WCP5297

Letter (WCP5297.5841)

[1]1

[No address] 2

Nov[ember]. 22 / [18]803

Dear old Darwin4

I must first thank you for the "Movements",5 which seems a most capital production, & I am so pleased to see Frank’s6 name associated with yours in it. I have read only two chapters, vii & viii, & they are splendid, but I hate the zig-zags!7 Bauhinia leaf-closing is a curious case; does it not show that said leaf consists of two leaflets?8 —

The fact that for good action the leaves want a [2] good illumination during the preceding day is very suggestive of experiments with the electric light.9 They are like the new paint that shines only by night after sun-light by day. There are heaps of points I should like to know more about.

Dyer10 & Baker11 are taken aback by the keel of the Cucurbita12 seed; which keel was a wonderful discovery in Welwitschia!!!.13

I have had no time to read more than the 2 chapters as yet, for I have a stock of half- [3]14 read books on hand & no time for any of them. I am only 2/3 through Wallace15 & it is splendid. What a number of cobwebs he has swept away. — That such a man should be a Spiritualist is more wonderful than all the movements of all the plants.16 He has done great things towards the explanation of the N[ew]. Zeal[an]d Flora & Australian, but marred it by assuming a pre-existent S[outh]. W[est]. Australian Flora — I am sure that the Australian Flora is very modern in the main, & the S[outh]. W[est]. peculiarities are exaggerations due to long isolation during the severance of the West from the East by [4] the inland sea sea or straits that occupied the continent from Carpentaria to the G[rea]t. Bight. I live in hopes of showing by an analysis (botanical) of the Australian types, that they are all derived from the Asiatic continent. Meanwhile I have no chance of tackling problems — I must grind away at the Garden,17 The Bot[anical]. Mag[azine].,18 & Indian Flora,19 which I cannot afford to give up, and Gen[era]. Plant[arum].,20 which alone I delight in. I am at Palms, a most difficult task, and sometimes weeks elapse and not a stroke of work done! I am getting very weary of "working for a living", and beginning to covet rest & leisure [5]21 in a way I never did before. But I must first look out for the education of three sons,22 — all hopeful I am glad to say, but one still an infant!

The Grays23 will be back in a fortnight. They have changed their plans & will spend 2 or 3 winter months here & then go abroad (with us) for the Spring. They will go into lodgings in Kew. We contemplate getting out a paper or book on the distribution of [United]. S[tates]. plants together (as one of Harden’s Reprints).24

Have you read Paget[’]s25 Lecture on plant diseases? 26 it is very suggestive and a wonderful specimen of style [6] aiding in giving great importance to possibly very superficial resemblances between animal & vegetable malformations. Still there must be a great deal in the subject to be investigated.

I suppose we should get "Nobbes’ Handbuch [1 word illeg. struck through] [der] Samenkunde." 27 — is it an [1 word illeg.] work — our funds for purchase are rather short — but if we have [1 word illeg.] I will order it at once.28

Ever affectionately y[ou]rs | J D Hooker29 [signature]

[7]30

Paget has started the idea of a Vegetable pathologist for Kew, & I have asked him to corkscrew Gladstone31 about it.

We were very sorry to see Miss Wedgwood’s32 death in the paper — I fear that Mrs Darwin33 will feel it a great deal.

[A largely indecipherable annotation mentioning zigzag in the hand of the recipient appears at the bottom of the page, struck through]

1
This document is foliated 142-145 and folio 145v is annotated "Hooker" and " '80".The first folio is also numbered "379".
2
The letter is written on the headed notepaper of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the embossed seal of which is positioned at the top centre of the page.
3
Year of date clearly 1880.
4
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). English naturalist and geologist, jointly with ARW originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection and author (1859) of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
5
Darwin, C. & Darwin F. (1880). The power of movement in plants London, John Murray. Francis Darwin (see Endnote 6) worked with his father on experiments dealing with plant movements, specifically phototropism.
6
Darwin, Francis ("Frank") (1848-1925). Botanist, third son and seventh child of Charles Darwin.
7
Hooker had read Chapter VII Modified circumnutation: Nyctitropic or sleep movements of leaves and Chapter VIII Modified circumnutation: Movements excited by light. In Chapter VII the Darwins describe tracking the movement of a leaf over two days: "Early on the next day (29th) it fell in a slightly zig-zag line rapidly until 9 A.M.., by which time it had reached nearly the same place as on the previous morning. During the remainder of the day it fell slowly and zigzagged laterally".
8
In Chapter VII Bauhinia is a genus of more than 500 species of flower-bearing trees in the subfamily Caesalpinioideae of the family Fabaceae, widespread in tropical regions. The lobed leaves are 10-15 cm across. In Chapter VII they describe how the two halves of the Bauhinia leaf rise up and come into close contact at night, as well as rising of the petiole (leaf stalk), reducing the surface exposed to radiation.
9
This passage refers to the subject of Chapter VIII.
10
Thiselton-Dyer, William Turner (1843-1928). Leading British botanist and the third director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
11
Baker, John Gilbert (1834-1920). English botanist. He worked at the library and herbarium of the Royal Botanic gardens, Kew 1866-1899, and was keeper of the herbarium 1890-1899.
12
A genus of herbaceous vine in the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae.
13
A monotypic gynosperm genus comprising solely the distinctive Welwitschia mirabilis in the family Welwitschiaceae in the plant division Gnetophyta. Informal sources commonly refer to the plant as a "living fossil". It is endemic to the Namib Desert. The Slovenian botanist and doctor Friedrich Welwitsch discovered the plant in 1859 in present day Angola. He supplied Hooker with some well-preserved material from which he was able to determine its botanical affinities.
14
The folio is numbered "143".
15
Wallace, A. R. (1880). Island Life: or, The phenomena and causes of insular faunas and floras, including a revision and attempted solution of the problem of geological climates. London: Macmillan & Co. This surveyed the problems of the dispersal and speciation of plants and animals on islands which he categorized, following Darwin, as oceanic or continental. Unlike Darwin’s theories of erratic spread to account for the discontinuous distribution of types, Wallace favoured theories of continuous spread followed by selective extinctions thus creating the appearance of gaps.
16
ARW began investigating spiritualism in the summer of 1865. His very public advocacy his repeated defence of spiritualist mediums against allegations of fraud in the 1870s damaged his scientific reputation. It strained his relationships with previously friendly scientists such as Henry Bates, Thomas Huxley and even Darwin, who felt he was overly credulous. He also annoyed Hooker by raising the subject at a meeting of the British Association.
17
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, founded in 1840, is the world’s largest collection of living plants. Joseph Dalton Hooker succeeded his father William Jackson Hooker as Director.
18
The Botanical Magazine or Flower-Garden Displayed, is an illustrated publication which began in 1787, the longest running botanical magazine. William Jackson Hooker was the editor from 1826 and Joseph Dalton Hooker followed his father as editor on becoming Director in 1865.
19
Hooker, J. D. & Thomson, T. (1855). Flora Indica London, W. Pamplin.
20
Hooker, J. D. & Bentham, G. (1862-1883). Genera plantarum London, Reeve and Co.
21
The folio is numbered "144" and bears the embossed seal of the Royal Botanic Gardens.
22
Joseph Dalton Hooker married Frances Harriet Henslow (1825-1874) in 1851. They had four sons, two of whom were adults at the date of the letter. Brian Harvey Hodgson Hooker (1860-1832) was aged 20 and Reginald Hawthorn Hooker (1867-1944) aged 13. After his first wife’s death he married Hyacinth Jardine (1842-1921) in 1876. They had two sons, but only the first, Joseph Symonds Hooker (1877-1940) (aged 3) had been born by the date of the letter.
23
Gray, Asa (1810-1888). Professor of Botany at Harvard University, considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century. His book Darwiniana was also considered an important explanation of how religion and science were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
24
Hooker, J. D. (1879). The Distribution of the North American Flora The American Naturalist 13: 155-170. In 1877 Hooker undertook a voyage with Asa Gray to the Western United States to investigate the connection between the floras of eastern United States and those of eastern continental Asia and Japan; and the line of demarkation between Arctic floras of America and Greenland. As probable causes they considered the Glacial periods and an earlier land connection with an Arctic continent. Hooker was back in Kew with 1,000 dried specimens by October.
25
Paget, James (1814-1899). English surgeon and pathologist and one of the founders of scientific medical pathology. He was friends with Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley. He was a committed Christian and maintained there was no conflict between religion and science.
26
Paget, J. (1880). An address on elemental pathology British Medical Journal 2(1034): 649-652.
27
Nobbe, F. (1876). Handbuch der Samenkunde: Physiologisch-satische Untersuchungen über den wirthshaflichen Gebrauchswerth der land und forstwirthschaftlichen, sowie gärtnerischen Saatwaaren Berlin, Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey.
28
This paragraph is marked by vertical lines in red pencil in both margins and annotated "Answer".
29
Hooker, Joseph Dalton (1817-1911). British botanist and explorer, founder of geographical botany. He succeeded his father William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865) as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on his death and held the post for 20 years.
30
The folio is numbered "145".
31
Gladstone, William Ewart (1809-1898). British Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister on four separate occasions between 1868 and 1894.
32
Wedgwood, Sarah Elizabeth ("Elizabeth") (1793-1880). Sister of Emma Darwin (née Wedgwood).
33
Darwin, Emma (née Wedgwood) (1808-1896). Wife and first cousin of the author. They were married in 1839 and were the parents of 10 children, three of whom died in infancy.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP5297.5841)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP5297,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5297