. [Read 5 March and 24 November 1860.] Transactions of the Entomological Society of London n.s. 5 (1858–61): 223–8, 335–61.
Bates, Henry Walter. 1861. Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidæ. [Read 21 November 1861.] Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 23 (1860–2): 495–566.
Carpenter, William Benjamin. 1866. Supplemental notes on the structure and affinities of Eozoon Canadense. [Read 10 January 1866.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 22: 219–28.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Dawson, John William. 1864. On the structure of certain organic remains in the Laurentian limestones of Canada. [Read 23 November 1864.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 21 (1865): 51–9.
[Gray, Asa.] 1860c. Darwin on the origin of species. Atlantic Monthly 6: 109–16, 229–39; Darwin and his reviewers. Atlantic Monthly 6: 406–25.
Grove, William Robert. 1866. Address of the president. Report of the thirty-sixth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Nottingham, pp. liii–lxxxii.
Origin 4th ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 4th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1866.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Owen, Richard. 1866–8. On the anatomy of vertebrates. 3 vols. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Rupke, Nicolaas A. 1994. Richard Owen, Victorian naturalist. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press.
Schopf, J. William. 2000. Solution to Darwin’s dilemma: discovery of the missing Precambrian record of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97: 6947–53.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Comments on JDH’s list – very good, but Orchids and Primula paper have too indirect a bearing to be worth mentioning. The Eozoon is a very important fact and to a much lesser degree the Archaeopteryx. Müller’s Für Darwin [1864] perhaps the most important contribution.
CD has forgotten to mention Bates on variation and JDH’s Arctic paper ["Distribution of Arctic plants", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 251–348] in new edition of Origin.
Now finds that Owen claims to be originator of natural selection.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5106
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Leith Hill Place
- Source of text
- DAR 115: 290
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5106,” accessed on 11 October 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5106.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 14