To J. D. Hooker¹   [June 1857]²

These queries are bound together with another list of questions for Hooker. In the letter to J. D. Hooker, 20 October [1857], CD stated that he had been collecting questions to ask Hooker during some future visit to Down: these questions may be those referred to, or some of them. The second set of questions is transcribed following the letter to J. D. Hooker, 20 October [1857].

The final question in this memorandum is related to a point discussed by CD in the letters to J. D. Hooker, 16 [May 1857] and 3 June [1857]. The chapter of CD’s species book in which the topic is discussed was completed on 5 July 1857 (‘Journal’; see Correspondence vol. 6, Appendix II).

The Marianne and Bonin Islands, off the east coast of Japan, had been visited in 1853 by Matthew Calbraith Perry. Hooker, who had worked on the flora of a neighbouring Pacific island in 1857 (J. D. Hooker 1857), would presumably have known whether any botanical studies of the area had been recently published. CD did not, however, refer to any such work in Natural selection.

Probably Lange 1857.

Robert Brown.

CD had previously asked Hooker to comment on the proposition that a characteristic that is particularly developed in any species is apt to be highly variable (letter to J. D. Hooker, 16 [May 1857]). See also letters to J. D. Hooker, 3 June [1857] and 5 June [1857], in which CD expressed his surprise that examples could not be found in plants. The subject is discussed in Natural selection, pp. 307–11. CD cited Hooker’s opinion that plants were altogether too variable for the phenomenon to be apparent (ibid., p. 308).