To J. D. Hooker   8 March [1870]¹

My dear Hooker

Thanks for your very nice letter.² You must not think for a moment of coming here on purpose, though it will be a great disappointment not seeing you.— You will own it was rather stupid of you not just to look in here, & see if we were arrived.— I sh^d. very much enjoy, as I always have, coming to Kew, but I fear the exertion: it almost always knocks me up.— Erasmus desires me to say that dinner is at 7 & luncheon at 1 every day—sh^d you be able to come.³ But mind I won’t have your blood on my head & I do not ask you to come.

I have no time to write & cannot analyse my feelings, but I sh^d. like to see you Sir J. H., & I do not care so much what sort of K^d.—⁴ I must also differ from you, (though this will make you angry), & I do not think that you owe your position in any degree as a man of science to your Father.—⁵

I have forgotten the main object of my note which is to say that we return home early on Saturday morning.

If you write to Barkly⁶ urge on him to ascertain

(1) whether R^d Is^d7 is a volcano, & what the fossil remains are.—whether surface or embedded.—

(2) Depth of Channel

(3) Currents—, whether drift wood large seeds—wrecks &c on any sloping part of coast.

We must meet some other time.—

Ever yours affect | C. Darwin

Did you have time to read Delpino on Marantaceæ?—⁸