WCP5321

Letter (WCP5321.5865)

[1]

Down.

Bromley.

Kent. S. E.

Sept. 25th [1866]1

My dear Hooker

My poor sister still lives, but is dying.2 It is a great comfort that she has now ceased suffering & doses [sic]3 nearly all day long. She wishes poor thing earnestly for death, & really death is nothing compared with much suffering. It will soon now all be over. —

Many thanks for two kind notes from you, & for the loan [2] of Sering. [sic]4 It will please me much to receive Drosera;5 not that I am in the least hurry. Can you give me another plant Erica Massoni;6 for I presume it is not to be bought, being described by Loudon7 as "grotesque". I see it is said to catch very many insects & even once a Kitty-wren. I want to look at its glands in comparison with [3] those of Drosera. —

Have you read or heard of Agassiz's8 new doctrine that the whole of the valley of Amazons was filled from Cordillera to beyond mouth of river with gigantic glacier! & that all striae have disappeared owing to Tropical climate!! There never was so monstrous a notion. Asa Gray9 says he started with determination to prove the whole globe covered with ice for the purpose of destroying all terrestrial productions & thus destroying [4] "Darwinian views". He rushed down immediately on his arrival to the Academy, & announced my destruction. —

Talking of my views, did you see a Review in last Gard. Chronicle on the Murray:10 by Jove if Masters11 wrote that he is up to snuff, & he will stand much higher than before in my estimation of his powers. It seemed to me very good. — It hits the nail on the head so truly & so hard & yet so gently. —

[5]12 Have you seen Frankland's13 Lecture on muscular force14 read before Royal In[stitutio]n. — he was so kind as to send it me, & I have liked it very much, though here & there were bits I could fully understand. —

I suppose you are, as usual, very very busy. I wonder when you will find time to finish off your Lecture, & when you will publish it. All your doings at Nottingham seem to have troubled much the good people at Dundee, who dread such infidel doctrines. I hope Wallace's paper will be published;15 I have seen not even a moderate abstract of it. —

Farewell | my dear old Friend. — | Yours affect[ionall]y. | C. Darwin [signature]

1
Following "Sept. 25" is the annotation "/1866" in pencil in an unidentified hand. See also note 2.
2
Darwin, Susan Elizabeth (1803 -1866), sister of Charles Darwin. She died on 3 October 1866.
3
The third letter is clearly an "s" as typically penned by CD, but "doses" may be a mis-spelling for "dozes" which seems more likely in context.
4
Seringe, Nicolas Charles. 1830. Pommier monstrueux de St.-Vallery, avec une notice sur la disposition des carpelles de plusieurs fruits. Bulletin Botanique ou Collection de Notices Originales et d’Extraits des Ouvrages Botaniques, 5, pp. 117-125.
5
Drosera; commonly known as Sundews, one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants.
6
Loudon, John Claudius. 1841. An encyclopaedia of plants. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans. p. 306. Erica massoni L., family Ericaceae, is commonly known as Masson's Heath.
7
Loudon, John Claudius (1783-1843). British botanist and garden designer.
8
Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe ("Louis") (1807-1873). Swiss-American naturalist, comparative anatomist, and founder of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.
9
Gray, Asa (1810-1888). American botanist. Professor of natural history, Harvard University, 1842-73.
10
Anon. 1886. Review of Murray, Andrew. 1866. The Geographical Distribution of Mammals. London: Day & Son Ltd., in Gardeners’ Chronicle, 22 Sept. 1866, p. 902.
11
Masters, Maxwell Tylden (1833-1907). Botanist and journal editor. In 1865 he became editor of the Gardeners' Chronicle.
12
No image of page [[5]] was available at time of transcription. The text "Have you seen Frankland's ... C. Darwin" is taken from the Darwin Correspondence Project: DCP_LETT_5217.
13
Frankland, Edward (1825-1899) British chemist.
14
Frankland, Edward. 1866. On the source of muscular power. [Read 8 June 1866.] Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 4: pp. 661-685.
15
Wallace, A.R. 1866. On Reversed Sexual Characters in a Butterfly, and their Interpretation on the Theory of Modification and Adaptive Mimicry. Report of the Thirty-Sixth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Held at Nottingham in August 1866. London: John Murray. (Transactions of the sections. p. 79).

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP5321.5865)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by Darwin Correspondence Project [2015-06-12] Transcription checked by Benny, Ruth [2015-06-12] Transcription checked by Sherwood, Danni [2020-08-10] Transcription checked by Lucas, Paula [2022-07-19]

Please cite as “WCP5321,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 8 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5321