To J. D. Hooker   22 December 1874

My dear Hooker

I must write just to say how grateful I feel both to you & Huxley, & how I honour your zeal in a cause in which you are in no way personally concerned.¹ I have written a line to Huxley, & have told him that you still feel inclined (as soon as you hear the result of his move) to write direct to Mivart, & that I thought there were some advantages in this plan.² But Mivart cannot fail to understand, after the message through M^r Roberts, the cause of Huxley’s cutting him, if he does so.³ Your proposed letter seems to me excellent. I shouldn’t be surprised if Mivart acknowledges the article, but he says it was altered,—a dodge which he practiced before, & in this case Murray shall hear that the libel is in fact thrown on the Editor’s shoulders.⁴ I’ll not write to Mivart until I know the result of what you & Huxley do, & then I will write in the plainest terms & so come to a dead cut.

I should be extremely glad to have another plant of Drosophyllum for there is a very curious point about the different power of the secretion from the tall & short glands, & I was not able before fully to determine this.⁵ If you can get a plant from Edinburgh, it had better not be sent till the frost is gone, & please ask for it to be address as on the enclosed paper⁶

My dear old friend | Yours affec^ly | Ch. Darwin