To J. D. Hooker   8 March [1869]1

Mar 8—

Dear Hooker

I think that part of the enclosed letter is well worth your reading, viz about the grass of which the awns like a tendril catch its own rachis. The first part about Escholtzia, which is self-sterile in a much greater degree in S. Brazil than here, is not worth your reading. At the end of the note however there is a good & precise case of the transmission of character from the individual flowers on the same spike.2

Please return the letter.

I am rather glad to have the excuse of sending it, as I want to hear a little news of you. About myself I have no news, as I am going on in my old routine. The subject of sexual selection grows bigger & bigger as I progress but I suppose I shall some day end it.3 We are a very small party here at present for Lizzy is gone to Germany & Henrietta is in a very poor state & has been confined to her bed room for the last fortnight.4

As you always puff me up so I must tell you that I have just been applied to to permit a French trans. of my Orchis book. It bothers me a good deal to know how much to add, for I have an immense amount of new matter; want of time however will compel me I think to make but few additions.5

yours affectionately | Ch Darwin

Though I am so despised by the great guns of the Institute, I presume I am rising in estimation amongst the mob, for another man has applied to translate my Journal of Travels.—6 Here is a boasting note.

L(S)(A)

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Fritz Müller, 12 January 1869.
2
CD evidently enclosed the letter from Fritz Müller, 12 January 1869. CD refers to Müller’s experiments with Eschscholzia californica and maize.
3
CD refers to his research for Descent.
4
According to Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242), Elizabeth Darwin left on 5 March, and Henrietta Emma Darwin was very ill from 23 February until 9 March 1869.
5
The French translation of Orchids by Louis Rérolle was published in 1870 (Rérolle trans. 1870). CD’s additions to the French edition were in the form of footnotes ending ‘C. D., mai 1869’. CD published an English version of these notes in Annals and Magazine of Natural History in July 1869 (‘Fertilization of orchids’). Much of this material was later incorporated into the text of the second edition of Orchids.
6
CD probably alludes to the Académie des Sciences and to the negative reception of Darwinian views among the French scientific élite (see Browne 2002, pp. 260–1). Charles Phipps Haussoullier had requested permission to translate CD’s Journal of researches into French (see letter from C. P. Haussoullier, 31 January 1869 and n. 1).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

6.1 Though … note. 6.3] in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6647,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6647