From J. D. Hooker   13 February 1868

Kew

Feby 13/68.

Dear old Darwin

I am indeed rejoiced at the sale of the green book— do I read correct 2500 copies? surely not, the figure is a little dubious—1 I have read no more myself, but shall set to immediately   The Pall-Mall review is no doubt by Lewis, I thought it very good, & oddly enough just what I should myself said, but said in far inferior style—2 I think I should have said much more however if I had read more of this second book, for after all the notice was of the Origin not of the Domestics.3

I was sorry that I could not get to Lubbocks, but I had not a chance4   We had a pleasant dinner at Lyells on Tuesday   Dean Stanley & wife, Tyndall, Tayler & dau (the Unitarians)—Tyndall—Frances Power Cobbe, a disenchanting mountain of flesh.—5 After dinner I asked Stanley whether we might have a monument to Faraday in W. A.   he said he would be delighted & had hoped he would have been asked for a burial place— is not this grand for Science.6

Percival Wright is back from Seychelles & has collected well flowering plants; but the group evidently wants the chief characteristics of an Insular group.7 The Crocodile is a Lizard, now extinct—8 He found a Shark 60 ft long! that feeds on vegetable matter!!! is this possible?—9

The Ophrys insectifera you gave me are doing nicely & one is in excellent flower & the others following—10 I am getting very proud of the Gardens, in which I really have worked tremendously hard for now 2 years.11

Ever yr affec | J D Hooker

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Athenaeum | Owen | Mr C. Darwin | Pouchet— Plants ignored will not do great Harm—’12 pencil
1
See letter to J. D. Hooker, 10 February [1868]; CD had written that 1500 copies of Variation had been sold. Murray announced his intention to issue a second printing of 1250 copies in his letter of 6 February [1868].
2
The first part of George Henry Lewes’s anonymous review of Variation appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette for 10 February 1868; two further parts were published ([Lewes] 1868a).
3
The first part of Lewes’s review was a general discussion of CD’s theory of the origin of species, and described in detail only the first chapters of Variation (see [Lewes] 1868a).
4
High Elms, the home of John and Ellen Frances Lubbock, was a mile and a half from Down House. CD had visited Lubbock on 9 February (see letter from John Lubbock, 12 February [1868].
6
Michael Faraday had died in August 1867 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. A subscription fund was established in 1869 for a marble statue commemorating Faraday to be erected in Westminster Abbey, where Stanley was dean; however the statue was instead put up in the Royal Institution, where Faraday had worked for most of his career. A memorial tablet was placed in Westminster Abbey in 1931, the centenary of his discovery of electromagnetism. See Cantor 1991, pp. 82–5.
7
Edward Perceval Wright visited the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, for six months in 1867 (ODNB). Hooker had delivered an address on insular floras and had discussed this subject extensively with CD (see J. D. Hooker 1867 and Correspondence vol. 14).
8
On the Seychelles crocodile, see the enclosure to the letter from J. D. Hooker, 3 October 1868.
9
Hooker may refer to the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the largest known fish. It feeds chiefly on plankton, and is found in tropical oceans worldwide (A. Wheeler 1985).
10
CD had been interested in John Traherne Moggridge’s work on Ophrys insectifera (the fly orchid) and related forms. See Correspondence vols. 12 and 13, ‘Fertilization of orchids’, p. 145 (Collected papers 2: 142), and Orchids 2d ed., pp. 58–9.
11
Hooker had been director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, since 1865.
12
CD’s annotations are for his letter to Hooker of 23 February [1868].

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5874,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5874