From J. D. Hooker   [12 January 1863]1

[Royal Gardens Kew]

Dr. Darwin

Can you answer this2   I have just finished Huxleys Lectures—3 the 3 last are tremendously good,4 how lucidly & vigorously he writes— if he took more pains he would be a Scientific Buckle:5 & Oh My what praise of you—& all merited too, richly.—6 I hope you are better.7 I am off to freeze in Paris on Saturday with Bentham for 10 days—8

Ever yours affec | J D Hooker

What is the sum of our knowledge regarding qualities induced in the individual being in any degree hereditary?

Monday.

CD annotations

End of letter: ‘(Medallions)9 | Naudin’10
1
The date is established by the reference to Hooker’s planned trip to Paris (see n. 8, below); 12 January 1863 fell on a Monday.
2
No enclosure containing Hooker’s query has been found; however, see the letter to J. D. Hooker, 13 January [1863].
3
T. H. Huxley 1863a. See letter to T. H. Huxley, 10 [January 1863] and n. 2.
4
T. H. Huxley 1863a, pp. 83–157.
5
Hooker refers to the historian Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of History of civilisation in England (Buckle 1857–61), a work that CD greatly admired (see, for example, Correspondence vol. 7, letters to J. D. Hooker, 23 February [1858] and 31 March [1858], and Correspondence vol. 10, letter to J. D. Hooker, 7 March [1862]).
7
In his letter to Hooker of 3 January [1863], CD wrote that the poor state of his health was ‘ludicrous’, and the slightest excitement caused ‘shaking & vomiting’.
8
Hooker and George Bentham departed for Paris on 17 January 1863 (Jackson 1906, p. 193).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3892,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3892