To J. D. Hooker   21 January [1867]

CD refers to the third instalment of Hooker’s article on insular floras (J. D. Hooker 1866a) in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 19 January 1867, pp. 50–1. See also the letters to J. D. Hooker, 9 January [1867] and 15 January [1867], for his comments on the first and second instalments. In summarising the peculiarities of island floras, Hooker had written: ‘the plants having no affinity with those of the mother continent are often the commonest of all’ (ibid., p. 50). In the pamphlet Hooker published from J. D. Hooker 1866a (see letter to J. D. Hooker, 9 January [1867], n. 2), Hooker changed ‘the commonest of all’ to ‘very common’ (see Williamson 1984, p. 70).

In summarising CD’s arguments for the trans-oceanic migration of plants, Hooker reported that CD had established a number of supporting facts, including the following: ‘That oceanic fish devour seeds, and that if these become the prey of birds, the contents of their stomachs may thus be deposited on distant islands’ (J. D. Hooker 1866a, p. 51). In his 1867 pamphlet (see n. 1, above), Hooker made CD’s suggested change (see Williamson 1984, p. 72). See Origin, p. 362.

Hooker summarised the arguments for the stocking of oceanic islands with plants from a continent either by former land-bridges, or by the transport of seeds by ocean currents, wind, birds, icebergs, or similar agencies in J. D. Hooker 1866a, pp. 50–1. For CD’s arguments in favour of seed and animal transport rather than land-bridges as a means of species dispersal, see Origin, pp. 356–65, 388–410.