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are annual! I suppose there can be no doubt but that a deciduous-leaved
vegetation affords more conditions for vegetable life than an evergreen
one, and that it is hence that we find countries characterised by
uniform climates to be poor in species, and those to be evergreens. I
can now work this point out for New Zealand and Britain. Japan may be
an exception: it is an extraordinary evergreen country, and has many
species apparently, but it has so much novelty that it may not be so
rich in species really as it hence looks, and I do believe it is very
poor. It has very few annuals. Then, again, I think that the number of
plants with irregular flowers, and especially such as require insect
agency, diminishes much with evergreenity. Hence in all humid temperate
regions we have, as a rule, few species, many evergreens, few annuals,
few Leguminosae and orchids, few lepidoptera and other flying
insects, many Coniferae, Amentaceae, Gramineae, Cyperaceae, and other
wind-fertilised trees and plants, etc. Orchids and Leguminosae are
scarce in islets, because the necessary fertilising insects have not
migrated with the plants. Perhaps you have published this.
LETTER 376. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 9th [1867].
I like the first part of your paper in the "Gard. Chronicle" (376/1.
The lecture on Insular Floras ("Gard. Chron." January 1867).) to an
extraordinary degree: you never, in my opinion, wrote anything better.
You ask for all, even minute criticisms. In the first column you speak
of no alpine plants and no replacement by zones, which will strike
every one with astonishment who has read Humboldt and Webb on Zones on
Teneriffe. Do you not mean boreal or arctic plants? (376/2. The passage
which seems to be referred to does mention the absence of BOREAL
plants.) In the third column you speak as if savages (376/3. "Such
plants on oceanic islands are, like the savages which in some islands
have been so long the sole witnesses of their existence, the last
representatives of their several races.") had generally viewed the
endemic plants of the Atlantic islands. Now, as you well know, the
Canaries alone of all the archipelagoes were inhabited. In the third
column have you really materials to speak of confirming the proportion
of winged and wingless insects on islands?
Your comparison of plants of Madeira with islets of Great Britain is
admirable. (376/4. "What should we say, for instance, if a plant so
totally unlike anything British as the Monizia edulis...were found
on one rocky islet of the Scillies, or another umbelliferous plant,
Melanoselinum...on one mountain in Wales; or if the Isle of Wight and
Scilly Islands had varieties, species, and genera too, differing from
anything in Britain, and found nowhere else in the world!")
I must allude to one of your last notes with very curious case of
proportion of annuals in New Zealand. (376/5. On this subject see
Hildebrand's interesting paper "Die Lebensdauer der Pflanzen" (Engler's
"Botanische Jahrbucher," Volume II., 1882, page 51). He shows that
annuals are rare in very dry desert-lands, in northern and alpine
regions. The following table gives the percentages of annuals, etc., in
various situations in Freiburg (Baden):--
Annuals. Biennials. Perennials. Trees and
Shrubs.
Sandy, dry, and
stony places: 21 11 65 3
Dry fields: 6 4 90
Damp fields: 12 2 77 9
Woods and copses: 3 2 65 31
Water: 3 97
Cultivated land: 89 11
Are annuals adapted for short seasons, as in arctic regions, or tropical
countries with dry season, or for periodically disturbed and cultivated
ground? You speak of evergreen vegetation as leading to few or confined
conditions; but is not evergreen vegetation connected with humid and
equable climate? Does not a very humid climate almost imply (Tyndall) an
equable one?
I have never printed a word that I can remember about orchids and
papilionaceous plants being few in islands on account of rarity of
insects; and I remember you screamed at me when I suggested this a
propos of Papilionaceae in New Zealand, and of the statement about
clover not seeding there till the hive-bee was introduced, as I stated
in my paper in "Gard. Chronicle." (376/6. "In an old number of the
"Gardeners' Chronicle" an extract is given from a New Zealand newspaper
in which much surprise is expressed that the introduced clover never
seeded freely until the hive-bee was introduced." "On the Agency of Bees
in the Fertilisation of Papilionaceous Flowers..." ("Gard. Chron." 1858,
page 828). See Letter 362, note.) I have been these last few days vexed
and annoyed to a foolish degree by hearing that my MS. on Domestic
Animals, etc., will make two volumes, both bigger than the "Origin." The
volumes will have to be full-sized octavo, so I have written to Murray
to suggest details to be printed in small type. But I feel that the size
is quite ludicrous in relation to the subject. I am ready to swear at
myself and at every fool who writes a book.
LETTER 377. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 15th [1867].
Thanks for your jolly letter. I have read your second article (377/1.
The lecture on Insular Floras was published in instalments in the
"Gardeners' Chronicle," January 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, 1867.), and like
it even more than the first, and more than this I cannot say. By mere
chance I stumbled yesterday on a passage in Humboldt that a violet grows
on the Peak of Teneriffe in common with the Pyrenees. If Humboldt is
right that the Canary Is. which lie nearest to the continent have a much
stronger African character than the others, ought you not just to allude
to this? I do not know whether you admit, and if so allude to, the view
which seems to me probable, that most of the genera confined to the
Atlantic islands (I do not say the species) originally existed in, and
were derived from, Europe, [and have] become extinct on this continent.
I should thus account for the community of peculiar genera in the
several Atlantic islands. About the Salvages is capital. (377/2. The
Salvages are rocky islets about midway between Madeira and the Canaries;
and they have an Atlantic flora, instead of, as might have been
expected, one composed of African immigrants. ("Insular Floras," page 5
of separate copy.)) I am glad you speak of LINKING, though this sounds
a little too close, instead of being continuous. All about St. Helena is
grand. You have no faith, but if I knew any one who lived in St. Helena
I would supplicate him to send me home a cask or two of earth from a few
inches beneath the surface from the upper part of the island, and from
any dried-up pond, and thus, as sure as I'm a wriggler, I should receive
a multitude of lost plants.
I did suggest to you to work out proportion of plants with irregular
flowers on islands; I did this after giving a very short discussion
on irregular flowers in my Lythrum paper. (377/3. "Linn. Soc. Journ."
VIII., 1865, page 169.) But what on earth has a mere suggestion like
this to do with meum and |