To J. D. Hooker 17 March [1867]1
Down.
Mar 17
My dear Hooker
It is a long time since I have written, but I cannot boast that I have refrained from charity towards you, but from having lots of work. I am so much obliged to you for telling me about the palm seeds. I have got a whole string of cases equally, or perhaps more curious, but yours is infinitely the most valuable from having been observed by first rate judges.2 The subject is of paramount importance for my beloved Pangenesis.3 Now cd you obtain permission for me from Naudin to insert some such paragraph as the enclosed.4 My book will not appear till next Nov. but I shd have to insert the passage in the proof sheet in about a month’s time. Help me if you can. Are they seeds or nuts? Correct the word if they are not seeds.
It is great news about the presidentship; I am very sorry for it, tho’ you seem to keep up your spirits.5 You ask what I have been doing; nothing but blackening proofs with corrections.6 I do not believe any man in England naturally writes so vile a style as I do. The only fact which I have lately ascertained, & about which I dont know whether you wd care, is that a great excess of, or very little pollen produced not the least difference in the average number, weight, or period of germination in the seeds of Ipomœa.7 I remember saying the contrary to you & Mr Smith8 at Kew. But the result is now clear from a great series of trials. On the other hand seeds from this plant, fertilised by pollen from the same flower, weigh less, produce dwarfer plants, but indisputably germinate quicker than seeds produced by a cross between two distinct plants.9
In your paper on Insular Floras (p. 9) there is what I must think an error, which I before pointed out to you; viz you say that the plants which are wholly distinct from those of nearest continent are often very common, instead of very rare.10 Etty,11 who has read your paper with great interest, was confounded by this sentence. By the way I have stumbled on two old notes, one that 22 species of European birds occasionally arrive as chance wanderer, to the Azores, & secondly the trunks of American trees have been known to be washed on shores of Canary isld, by gulf stream, which returns southward from the Azores.12
What poor papers those of A. Murray are in G. Chronicle: what conclusions he dreams from a single Carabus & that a widely ranging genus!13 He seems to me conceited: you & I are fair game geologically, but he refers to Lyell, as if his opinion on a geological point was worth no more than his own.—14 I have just bought, but not read a sentence of, Murray’s big book, second-hand for 30s, new, so I do not envy the publishers.15 It is clear to me that the man cannot reason.—
I have had a very nice letter from Scott at Calcutta:16 he has been making some good observations on the acclimatisation of seeds from plants of same species, grown in different countries; & likewise on how far European plants will stand the climate of Calcutta; he says he is astonished how well some flourish, & he maintains, if the land were unoccupied, several could easily cross, spreading by seed, the Tropics from N. to South; so he knows how to please me, but I have told him to be cautious, else he will have Dragons down on him.—17
I was going to have asked you what sort of a man Benj. Clarke was (I bought his book out of kindness) but I see A. Gray calls him “that ass”. He is now going to publish analogous views on Animals, & I have subscribed.18 He tells me that no single person has or can object to his views on plants; I suspected that perhaps no one noticed them.19 He tells me a wonderful story of the effects of an inherited mutilation from cutting off the upper half of the ears of wheat for only 3 generations, which I cannot believe; & I have told him no one would believe it, unless he repeat & rerepeats his experiment.—20
Farewell my dear old friend | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Clarke, Benjamin. 1870. On systematic botany and zoology, including a new arrangement of phanerogamous plants, with especial reference to relative position, and their relations with the cryptogamous; and a new arrangement of the classes of zoology. London: n.p.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.
Desmond, Ray. 1994. Dictionary of British and Irish botanists and horticulturists including plant collectors, flower painters and garden designers. New edition, revised with the assistance of Christine Ellwood. London: Taylor & Francis and the Natural History Museum. Bristol, Pa.: Taylor & Francis.
Marginalia: Charles Darwin’s marginalia. Edited by Mario A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of Nicholas W. Gill. Vol. 1. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 1990.
Murray, Andrew. 1866. The geographical distribution of mammals. London: Day and Son.
Murray, Andrew. 1867. Dr. Hooker on insular floras. Gardeners’ Chronicle (1867): 152, 181–2.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Williamson, M. 1984. Sir Joseph Hooker’s lecture on insular floras. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 22: 55–77.
Summary
The date-palm seed case is important for Pangenesis.
Reports experiments on pollination of Ipomoea.
"Insular floras": A. Murray’s paper in Gardeners’ Chronicle is poor.
John Scott’s work on acclimatisation of plants.
The anomaly of the Azores flora on the migration theory.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5445
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 94: 13a–e
- Physical description
- ALS 8pp, CD note
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5445,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5445.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 15