From J. D. Hooker   [6 or 7 July 1870]1

Royal Gardens Kew

My dear Darwin

Thanks for the names of the Orchid: books; please let me see them when you have arranged your pamphlets 3 mos hence.2

Have you read Claparede?3 it is not so good as I expected it would have been, & is rather windy I think— is it worth translation as an avant courier for the “Origin of Man”?4 if so I would set some one to do it for Nature or some other periodical.—

You & old Brandt are “en lutte” for the Acad: of Sciences. which will be decided I hear on the 15th. or 20th.— What a farce it is!5

I am delighted to hear that you are on the eve of printing—6 I am hard at work on Nepenthes for DC. Prodr:— this genus supports Miquels & Wallace’s view of the identity of Bornean & Sumatran Zoology & the differences of Java from either most marvellously. Who first published on that curious point? I remember old Blume telling me of it in Leyden in 1845. and I think that Miquel has published on it— can you refer me?7

Hodgson has been here for 2 days, & is nettled at you not having alluded in your chapter on dogs to his paper on the Indian dog—8 I told him that I could not doubt but that it was not it’s value that you underrated, but that it illustrated no points in his subject.—

Bastian’s paper in Nature is full of curious matter but eminently unsatisfactory in treatment I think, & poorly written.9

Lyell was here on Tuesday, looking remarkably well— he does not like Bentham’s Address at all— or perhaps only the drift of it. I am so glad you admire it’s care & thought.10

We spent last Sunday at Mr G. Macleays who has taken Pendell Court near Bletchyngly— he is a pleasant & interesting man, & an ardent admirer of his old curmudgeon of a brother— William.11 I ascended to the top of the N. Downs (Eastern continuation of the Reigate range) & was struck with the capping of very fine gravel. I wish I knew more of tertiary geology, but suppose I should only disbelieve— as I do the whole theory of the upper & lower gravel levels of the Somme & Seine &c. I never can believe that existing rivers or river basins capped these hills with thick beds of gravel which represent either sea shores or drainage over great areas & an enormous amount of denudation of some still higher land, than the hill tops themselves—12

Ever your affectionate & ignorant skeptic | J D Hooker

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letters to J. D. Hooker, 2 July [1870] and 8 July [1870], and by the reference to a visit from Charles Lyell on Tuesday. In 1870, the first Tuesday after 2 July was 5 July.
3
Hooker refers to Edouard Claparède and his essay review of Wallace 1870a, in which Claparède focused on Alfred Russel Wallace’s views on the development of humans (Claparède 1870).
4
Hooker refers to Descent; CD had not yet decided on the title (see letter to John Murray, [after 1 July 1870]).
5
Both Johann Friedrich von Brandt and CD were candidates for corresponding membership in the French Académie des Sciences. Brandt was elected to the anatomical and zoological section of the academy on 4 July 1870; CD was elected to the botanical section on 4 August 1878 (Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 71 (1870): 41, and 87 (1878): 245; Corsi and Weindling 1985, p. 699).
6
Hooker refers to Descent.
7
Hooker refers to his monograph ‘Nepenthaceae, Cytinaceae’, which appeared in the last part of Candolle and Candolle 1824–73 (17: 90–116). Both Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel and Wallace divided the Malay archipelago into biogeographic zones based on the similarity of the flora and fauna (see Keng 1978, pp. xxx–xxxii). The first naturalist to publish on the biogeographic zones of the area was Heinrich Zollinger, who named the whole region ‘Malesia’ (Zollinger 1857). Wallace referred to Zollinger’s division in Wallace 1869a, 1: 317–18 (see also Johns 1995 for a discussion of the changes in the division of the Malesian region). Hooker also refers to Carl Ludwig Blume and probably to Miquel 1860.
8
In Variation 1: 26, CD referred to Brian Houghton Hodgson having tamed young Indian dogs, and cited a notice of Hodgson’s paper ‘A description of the wild dog of Nepâl’ in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1833): 111–12. The paper was published in Asiatic Researches (Hodgson 1833).
9
Hooker refers to Henry Charlton Bastian and the first and possibly second part of Bastian 1870, a paper on evolution, published in the 30 June and 7 July 1870 issues of Nature.
10
Hooker refers to Charles Lyell and to George Bentham’s presidential address to the Linnean Society. See letter to J. D. Hooker, 2 July [1870] and n. 7.
11
Hooker refers to George Macleay and William Sharp Macleay. George Macleay had lived at Pendell Court, Bletchingley, Surrey, since 1860 (ODNB).
12
Hooker refers to the fluvial theory of the origin of the upper and lower level gravel deposits in river valleys like the Somme and Seine in France or the valleys of the south of England. For more on the theory, see Prestwich 1862a.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7267,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7267