To J. D. Hooker   23 July [1871]

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

July 23

My dear Hooker

I am glad to hear the Abutilon is a new species, & I am honoured by its name. I do not know its habitat, but strongly suspect that it must be St. Catharina.1 The plant flourished & flowered profusely in my cool hot-house.— It seems to like heat. It offers an instance, of which I have known others, of being during the early part of the flowering season quite sterile with pollen from the same plant, though fertile with the pollen of any other plant, though later in the season it becomes capable of self-fertilisation.—2

On the 26th or 27th we go to a house which we have taken for a month on Albury Heath; as I am in much want of complete rest & a change.3 It is great news about Henrietta’s marriage: somehow I never expected her to marry, & her loss will be so terrible to us all, that I am so selfish I cannot rejoice properly over her great happiness.—4

Ever dear old friend | yours C. Darwin

P.S. Have you seen the last Quarterly: I am cut up into mince-meat, evidently by Mivart.5

P.S. Henslow used to keep tame field-mice, & I distinctly remember his telling me that they used their tails as prehensile organs, when climbing up a branched stick in their place of confinement.— Will you ask Mrs. Hooker whether she remembers them? I want to know what species of mouse they were? & especially whether Henslow published in any of the popular Journals an account of their habits.6 I shd. be greatly obliged for any information on this head.—

Endorsement: ‘/71’

1
See letter from J. D. Hooker, 22 July 1871 and n. 1. CD refers to Abutilon darwinii.
2
CD discussed this feature of Abutilon darwinii in Cross and self fertilisation, pp. 333–5. In Brazil, the plant was completely self-sterile.
3
The Darwins stayed at a house called Haredene, in Albury, Surrey, from 28 July to 25 August 1871 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
4
Henrietta Emma Darwin was engaged to marry Richard Buckley Litchfield (see Emma Darwin (1915) 2: 204).
5
St George Jackson Mivart’s anonymous review of Descent appeared in the Quarterly Review for July 1871 ([Mivart] 1871c).
6
For John Stevens Henslow’s account of the activities of his pet harvest mouse (Mus messorius, now Micromys minutus), see Correspondence vol. 2, letter from J. S. Henslow, 19 April 1841. CD mentioned Henslow’s observations in Origin 6th ed., p. 189, in response to a supporter of Mivart who argued that an incipient tendency to grasp could not be of advantage to an organism. Frances Harriet Hooker was Henslow’s daughter.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.1 for a month] interl
5.6 greatly] after del ‘grate’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7878,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7878