WCP3763

[1]¹

ROYAL GARDENS KEW

DIRECTOR

Kew

Jan^Y.12.90

My dear Huxley²

I have not forgotten your enquiry about the botanical literature of Teneriffe.

I find there is no handy apercu of the vegetation. There is nothing comprehensive except the great botanical volume of the great work of Webb and Belbelot. This you can use at the Linnean Society.

We think however that you [2] would find it pleasant to take with you a paper by Christ — a very good man (!) — "Vegetation und Flora den Canarischer Inseln".³ This is to be found in the sixth volume of Engler's Botanische Jahrbucher. But I have no doubt that Dulau & Co, who are really very smart people, would either pick you up a separate copy or get you the number. [3] This is Heft 5. 1885.

Then you might pick up at Wheldon's^{, for a few shillings,} the fragment of Lowe's⁴ Flora Madeira.⁵ It was never finished because he and his wife were drowned in the London. It was a curious thing that Berkeley⁶ was trustee for Lowe under his marriage settlements. They quarrelled because Berkeley wd not let him sell out. As it turned out on the presumption in law that the wife dies before the hus: [4] =band when both are drowned, the property would have gone to people who wd have made Berkeley replace every penny.

Donnelly & Lambeth have persuaded me to write an answer to the Duke of Argyll's⁷ imbecile letter in Nature. E. R. L.⁸ wants to lie by a little which I think is advisable.

The difficulty, however, which I feel, or much as he would, is to treat such [5] infernal rubbish with anything like moderation. I hate controversy. But they say that it is not advisable for the non-scientific readers of Nature to think that the Duke is to be allowed to have his way unchecked.

How I longed for the temporary use of your magical hand! However I have made free use [6] of your admirable obituary in the Proc. R. S. I feel bound to say that in force, logical clearness and condensation, I don’t think you ever excelled that markedly bit of work.

Its present position in literature is neither very accessible nor very attractive & I want to persuade you to have it reprinted by Macmillan as a little [7] book in large type. As regards quintessential exposition of the Darwinian theory it is the γάλα ἄδολον — the "sincere milk of the word". There is nothing like it. Wallace ought to have done it. But though there is much ^{that is} interesting in his book, in my opinion, he has messed the thing about too much. I cannot keep feeling in reading him what a pigmy he really is compared to Darwin.⁹

[8] My father-in-law¹⁰ seems to have had a bad bout of bronchitis. But I hear that he is recovering satisfactorily & I think that he will take the lesson to be more careful of himself.

Yours sincerely | W. T. Thiselton-Dyer¹¹ [signature]