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
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[8 Feb 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 12
Summary:
Sends dried specimens of Melastomataceae.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
9 Feb [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 143
Summary:
Thanks JDH for box of melastomes
and a very valuable reference from Daniel Oliver.
Is crossing Monochaetum which he thinks is dimorphic.
Is "sometimes half tempted to give up species & stick to experiments".
Pollen of Bletia hyacinthina is quite unlike other Bletia species but exactly the same as Epipactis.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
[before 15 Feb 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 96: 7r
Summary:
Asks for the address of C. W. Crocker.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[before 15 Feb 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 96: 7v
Summary:
Sends C. W. Crocker’s address.
Doubts CWC can help with Mormodes.
Will see CD at Lubbock’s.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
25 Feb [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 144
Summary:
Admires JDH’s paper on Arctic plants ["Distribution of Arctic plants", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 251–348]. Such papers compel people to reflect on modification of species;
JDH will be driven to a cooled globe.
Serious erratum in paper.
New and original evidence in case of Greenland. Its flora requires accidental means of transport by ice and currents.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[26 Feb 1862?]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 13
Summary:
Box of Melastomataceae has arrived.
Talked with [Duke of] Argyll about Origin. He is between stools: Owen and Lyell.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
27 Feb 1862
Source of text:
DAR 101: 15–16
Summary:
Pleased at CD’s opinion of his Arctic plants paper. CD has caught great blunder.
Lack of Arctic–Asiatic species in mountains of tropical Asia does not trouble him. Species seem to indicate some "current of migration" from Europe and W. Asia southeastward to Ceylon – an awful staggerer to bridge migrations.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
[1 Mar – 15 May 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 87
Summary:
[List of plants in CD’s hand, with notes by JDH identifying them.]
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
3 Mar 1862
Source of text:
DAR 101: 17–19
Summary:
Had it not been for CD, JDH would never have written such papers as his one on Arctic flora. The "evulgation" of CD’s views is the purest pleasure he derives from them.
He too is staggered that Greenland ought to have been depopulated during the glacial period. Absence of Caltha is fatal to its re-population by chance migration.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
7 Mar [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 185
Summary:
CD wishes he could sympathise with Asa Gray’s politics.
Orchids to appear soon.
Pre-glacial Arctic distribution.
Work on floral dimorphism.
High opinion of Buckle as a writer.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[10 Mar 1862]
Source of text:
DAR 101: 20–2; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (probably JDH/2/1/2)
Summary:
Returns Asa Gray’s letter. Disappointed with Gray. Comments on America. British–American relations.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
14 Mar [1862]
Source of text:
DAR 115: 150
Summary:
Thinks JDH is a bit hard on Asa Gray.
Bates’s letter is that of a true thinker. Asks to see JDH’s to Bates. Point raised in it is most difficult. "There is one clear line of distinction; – when many parts of structure as in woodpecker show distinct adaptation to external bodies, it is preposterous to attribute them to effect of climate etc. – but when a single point, alone, as a hooked seed, it is conceivable that it may thus have arisen." His study of orchids shows nearly all parts of the flower co-adapted for fertilisation by insects and therefore the result of natural selection. Mormodes ignea "is a prodigy of adaptation".
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
