To J. D. Hooker   15 [January 1866]

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

15th

My dear H.

I remember when I lent you Wichura on Hybrids,1 (since returned) talking with you on Verlot’s memoir on variation of plants in French.—

I have lost it & am in despair— Did I lend it you? Let me have one line in answer; but do not hunt for it, if you remember nothing. I must immediately order fresh copy & what is only bad job read the whole again—2 Post going

Yours affect | C. Darwin

Endorsement: ‘Jany 66.’

1
CD reminded Hooker of his loan of Wichura 1865, a paper on hybrid willows, three times in 1865 (see Correspondence vol. 13, letters to J. D. Hooker, [17 June 1865], [29 July 1865], and 22 and 28 [October 1865]). Hooker is likely to have borrowed the work during his visit to Down between 4 and 6 March 1865 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)). There is an annotated copy of Wichura 1865 in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 871–3).
2
CD probably needed Bernard Verlot’s Sur la production et la fixation des variétés dans les plantes d’ornement (Verlot 1865) for his work on the fourth edition of Origin and Variation. In a number of chapters of Variation, CD included examples of variability in plants from Verlot 1865. A passage on the production of fertile and sterile forms in varieties of garden stock (Verlot 1865, p. 84) was cited in Origin 4th ed., p. 284, where CD described similar alternation between reproductive and sterile forms of ants. CD previously expressed his high opinion of Verlot 1865 in the letter to Hooker of [29 July 1865] (Correspondence vol. 13). There is an annotated copy of Verlot 1865 in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 817–19).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4976,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4976