WCP5306

[1]

Down Bromley Kent.

May 15^th / [18]63

My dear Hooker

Your letter received this morning interested me more than even most of your letters; & that is saying a good deal. —

I must scribble a little on several points. About Lyell^{1 & Species} you put the whole case, I do believe, when you say that he is "half-hearted & whole-headed".² I wrote to A[sa]. Gray³ that when I saw such man as Lyell & he refuse to judge, it put me in despair; & that I sometimes thought I sh[oul]^d. prefer that ^{Lyell had} judged against modification of species, rather than profess inability to decide; & I left him to [2] apply this to himself. — I am heartily rejoiced to hear that you intend to try to bring L[yell]. & F[alconer].⁴ together again: but had you not better wait till they are a little cooled? you will do science a real good service. Falconer never forgave Lyell for taking the Purbeck⁵ bones from him & handing them over to Owen⁶ —

I was so glad to see the curious & most beautiful Clianthus⁷ (you beggar to make a man’s wife & daughter laugh outrageously at him with your "wriggles"): if you sh[oul]^d. look at [the] flower again, I think from analogy & from what I saw of ^the packing of ^the pollen, that you [3] will find that hairy pistil grows & brushes masses of pollen to apex of keel, & the insects, whilst sucking work ^{move the} keel up & down & force pollen & stigma on to hairy abdomen: by thus gently working I brushed all the pollen out of keel by its apex. —

With respect to Island Floras, if I understand rightly, we differ almost solely how plants first got there: I suppose that at long intervals, ^from as far back as later Tertiary periods, ^{to the present time} plants occasionally arrived (in some cases perhaps aided by different current ^{from existing currents} & ^by former islands) & that the old plant arrivals have survived little modified on the islands, but have been greatly modified or become extinct [4] on ^the continents. If I understand, you believe that the ^all islands were formerly united ^{to continents} & then received all their plants & none since; & that on the islands they have undergone less extinction & modification than on the continents. — The number of ^animal-forms on islands very closely allied to those on continents, ^{with a few extremely distinct & anomalous,} does not seem to me well to harmonise with this ^{your supposed} view of all all having formerly arrived or rather having been left together on the island. —

May 22^[n]d. I have been very bad & chiefly confined to bed; but will amuse myself by writing a little more [5] to you. With respect to Bates⁸ & Wallace having distinct views on species during their Journey;⁹ what does astonish me is the extreme poverty of observation on this head in Wallace's book;¹⁰ with one discussion on ^very dissimilar Birds feeding alike showing, as it seemed to me, complete misunderstanding of the economy of nature.

Will you ask Oliver¹¹ for reference,¹² if he can, to Nageli [Nägeli]¹³ on relation of vessels & leaves; it is just the point I was driven to. — I failed hopelessly; but found to my surprise that leaves arranged at angles, which do not naturally occur, stand in as perfect [6] symmetry with other leaves (viz[.] at intersection of the two diagonals of a rhomb[us]. formed by joining the two two [sic] leaves above & two below) as do the leaves placed at the real angles from each other. There is some curious law to be made out about these angles which all go on converging to an imaginary angle. —

You have given excellent counsel to Bates & I hope he will follow it; what an old malignant [7] fool D^r Gray¹⁴ is; but I never care an atom for his malignacy [sic]; it never makes me angry, & I believe your explanation is right; one gets used to it.

Have you seen the Anthropological Review: there are some clever articles; with a fierce attack on Huxley.¹⁵ —

Please remember & tell me name of ^Hot-House plant (& if possible send flower of) with two coloured anthers.¹⁶ —

All my work is at [a] wretched [8] standstill, with everlasting sickness & devilish headachs [sic] —

Goodnight | My dear old friend. | C. Darwin [signature]

The more I think of the "Sad Case" the cleverer it seems. — Where is Huxley: is he alive? I sometimes think that my days of scientific work are very rapidly drawing to a close. — Goodnight dear old friend. —