To J. D. Hooker   28 [December 1861]

My dear Hooker

I hope & suppose that my note was in time to stop you searching for Gongora. By Jove what a strange creature Gongora is! It has good masculine organs & cannot be female of Acropera; indeed I sh^d. not be surprised if it, also, turned out a male orchid.—¹ Thank Heaven I shall soon go to press & finish with my Hobby-horse.² I see Oliver is going to lecture at Royal Institution on Northern plants; & I am very glad to hear it.³ I hope “Atlantis” will get a good sinking.⁴ These enormous continental extensions are quite an article of faith with many. Little Woodward is quite contemptuous if I hint my doubts about any island whatever having been an island within the whole recent period.—⁵

By the way tell Oliver that his note about Acropera ovules has been very useful to me; & I have had another good look; & I believe the membranous fringes are placentæ with no ovules or merest rudiments.⁶

I have written to M^r Gower to thank him about Victoria fact;⁷ but further experiments would be requisite for any trust. I wrote carelessly about the value of Phanerogams; what I was thinking of was that the sub-groups seemed to blend so much more one into another than with most classes of animals.⁸ I suspect Crustacea would show more differences in the extreme forms than Phanerogams; but as you say it is wild speculation. Yet it is very strange what difficulty Botanists seem to find in grouping the Families together into masses.

There is a great deal in Lecoq about colour of flowers in Latitude from Lapland to S. of Spain.⁹ He shows that white flowers increase to N. but (I think) no very great difference in proportion of red & blues.—

Ever yours | C. Darwin