To J. D. Hooker   1 July 1878

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

July 1. 1878

My dear Hooker

I shall be very glad to take a part in any scheme which you wish for.—1 Will you therefore put my name down for £200. But I think rather strongly that it would be only fair to the subscribers to state that the subscriptions would not be called for, unless £10,000 is promised, so that the Socy. may be enabled to reduce by a sensible amount the cost of being elected a member.2

Your life must now be one of great fatigue,

Ever yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S. | Do you possess Porliera hygrometrica & if so could you lend me the plant? Frank sends me a wonderful account of its being almost always asleep, night & day, & I shd. much like to observe it.3

1
Hooker had proposed setting up a fund to cover the costs of Royal Society of London publications so that the fees for fellows of the society could be reduced (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 9 June 1878 and n. 1). No more recent letter from Hooker requesting a subscription from CD has been found.
2
William Spottiswoode, treasurer of the Royal Society, had stated that a fund of £10,000 for publications would suffice to reduce the fees of the Royal Society to the amount charged by other societies; he suggested that donations be sought from the fellows of the society (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 9 June 1878 and n. 3).
3
On the identification of Porlieria hygrometrica, see the letter from Francis Darwin, [22 June 1878] and n. 6.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 £200] ‘ £’ above ‘200’
1.2 it would] interl
1.4 £10,000] ‘£’ above ‘10,000’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11581,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11581