To J. D. Hooker   8 July [1870]¹

My dear Hooker

It suddenly flashed on me in what part of heap, I I sh^d. find the 2 Pamphlets on orchids, & have extracted them & send them by this post.—²

I thought well of Prof. Claparèdes criticism, & I think it w^d. be well worth translating & publishing, partly because he is so capital an observer & naturalist, & chiefly because no sort of answer has yet appeared to Wallace.³ Bates thinks his heterodox views have already done a good deal of mischief to the cause of evolution.⁴ There are so few “ignorant sceptics” in the world, who think for themselves. Wallace himself thinks Claparede’s article very weak;⁵ but I conclude that he thinks so because Claparede has arrived at an unpleasant judgement, very much like Lyell about Bentham’s address: I w^d lay a wager that L. has lately said something about European Proteaceæ in one of his Editions.⁶ I do not remember anyone before Wallace on relations of Sumatra & Java: I obscurely fancied that Miquel had demurred, or said there were no materials to judge from; but my attention has now been for a long time turned from the grand subject of Geograph. Distrib.⁷

Thanks for your very pleasant letter with lots of all kinds of gossip: I am sorry to have nettled Hodgson, for whom I have much respect, but it is too absurd to suppose that I possibly could refer to all papers on such a large subject as Dogs.—⁸ When you see Huxley ask him about Bastian & a fragment of Sphagnum moss, which he mistook for a spont. gen. organism!⁹

Farewell my dear old fellow. C.D.

I sh^d. think I had no chance of election in France against Brandt.¹⁰