From J. D. Hooker   [6–11 December 1860]1

Royal Gardens Kew

–

Ed I.2 P. 9. Is the term Sport confined to buds & offsets. If so, they must necessarily be rare under nature.3 p. 18. Many people have remarked that the Quarterly so disposed of Horner’s pottery dating that they wonder you should quote it.—4 I know nothing. p. 19. Bottom of page. I suppose you know that a Greyhound will run a Scotch Terrier. p. 29. I think the “explanation” of the Gardeners disbelief, is more due to want of reversion, & the fact that all future varieties wander still further from the wild apple. p. 58. Bottom. “Finally x   x   x &c”—   this is very unclear, though I see the meaning p. 109. Middle of page. “Each area is already fully stocked”— 110 at top. “No region is as yet fully stocked”— p. 132. Forbes’ & Gould’s statements are repeated in next page. p. 193. replace h by c & read ‘Matteucci p. 197. Is not the Bamboo here alluded to a Palm? 219 “Slaves carry masters” 221 “Masters carry slaves.” 353. Perhaps better to say that most Natural Genera “almost invariably continuous in area”—for many of most natural are cosmopolitan. 369 line 17. for “Some few” read “many” 379. An equally curious case is that of a group of several N. Chili species reappearing in N. Mexico & California5 416 It is the position of the rudimental florets of grapes that Brown found so important, not their characters. 459. line 7 from bottom    The introducing “which we may consider” is very confusing— ? take out comma before it—

CD annotations

1.1 P. 9.... nature. 1.2] ‘?+?’ added brown crayon
2.1 p. 18.... nothing. 2.2] crossed pencil
3.1 p. 19.... Terrier. 3.2] ‘?+?’ added brown crayon
4.1 p. 29.... apple. 4.3] crossed brown crayon
5.1 p. 58.... meaning 5.1] crossed pencil; cross added brown crayon
6.1 p. 109.... ‘Matteucci 8.1] crossed ink
10.1 219 … slaves.“ 10.1] crossed ink
11.1 353.... “many”12.1] crossed pencil
13.1 379.... California 13.2] ‘[Glacial]’ added brown crayon
14.1 416 … before it— 15.2] crossed pencil
1
The letter had not been received by CD when he wrote to Hooker on 6 December (see preceding letter). CD replied to it on 11 December (letter to J. D. Hooker, 11 December [1860]).
2
CD had asked Hooker to send him his criticisms of Origin to assist with the corrections and additions to the third edition (see letters to J. D. Hooker, 26 November [1860] and 4 December [1860]).
3
Hooker’s point is that buds and offsets in plants are almost always garden phenomena. CD did not change the passage in the third edition of Origin.
4
In the first edition of Origin, CD cited the results of Leonard Horner’s geological excavation of alluvial deposits in Egypt (Horner 1858) as support for the statement that ‘civilized men may have lived in the valley of the Nile thirteen or fourteen thousand years ago’ (Origin, p. 18). The empirical basis for Horner’s chronology, however, was challenged by the classicist William Smith in an unsigned article published in the Quarterly Review in April 1859 ([W. Smith] 1859; see Wellesley index 1: 742). In fact, CD had already replaced this sentence in the revised American edition of Origin (see letter to Asa Gray, 1 February [1860] and n. 7).
5
In the first edition of Origin, p. 379, CD discussed how only a few southern organisms seemed to have migrated north, giving as an example the case of ‘a few southern vegetable forms on the mountains of Borneo and Abyssinia.’ He did not add Hooker’s example to the third edition.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3013,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3013