From J. D. Hooker   [29 August 1874]1

Royal Gardens Kew

Saturday

Dear Darwin

We are just back having spent two days near Stranraer to see the Pinetum at Castle Kennedy, which is very fine.2

Thanks for your letter received in Belfast.3 I too have been hunting for Dionaea in vain.4 Lady Dorothy Neville is your best chance— meanwhile I will send you the best we have5

Lubbock’s Lecture went off admirably— but Huxley’s was the magnum opus of the meeting.6 It was a most capital meeting. Moore brought splendid pitcher-plants.7

Ever yours affec | J.D. Hooker

P.S— The enclosed have just arrived from Mrs Barber   Her clever suggestions of the colour being as it was photographed reminds me that Grove ages ago told me that he had seen dead Fish take the colour of an adjacent object—I forget what—but it was after the manner of a photograph.8

The Papilio reminds me of my Indian Tick or the Lizard, which I never have quite persuaded myself to believe in till now!!! I remember telling you of the Grasshoppers on Mt Lebanon which were grey on grey rocks & greener & browner on other situations.9

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Cephalotus’10 pencil
1
The date is established by the reference to Hooker’s return from the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Belfast. The meeting finished on 26 August 1874; the following Saturday was 29 August.
2
Castle Kennedy is three miles east of Stranraer in Scotland; Stranraer was the port used for crossings to and from Belfast in Ireland. Castle Kennedy burned down in the eighteenth century and its ruins remained in the famous Castle Kennedy Gardens (M’Kerlie 1870–9, 1: 162–3).
4
Dionaea muscipula (Dionaea is a monospecific genus) is the Venus fly trap and is native to North America; CD was interested in it for his work on insectivorous plants.
5
Dorothy Fanny Nevill cultivated orchids, pitcher-plants, and other tropical plants at her garden at Dangstein in Hampshire, and exchanged plants with Hooker, the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew (ODNB).
6
At the meeting of the British Association in Belfast, John Lubbock gave an evening lecture on common flowers in relation to insects (see The Times, 24 August 1874, pp. 6–7; see also Lubbock 1875b). Thomas Henry Huxley gave an evening lecture, ‘The hypothesis that animals are automata, and its history’ (T. H. Huxley 1874a).
7
Hooker was assisting CD with his work on insectivorous plants by experimenting on Nepenthes (tropical pitcher-plants); he had read an address on the subject at the British Association meeting (J. D. Hooker 1874a). David Moore, who raised hybrid Sarracenias (an unrelated North American pitcher-plant genus, known as trumpet pitchers) at the Glasnevin Gardens in Dublin (ODNB), exhibited a monstrous Sarracenia flower at the meeting (Report of the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1874), Transactions of the sections, p. 134).
8
Mary Elizabeth Barber had sent her observations on the pupae of Papilio nireus (the green-banded swallowtail, a butterfly found in sub-Saharan Africa), which developed colours to match their surroundings (Barber 1874). She questioned whether the colour change was brought about by the volition of the caterpillar, or whether the pupa automatically absorbed the colours around it, ‘a sun picture or photograph’ (Barber 1874, p. 521). Hooker also refers to William Robert Grove.
9
Hooker wrote to CD about his visit to Mount Lebanon in his letter of [26 November – 4 December 1860] (Correspondence vol. 8). No reference has been found in his extant correspondence with CD to the Indian tick or lizard, or the Lebanon grasshoppers. See also J. D. Hooker 1854, 1: 37.
10
CD’s annotation is a note for his letter to Hooker of 30 August [1874].

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9610,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9610