From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[1 Jan 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 5
Summary:
Sends plant specimens. William Borrer will be glad to send seeds.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
George Bentham
Date:
?-?-1862?
Source of text:
JDH/2/3/2 f.138, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Summary:
Undated letter of four pages over 1 folio.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
16 Jan [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 140
Summary:
Entire family down with influenza. Has done nothing for three weeks.
Asks for Haast reference on New Zealand glacial deposits.
CD’s view of the North since Trent case. Can no longer write with sympathy to Asa Gray.
Encourages JDH about his son, Willy.
Problem of relation of colour to external conditions. Hopes JDH will undertake the investigation.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[19 Jan 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 8–11
Summary:
JDH castigates the Americans after the Trent affair. The value of an aristocracy. How will CD answer Asa Gray’s letter?
His "remarkable plant" [Welwitschia mirabilis] exhibited at Linnean Society.
Genera plantarum is in press.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
25 [and 26] Jan [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 141
Summary:
His answer to Asa Gray.
On JDH’s view of aristocracy. Primogeniture is dreadfully opposed to selection.
Orchid book proofs ready soon – has no idea whether it is worth publishing.
Huxley on Owen.
Feeble letter from J. H. Balfour against Huxley’s lectures ["Relation of man to lower animals", pt 2 of Man’s place in nature (1863)].
Has received the "astounding" Angraecum sesquipedale with nectary 1ft long: "what insect could suck it?"
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[25 Jan 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 6–7
Summary:
Will send an Arethusa; offers other specimens.
Dimorphism.
Falconer contradicts Sumatra and Ceylon elephant story.
Lyell as rabid as ever about America.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
30 Jan [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 142
Summary:
Is JDH sure it is a Bletia, just received? Its pollen very different from any Epidendreæ he has seen. If it is Bletia, Lindley’s grand divisions are fanciful.
Accepts JDH’s offer to collect cases of dimorphism.
James Bateman has sent a lot of orchids with Angraecum sesquipedale. What a proboscis the moth that sucks its 11½ inch nectary must have!
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[31 Jan – 8 Feb 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 14; DAR 111: 93
Summary:
Wrote a "frightful screed" about aristocracy’s being a necessary consequence of natural selection, and then burnt it.
H. W. Bates is the only man "thinking out" natural selection to any purpose. "I think I have driven Bates back to Nat. Sel. as the only way of solving his difficulties."
HWB’s mimetic butterflies.
JDH wishes he had time to do the same thing with plants.
Owen and Huxley involved in a "contemptible" squabble in the Edinburgh newspapers.
Maximovitch reports Stellaria bulbifera is a Siberian form which never ripens its seeds.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
