WCP5294

[1]¹

DOWN,

BECKENHAM, KENT.

RAILWAY STATION

ORPINGTON. S.E.R.

Nov[ember]. 23^[r]d / [18]80²

My dear Hooker³

Your note has pleased me much; for I did not expect that you would have ^had time to read any of it.⁴ — Read the last chapt[er].⁵ & you will know the whole result, but without the evidence. The case, ^however, of radicles bending after exposure for an hour to geotropism,⁶ with their tips (or brains) cut off, is, I think, worth your reading (bottom of p[age]. 525); it astounded me. The next most remarkable fact, as it appeared to me (p[age]. 189 148), is the discrimination of the top of the radicle between a slightly harder & softer objects [sic] affixed on opposite sides ^{of [the] tip}. But [2] I will bother you no more about my book. — The sensitiveness of seedlings to light is marvellous.⁷ —

I have read Wallace⁸ with the greatest interest & admire it extremely; but I cannot swallow or digest all his conclusion[s]; perhaps my ^brain-digestion is weak from old age. I can hardly credit that the opening of one or two N[orth]. & S[outh]. sea-channels across Europe & Asia w[oul]^d. warm Arctic regions enough for them to support such organisms as they formerly supported. It stumps me to believe that [3]⁹ Northern plants travelled down [the] Andes to Fuegia,¹⁰ — then to the supposed Antarctic continent, & thence by insular [1 word illeg.] places to S[outh]. Australia & ^{(I think to)} C[ape]. of Good Hope. That the [1 word illeg.] has been subjected to such a series of changes & retained the same specific character is to me almost incredible. But what I must object to is that seeds have been blown from one mountain-summit to another distant one. Wallace argues from dispersal to oceanic islands; [4] but in this can we have sea-currents, & birds with dirt on [their] feet & base of beak & seeds in [their] stomach. No bird w[oul]d. fly from the ^{tops of the} Alps to the tops of the Pyrenees, & fancy th seeds being often thus blown & not theref[ore] to the tops, but to where a debacle[?] had recently occurred. I still remain convinced that when sp [the] same species inhabits distant mountain-summits, they must [have] formerly inhabited intermediate lowlands, — first in our hemisphere & then in to other [5]¹¹ though Wallace argues very well against ^several former glacial periods ^{& almost convinced me}, & I feel inclined to admit them, as the sole means of explaining the temperate forms at the C[ape]. of Good Hope. How I wish you had time to take up this great subject again. It pleased me to see how well Wallace appreciated your work. -

I feel inclined to abide by [the] view [6] [that] where oceans now extend, they have always (i e [that is] since Silurian¹² times) ^nearly extended, & so with continents; but it is an awfully perplexing subject. -

I( was delighted with Paget[’]s¹³ essay;¹⁴ I hear that he has occasionally attended to this subject from his youth. I thought he made too [7]¹⁵ much of the [1 word illeg.] of decay in leaves. — I am very glad he has called attention to galls — this has always seemed to me a profoundly interesting subject; & if I had been younger would take it up — By Jove his essay will have borne good fruit if it gives you a pathologist. —

Frank¹⁶ shall answer about Nobbe,¹⁷ when he comes home. — [8] What word could I use for zig-zag which you hate so much?¹⁸

With hearty thanks[,] farewell my dear Hooker.

Yours ever | Ch Darwin¹⁹ [signature]

Reading this over again I do not think I have expressed strong enough admiration of Wallaces’s book. — His weakness is want of sound judgment, as it appears to me, — videlicet²⁰ Spiritualism.²¹ —