From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
George Bentham
Date:
?-?-1855?
Source of text:
JDH/2/3/2 f.115, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
George Bentham
Date:
?-?-1855?
Source of text:
JDH/2/3/2 f.116, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Summary:
4 page letter over 1 folio.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Miles Joseph Berkeley
Date:
?-?-1855?
Source of text:
JDH/2/3/2 f.214, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Miles Joseph Berkeley
Date:
?-?-1855?
Source of text:
JDH/2/3/2 f.215, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Summary:
A one page letter to Miles Berkeley.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[before 7 Mar 1855]
Source of text:
DAR 104: 216–17
Summary:
CD’s tabulation of colonists curious but explicable.
Working on Tasmanian flora; contemplating general essay on Australian distribution: Tasmania and Australia same alpine species; Swan River flora very peculiar and quite distinct from New South Wales.
Trying to establish new journal at Linnean.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
7 Mar [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 126
Summary:
Latitude overrules everything in distribution. Alpine distributions are like insular. Tabulating proportions.
T. V. Wollaston’s Madeira insects: many flightless, thus not blown to sea. TVW’s insects do not confirm Forbes’s Atlantis.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[before 17 Mar 1855]
Source of text:
DAR 104: 210–13
Summary:
JDH criticises C. J. F. Bunbury’s paper on Madeira [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 1 (1857): 1–35].
Absence of Ophrys on Madeira suggests to JDH a sequence in creation of groups.
Why are flightless insects common in desert?
Australian endemism.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
7 Apr [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 127
Summary:
CD has begun seed-salting experiments. Wants JDH to write which seeds he expects to be easily killed [in salt water].
CD’s idea that coal-plants lived in salt water like mangroves made JDH savage.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
13 Apr [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 128
Summary:
Pea self-fertilisation: has forty-five varieties growing side by side.
Describes seed-salting experiments: e.g., immersion in tank filled with snow. Reports some successful germinations.
Made list of naturalised plants from Asa Gray’s Manual [of Botany] to calculate the proportions of the great families.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
19 Apr [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 129
Summary:
Rejects JDH’s suggestion that seed-salting experiments be conducted on huge scale. Only wishes to demonstrate possibility of sea transport, not establishment of any particular insular flora. More seed results.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
24 Apr [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 130
Summary:
More on seed-salting. JDH’s admission that he expected seeds to die in a week gives CD "a nice little triumph".
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
11 May [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 131
Summary:
JDH to be appointed Assistant Director at Kew.
On where to publish seed-salting paper. Floating problem perhaps more important than germination.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
15 [May 1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 147
Summary:
CD upset because salted seeds do not float.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
27 May [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 132
Summary:
CD’s seed paper in Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 255–8];
CD attacks Forbes’s "Atlantis".
Considers solutions to floating problem. Decides to test Azores seeds.
Photographs and drawings of CD.
Plant movement experiments with Hedysarum gyrans.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
2 June [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 134
Summary:
Asks JDH not to send H. C. Watson’s paper on Azores plants [Hooker’s Lond. J. Bot. 2 (1843): 1–9, 125–31, 394–408; 3 (1844): 582–617; 6 (1847): 380–97].
CD cannot endure trying all the Azorean seeds.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
5 June [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 135
Summary:
Seeds: worried they will turn into another barnacle job.
Studies plants colonising abandoned field.
Experiment on plant sleep movements.
CD objects to "Atlantis" because no evidence; does not affect species theory.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[6–9 June 1855]
Source of text:
DAR 100: 90–3
Summary:
Finds Forbes’s continental theories, migration, and double creation are all unsatisfactory explanations of geographical distribution of plants.
Is currently working on problems of sea transport of plant species.
European plants on Australian Alps only explicable by double creations.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
10 June [1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 136
Summary:
Detailed response to JDH’s critique of sea transport and continental connection theories. JDH’s claim that low plants are widely distributed fits both theories.
Species theory does not touch origin of life.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
15 [June 1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 137
Summary:
Thanks for Hedysarum.
Pleasure in identifying field plants.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
23 [June 1855]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 138
Summary:
Has used borrowing rights at Linnean Society Library arranged for him by JDH.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
