WCP3811

Letter (WCP3811.3729)

[1]1

Waldron Edge, Duppas Hill, Croydon.

July 20th. 1878

Dear Sir Joseph2

Many thanks for sending me your extremely interesting lecture on the "North American Flora"— How I wish you or Prof.[essor] Asa Gray3 could find time to write a small volume on it, illustrated by Maps & figures. Your description of the process of destruction of the "Big-trees"4 makes one quite melancholy. What barbarians our successors will consider us if they are not preserved. Surely if proper representations were made to them, the Californial[sic] Government [2] or that of the U.S. would secure a tract of the country theyse trees now flourish in as a "Public Park". Your last par[agraph]. "fire and the saw" is inimitable.

At p.2 on the spread of the mango you refer to the fruits rolling down hill; & the negroes throwing the stones about as accounting for its spread, but are not animals a more efficient cause? The mango is greedily eaten by all quadrupeds— pigs, horses, cows &c.— and the stone being excessively tough & hard would often be swallowed & passed through the intestines.

There is a paper of yours I have been unable to find,— that on the plants of Kini-Balou5[Kinabalu?] & their geographical [3] relations. Can you kindly refer to it,— or favour me with a separate copy if you should have one.

Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Sir Joseph Hooker K.C.B.

1
"AW" appears to be written in a different and light script than ARW’s usual cursive script, indicating that this was likely a later annotation.
2
Great 19th century British botanist and explorer Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, KCB, FRS (1817 — 1911). Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and one of Charles Darwin’s closest friends. Hooker, along with Charles Lyell, played a vital role in the relatively peaceful co-publication of Darwin and Wallace’s papers on the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858.
3
Botanist and Harvard University professor Asa Gray (1810 — 1888). Gray is widely considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century. A correspondent of Charles Darwin, letters to Gray in which Darwin outlined his theory of natural selection were instrumental in establishing the originality of his views, especially when published side-by-side with those of ARW in 1858.
4
When visiting California, Hooker studied large valley oak trees (Quercus lobata). One particularly large oak (30 metres tall, 2.4 metres in circumference at its base), called by Hooker the largest such oak known, was named "Hooker Oak" in his honour.
5
Mount Kinabalu (or, as ARW spells it, "Kini-Balu") is a mountain on Borneo, today located in Kinabalu National Park, a World Heritage Site. Mount Kinabalu is the highest mountain in the Malay Archipelago.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3811.3729)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Clerx, William [2012-08-16] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-01-15]

Please cite as “WCP3811,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3811