From J. D. Hooker   19 October 1866

Royal Gardens Kew

October 19/66

My dear Darwin

The shrubs for your lawn are gone to day.—1 plant them singly in good light loamy soil & not too near other trees.

Lyell was here the other day very well, but blinder than ever I fear.2 He sent me his chapters X, XI, XIII3   I pointed out a few inadvertencies in X & XI. My great objection to XII is that he ignores vapor,—which plays so important a part in modifying climate— if you push the land to the Poles or to the Equator, you may not necessarily thereby alter the temp. of the globe.—only alter its distribution over the Globe4

Ever yr aff | J D Hooker

The Govt. (Lord J. Manners) has arranged that the Treasury will propose to Parliament next session to purchase my fathers collection5

Herbarium £5000

Choice of books £1000

Portraits, mss,

Correspondence &c £1000

£7000

This is what I asked. it relieves me of a great strain.

Ever yr aff | J D H

1
On 19 October 1866 Hooker sent CD the following plants: Abies douglasii (a synonym of Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii, the coast Douglas fir), A. canadensis (a synonym of Tsuga canadensis, the black hemlock), Retinospora obtusa (a synonym of Chamaecyparis obtusa, the Hinoki cypress), Wellingtonia gigantea (a synonym of Sequoiadendron giganteum, the giant sequoia), Cupressus lawsoniana (a synonym of Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, Port Orford cedar), C. macrocarpa (Monterey cypress), and Thuja lobbii (a synonym of Thuja plicata, western red cedar); (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Outwards book).
2
Charles Lyell’s eyesight had always been poor, requiring him to be read aloud to and to dictate much of what he wrote (K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 381).
3
Hooker refers to proof-sheets of chapters in the first volume of the tenth edition of Lyell’s Principles of geology (C. Lyell 1867–8). CD had recently sent Lyell comments on the proof-sheets he had been sent (see letters to Charles Lyell, 9 October [1866] and 12 October [1866]). Hooker wrote ‘XIII’ by mistake for ‘XII’ (see n. 4, below).
4
In the section referred to in chapter 12 (C. Lyell 1867–8, 1: 233–67), Lyell discussed the relationship between temperature and the relative position of land and sea. He discussed the role of the ocean in equalising and moderating temperature (ibid., pp. 236–9) but did not consider vapour in a similar context. In a letter to Hooker, 20 October 1866, Lyell said he would send chapter 13 and hoped it would clear up difficulties arising from current climate theories that predicted huge temperature differences between the hemispheres because of the greater proportion of land in the northern hemisphere. He suggested that vapour, to which Hooker had alluded, could be a factor in equalising temperature (see K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 410–11). See also letter from J. D. Hooker, [after 28 April 1866] and nn. 7 and 8.
5
John James Robert Manners was commissioner of works (DNB). Before his death in 1865, Hooker’s father, William Jackson Hooker, had written a memorandum stating that his herbarium would be left to his son on the understanding that it might be purchased by the government as part of the crown property attached to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Allan 1967, pp. 216–17).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5247,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5247