Dear Darwin

I have been laid up for a week with Influenza aggrevated by a dinner-party in the middle of it & am thinking of going to S^t Leonards for a week on Saturday with Harriette who has been laid up too.¹

I am delighted with Moggridge’s book² & have written begging him to bury seeds in tobacco-pipe bowls & other receptacles There can be but two ways of accounting for the seeds not germinating— Either the want of any circulation of air, or formic acid may prevent it.³ I know nothing about formic acid— Has an ant’s-nest any increase of temperature?

I have no news except of my own folly— I have undertaken the Botany Primer for Macmillan—which will be some 100 12mo pages of a sort Introduction to the subject of Botany—⁴ something different I think from an Elementary lesson-book—& yet the information must be definite, & such as the recipient can be questioned about. I have given the subject a great deal of thought & sketched out a plan. The great difficulty is to go to the bottom of things & yet avoid detail,— or rather to keep pointing to the bottom of things without going into it. I am afraid it will be like the sailor’s “Potato & point—” which, as I daresay you remember, consisted in a plate of potato & one oderiferous red-herring hung over the mess table. at every mouthful of potato every man pointed it to the herring before eating it— by way of catching flavor?—

Ever yours affec | J D Hooker