To J. D. Hooker   6 August 1881

My dear Hooker.—

For Heaven sake never speak of boring me, as it w^d. be the greatest pleasure to aid you in the slightest degree, & your letter has interested me exceedingly.—¹ I will go through your points seriatim, but I have never attended much to the history of any subject, & my memory has become atrociously bad. It will therefore be a mere chance whether any of my remarks are of any use.— Your idea to show what travellers have done seems to me a brilliant & just one, especially considering your audience.

(1) I know nothing about Tourneforth’s work, but your remark that we now understand the meaning of the resemblance between height & latitude on Plants seems very appropriate²

(2) I believe that you are fully right in calling Humboldt the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived. I have lately read 2 or 3 Volumes again.³ His geology is funny stuff; but that merely means that he was not in advance of his age. I sh^d. say he was wonderful more for his near approach to omniscience than for originality.— Whether or not his position as a scientific man is as eminent as we think, you might truly call him the parent of a grand progeny of scientific travellers, who taken together have done much for science.—⁴

(3) It seems to me quite just to give Lyell (& secondarily E. Forbes) a very prominent place.⁵

(4) Dana was I believe the first man (as he has rather angrily & lately reclaimed) who maintained the permanence of continents & the great oceans. I knew nothing about Dana’s, views when I propounded the doctrine in my Coral Book, & am now sorry that I cared so little about priority that I did not take the trouble to compare the date (now forgotten) of Dana’s publication with that of my Coral Book.⁶ When I read the Challenger’s conclusion that sediment from the land is not deposited at greater distances than 200 to 300 miles from the land, I was much strengthened in my old belief.—⁷ Wallace seems to me to have argued the case excellently.⁸ Nevertheless, I w^d. speak, if I were in your place, rather cautiously; for T. Mellard Reade has argued lately with some force against the view;⁹ but I cannot call to mind his arguments. If forced to express a judgment, I sh^d. abide by the view of approximate permanence since Cambrian days.

(6) The extreme importance of the Arctic fossil plants is self-evident. Take the opportunity of groaning over our ignorance of the Lignite plants of Kerguelen Land or any Antarctic land—¹⁰ It might do good.—

(7) I cannot avoid feeling sceptical about the travelling of plants from the North, except during the Tertiary period.¹¹ It may of course have been so & probably was so from one of the two Poles at the earliest period, during Pre Cambrian ages; but such speculations seem to me hardly scientific, seeing how little we know of the old Floras

I will now jot down without any order a few miscellaneous remarks. I think you ought to allude to Alph. De Candolle’s great book, for though it (like almost everything else) is washed out of my mind, yet I remember most distinctly thinking a very valuable work. Anyhow you might allude to his excellent account of the history of all cultivated plants.¹²

How shall you manage to allude to your New Zealand & Tierra del Fuego work;¹³ if you do not allude to them, you will be scandalously unjust.—

The many angiosperm plants in the Cretaceous beds of the U. States (& as far as I can judge the age of these beds has been fairly well made out) seems to me a fact of very great importance. So is their relation to the existing flora of the U. States under an evolutionary point of view.¹⁴ Have not some Australian extinct forms been lately found in Australia? Or have I dreamed it?

Again the recent discovery of plants rather low down in our Silurian beds is very important.)¹⁵

(Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants. I have sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated continent, perhaps near the S. Pole. Hence I was greatly interested by a view which Saporta propounded to me a few years ago at great length in M.S, & which I fancy he has since published, as I urged him to do,—viz that as soon as flower-frequenting insects were developed, during the latter part of the Secondary period, an enormous impulse was given to the development of the higher plants, by cross-fertilisation being thus suddenly favoured.¹⁶

A few years ago I was much struck with Axel Blytt’s essay, showing from observations on the peat-beds in Scandinavia that there had apparently been long periods with more rain & others with less rain (Perhaps connected with Crolls recurrent astronomical periods) & that these periods had largely determined the present distribution of the plants of Norway & Sweden. This seemed to me a very important essay.—¹⁷

(I have just read over my remarks & I fear that they will not be of the slightest use to you.). I cannot but think that you have got through the hardest or at least the most difficult part of your work in having made so good & striking a sketch of what you intend to say; but I can quite understand how you must groan over the great necessary labour.—

I most heartily sympathise with you on the successes of Brian & Reginald:¹⁸ as years advance what happens to oneself becomes of very little consequence, in comparison with the careers of our children.— Keep your spirits up, for I am convinced that you will make an excellent address.

Ever yours affectionately | Charles Darwin

N.B. I have taken this paper as it makes me write a little better¹⁹

Do not waste your time in acknowledging this or writing to me.—