To J. D. Hooker   28 [December 1866]1

Down

28th

My dear Hooker

Many thanks for the Revue Horticle,2 which I return by this Post.—

I had a long & very pleasant letter from Sulivan3 this morning & he is in somewhat better health.— He has been collecting fossil leaves in Eocene(?) beds at Bournemouth & has got, as he believes new forms.— Mr Mitchell from British Assoc. has first pick & he offers me others & then recollecting that they wd be of no use to me, offers them to you.—4 Now when you write say whether you wd like to have them for yourself or Heer,5 & whether he shall send them to Kew. I will not write to Sulivan till I have a line from you.— The Athenæum has been admitting letters urging Publishers to sell their Books cut & I have, like an ass, sent a long letter, which they will perhaps insert.—6

Yours affecty | C. Darwin

1
The month and year are established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from B. J. Sulivan, 25 December 1866.
5
Oswald Heer was a Swiss palaeobotanist who had published on the flora of the Tertiary period, including the Eocene (Heer 1860).
6
CD had encouraged his publisher, John Murray, to bring out the fourth edition of Origin with the pages cut (see letter to John Murray, 15 July [1866]). Two letters had already been printed in the Athenæum on the subject (Athenæum, 15 December 1866, p. 803, and 22 December 1866, p. 848). CD’s letter was published in the Athenæum, 5 January 1867, pp. 18–19 (see Correspondence vol. 15, letter to Athenæum, 1 January 1867).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.4 others] after del ‘remain’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5326,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5326