From J. D. Hooker   8 December 1876

George Bentham, Daniel Oliver, and Hooker were investigating Hoya carnosa (the wax plant). CD had evidently asked about the minute bud-like bodies sometimes found together with perfect flowers in the umbels. He called the bodies that alternated with the sepals ‘small flattened heart-shaped papillæ, like rudiments of petals’ (Forms of flowers, p. 332).

Hooker sent flowers of Asperula scoparia (prickly woodruff), Arnebia hispidissima, and Cinchona micrantha. CD discussed the flowers of these species in Forms of flowers, pp. 285, 111, and 134. Arnebia and Alkanna are both genera in the family Boraginaceae. CD did not examine any flowers from the genus Roucheria.

CD had probably sent flowers of Aegiphila obdurata to Hooker for identification. He first received dried flowers of Aegiphila (spirit weed) from Fritz Müller in 1868; Müller had initially believed the flowers were heterostyled but later discovered the species was dioecious (Correspondence vol. 16, letter from Fritz Müller, 31 October 1868). CD described Müller’s flowers as Aegiphila obdurata in Forms of flowers, p. 124. Aegiphila obdurata is a synonym of A. obducta.

On 26 October 1876, letters from Richard Owen and Albert Günther were presented to the Royal Sociey Council regarding the HMS Challenger expedition specimens (Royal Society, Council minutes 4: 340–4). Challenger had returned on 24 May 1876 after a three-and-a-half-year surveying voyage (Tizard et al. 1885). Günther’s letters, dated 6 and 21 June 1876, argued that members of the zoology department of the British Museum were competent to examine, record, and classify the zoology specimens from the Challenger expedition. He stated that because specimens from previous expeditions placed in the hands of private individuals had been lost, and the voyage had been funded by the British government, the specimens should be deposited in the British Museum for the benefit of the nation. He concluded the second letter by accusing Charles Wyville Thomson, scientific supervisor of the expedition, of recommending to the Admiralty that the specimens should be deposited with a professor in Edinburgh and other private persons, and of having ‘the object in view to retain the principal part of the ‘Challenger’ collections permanently in Edinburgh, to form the foundation of a new Natural History Museum’. He continued: ‘If such a scheme should be really contemplated, the way for its execution would be prepared not only by keeping those collections at a distance from the British Museum, but also by excluding the naturalists of the Museum from participating in the duty of examining and arranging them.’ For the full letters, see Appendix QQQQ.

Hooker had family connections in Great Yarmouth. Hooker and his wife, Hyacinth, visited Down on 2 December 1876 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).