To Charles Lyell   27 [December 1859]

My dear Lyell

Owen wrote to me to ask for reference to Clift.¹ As my own notes for late chapt^s. are all in chaos, I bethought me, who was the most trustworthy man of all others to look for references, & I answered myself, “of course Lyell”. In Edit of 1833 Vol. 2. Vol 3. p. 144, you will find reference to Clift in Ed. New. Phil. Journ. no XX p. 394.—² You will also find that you were greatly struck with the fact itself, which I had quite forgotten. I copied passage & sent it to Owen.—³ Why I gave in some detail references to my own work⁴ is that Owen (not the first ocasion with respect to myself & others) quietly ignores my having ever generalised on the subject & makes great fuss on more than one occasion at having discovered the law of succession.⁵ In fact this law with the Galapagos Distribution first turned my mind on origin of species.—⁶ My own references, are diag Large 8^vo Edit 1839 Murrays Edit. 1845.—

p. 210 … … . p 173 On Succession

p. 153 … … . p. 131,132 On splitting up of old

Geograph. Provincesramme (Long before Owen published I had in M.S. worked out the succession of types in Old World.—) as I remember telling Sedgwick, who of course disbelieved it.)

Since receiving your last letter on Hooker, I have read his Introduction as far as p xxiv where Australian Flora begins; & this latter part I liked most in the Proofs.— It is a magnificent Essay.— I doubt slightly about some assertions, or rather sh^d have liked more facts, as, for instance, in regard to species varying most on confines of their range.— Naturally I doubt a little whether his remarks about “divergence”, & about domestic races being produced under nature, without selection.⁷ It would take much to persuade me that a Pouter Pigeon or Carrier &c could have been produced by mere laws of variation without long-continued selection; though each little enlargement of crop & beak are due to variation.

I demur greatly to his comparison of products of sinking & rising islands: in Indian Ocean he compares exclusively rising volcanic & sinking coral-isl^d. ⁸ The latter have most peculiar soil, & are excessively small in area & are tenanted by very few species: moreover such low coral-islands have probably been often during their subsidence utterly submerged & restocked by plants from other lands. In Pacific Ocean the floras of all best cases are unknown: the comparison ought to have been exclusively between rising & fringed Volcanic isl^d. & sinking & encircled Volcanic isl^d.—

I have read Naudin, & Hooker agrees that he does not even touch on my views.—⁹

I doubt whether Hooker will succeed (anyhow I tried & failed) in keeping parts of Tropics hot, whilst other parts