To J. D. Hooker   [20 May 1868]1

Down

My dear Hooker

The enclosed grass is one of those sent me within the pellets of Locust dung from Natal.2 The case seems to me sufficiently curious to deserve that the name of grass shd be made out. Can you do this for me; but if a troublesome genus, the generic name wd. suffice.3 There is another much bigger kind of grass not yet in flower.—4

Yours affecty | C. Darwin

I suppose you do not care to have the plants for Kew?—

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to J. D. Hooker, 21 May [1868].
2
CD had germinated grass seeds found in pellets of locust dung sent to him by James Philip Mansel Weale, who at the time was at Bedford, Cape Colony (now the Eastern Cape province of the Republic of South Africa). See Correspondence vol. 15, letter from J. P. M. Weale, 7 July 1867, and letters to J. P. M. Weale, 27 August [1867] and 9 December [1867].
3
A separate reply has not been found, but Hooker wrote at the top of the verso of this letter, ‘Eragrastis capillifolia Nees’ (a misspelling of Eragrostis capillifolia, a synonym of Eragrostis curvula, African love grass).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.4 of grass] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6190,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6190