My dear Hooker

Many thanks for yr pleasant & very amusing letter.¹ You have been treated shamefully by Etty² & me, for now that I know the facts, the sentence seems to me quite clear. Nevertheless as we have both blundered it w^d be well to modify the sentence something as follows. “whilst on the other hand the plants which are related to those of distant continents, but have no affinity with those of the mother continent, are often very common”.³ I forget whether you explain this circumstance but it seems to me very mysterious.

You have not sent Naudin’s letter which I sh^d be glad to see as according to the Gard. Chron. it is the fruit of the hybrid itself & not of the mother plant which is intermediate in character; & if so I do not care much about the case.⁴ I must say one w^d on Pangenesis viz. that it by no means implies that “every previous attribute of all the ancestors exists in an organism,” but I fear my dear Pang. will appear bosh to all you sceptics.⁵ You were quite right about Asa Gray, & as seems invariably the case I quite wrong.⁶

Do always remember that nothing in the world gives us so much pleasure as seeing you here whenever you can come.

I chuckle over what you say of And. Murray, but I must grapple with his book some day.⁷ yours affectionately | Ch Darwin