Ɛpsilon

To J. D. Hooker   27 September 1873

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Sep 27. ’73

My dear Hooker,

I am delighted that you will come this day week, as I have many things that I should like to talk over with you.1 Let me have a card & I will see that some vehicle meets you. Your note from Bradford was very juicy in news.2 After I had written but before I had despatched my last note I had read Tyndal’s letter but said nothing about it in my note, for I did not like to say what I thought.3 It was awfully savage, but certainly a great mistake to print it.

I think if you read Clerk Maxwells lecture you will alter your opinion.4 I quite agree with what you say about Allman.5

Ever yours | Ch. Darwin

Do you think you could find out for me the temperature of rain in very hot countries, as in the hotter parts of India?6

LS(A)

2
See letter from J. D. Hooker, [23 September 1873]. Hooker had been at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Bradford.
3
See letter to J. D. Hooker, 19 September [1873]. A letter from John Tyndall had been published in Nature, 18 September 1873, p. 399; for Hooker’s opinion of it, see the letter from J. D. Hooker, [23 September 1873] and n. 6. In Nature, 25 September 1873, p. 431, Tyndall retracted some of the statements he had made in his letter.
4
For Hooker’s negative opinion of James Clerk Maxwell’s discourse on molecules, see the letter from J. D. Hooker, [23 September 1873] and n. 12. CD may have read an account of Maxwell’s lecture in The Times, 24 September 1873, pp. 7–8, or the full lecture in Nature, 25 September 1873, pp. 437–41.
5
See letter from J. D. Hooker, [23 September 1873] and n. 15. George James Allman’s address had been reported in The Times, 20 September 1873, p. 10.
6
CD was investigating whether the injurious effects of water on leaves depended on the temperature of the water (see letter to J. D. Hooker, 19 August 1873, letter from Richard Strachey, 25 August 1873, and letter to J. D. Hooker, 12 September [1873]).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.1 I think … India? 4.2] in CD’s hand
4.2 as] after del ‘?’ in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9074,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9074