Dear Darwin

How are you after your visit here last Tuesday? & how did you get home. It was a great treat to see you looking so well.¹

I have no news, having been away in Norfolk to see my Mother, who appears to be comfortably settled at Norwich.² I received Lyells volume last night & am very anxious to begin it. What a comfort it is that he has returned to the old typography.³ We must now keep him straight anent origin & development.⁴ I dine with them on Tuesday, to meet Bunbury—to whom I shall give a hint on the subject.⁵

Have you seen the new part of Herbert Spencer,⁶ some of it is interesting, but much of it is ponderous verbose & sesquipedalian to the last degree. Good God fancy a luckless school boy of 10 centuries hence having to translate it into the vernacular of his epoch!— Some passages trench on your subject of Pangenesis.⁷

Huxleys little book on Elementary Physiology is very clear & good for those who have a good knowledge of the subject, but what the “boys & girls” for whom it is intended can make of it passes my comprehension.⁸

I have just finished the New Zealand Manual, & am thinking about a discussion on the Geograph. distrib &c of other plants.⁹ There is scarce a single indigenous annual plant in the group.¹⁰ I wish that I knew more of the past condition of the Islands & whether they have been rising or sinking   There is much that suggests the idea, that the Islands were once connected during a warmer epoch, were afterwards seperated & much reduced in area to what they now are, & lastly have assumed their present size. The remarkable general uniformity of the flora, even of the arboreous Flora, throughout so many degrees of latitude, is a very remarkable feature, as are the representation in the Southern half of certain species of the north, by very closely allied varieties or species; & lastly there is the immense preponderance of certain genera whose species all run into one another & vary horribly. & which suggest a rising area.—¹¹ I hear that a whale has been found some miles inland.¹²

Do you care to see Haast’s lecture on the West-coast of Canterbury—¹³ It is I think quite worth glancing over: as is Doyne’s report on the formation of the lower plains of Canterbury, I can lend you both.¹⁴

At Cambridge I heard that Babington was very ill,¹⁵ with a sudden attack of illness that puzzled the Doctor, Rheumatism Gout & Paralysis were all talked of.

I suppose you never were insane enough to speculate upon the status of life on the globe: but this question of replacement of species, plus a dose of Malthus which I took the other day, has set me to stupifying myself over the question as to whether the total amount of life, i.e. of living organized matter on the globe varies materially within the limits of our knowledge:¹⁶ putting of course temperature on one side, a rise in which would I suppose largely increase the amount of organized matter existing at any one time, Temperature I suppose determines the amount of living matter existing at any time on the globe,—its fluctuations or unequal distribution the variety of life, & so forth. This may be all great nonsense, but I suppose the time may come when the inorganic equivalent of the organized matter on the globe may be measured or weighed.

What a curious discovery this is of Balfour Stewarts at the Kew Observatory, that the spots on the sun are connected with the positions of Venus & other planets, which thus either drag on one side patches of the Sun’s photosphere, or otherwise so influence it that it disperses in spots that are exposed to their influence.¹⁷

This is a precious idle gossip, but it is like holding on to your coat-tails, after you have left Kew, yourself. & calling “Papa come back”—

My wife is much the same; eats well, which I suppose is everything at this time.¹⁸

Ever Yr affectionate | Jos D Hooker.