Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Book not quite correct, and yet I do not see my way to
arrive at any better terms. It will be years before I publish, so that
I shall have plenty of time to think of better words. Development would
perhaps do, only it is applied to the changes of an individual during
its growth. I am, however, very glad of your remark, and will ponder
over it.
We are all well, wife and children three, and as flourishing as this
horrid, house-confining, tempestuous weather permits.
LETTER 18. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1845].
I hope you are getting on well with your lectures, and that you have
enjoyed some pleasant walks during the late delightful weather. I write
to tell you (as perhaps you might have had fears on the subject) that
your books have arrived safely. I am exceedingly obliged to you for
them, and will take great care of them; they will take me some time to
read carefully.
I send to-day the corrected MS. of the first number of my "Journal"
(18/1. In 1842 he had written to his sister: "Talking of money, I reaped
the other day all the profit which I shall ever get from my "Journal"
["Journal of Researches, etc."] which consisted in paying Mr. Colburn
21 pounds 10 shillings for the copies which I presented to different
people; 1,337 copies have been sold. This is a comfortable arrangement,
is it not?" He was proved wrong in his gloomy prophecy, as the second
edition was published by Mr. Murray in 1845.) in the Colonial Library,
so that if you chance to know of any gross mistake in the first 214
pages (if you have my "Journal"), I should be obliged to you to tell me.
Do not answer this for form's sake; for you must be very busy. We have
just had the Lyells here, and you ought to have a wife to stop your
working too much, as Mrs. Lyell peremptorily stops Lyell.
LETTER 19. TO J.D. HOOKER.
(19/1. Sir J.D. Hooker's letters to Mr. Darwin seem to fix the date as
1845, while the reference to Forbes' paper indicates 1846.)
Down [1845-1846].
I am particularly obliged for your facts about solitary islands having
several species of peculiar genera; it knocks on the head some analogies
of mine; the point stupidly never occurred to me to ask about. I am
amused at your anathemas against variation and co.; whatever you may be
pleased to say, you will never be content with simple species, "as they
are." I defy you to steel your mind to technicalities, like so many of
our brother naturalists. I am much pleased that I thought of sending
you Forbes' article. (19/2. E. Forbes' celebrated paper "Memoirs of
the Geological Survey of Great Britain," Volume I., page 336, 1846. In
Lyell's "Principles," 7th Edition, 1847, page 676, he makes a temperate
claim of priority, as he had already done in a private letter of October
14th, 1846, to Forbes ("Life of Sir Charles Lyell," 1881, Volume II.,
page 106) both as regards the Sicilian flora and the barrier effect of
mountain-chains. See Letter 20 for a note on Forbes.) I confess I cannot
make out the evidence of his time-notions in distribution, and I cannot
help suspecting that they are rather vague. Lyell preceded Forbes in one
class of speculation of this kind: for instance, in his explaining the
identity of the Sicily Flora with that of South Italy, by its having
been wholly upraised within the recent period; and, so I believe, with
mountain-chains separating floras. I do not remember Humboldt's fact
about the heath regions. Very curious the case of the broom; I can tell
you something analogous on a small scale. My father, when he built his
house, sowed many broom-seeds on a wild bank, which did not come up,
owing, as it was thought, to much earth having been thrown over them.
About thirty-five years afterwards, in cutting a terrace, all this earth
was thrown up, and now the bank is one mass of broom. I see we were
in some degree talking to cross-purposes; when I said I did [not] much
believe in hybridising to any extent, I did not mean at all to exclude
crossing. It has long been a hobby of mine to see in how many flowers
such crossing is probable; it was, I believe, Knight's view, originally,
that every plant must be occasionally crossed. (19/3. See an article
on "The Knight-Darwin law" by Francis Darwin in "Nature," October 27th,
1898, page 630.) I find, however, plenty of difficulty in showing even
a vague probability of this; especially in the Leguminosae, though their
[structure?] is inimitably adapted to favour crossing, I have never
yet met with but one instance of a NATURAL MONGREL (nor mule?) in this
family.
I shall be particularly curious to hear some account of the appearance
and origin of the Ayrshire Irish Yew. And now for the main object of my
letter: it is to ask whether you would just run your eye over the
proof of my Galapagos chapter (19/4. In the second edition of the
"Naturalist's Voyage."), where I mention the plants, to see that I have
made no blunders, or spelt any of the scientific names wrongly. As
I daresay you will so far oblige me, will you let me know a few days
before, when you leave Edinburgh and how long you stay at Kinnordy, so
that my letter might catch you. I am not surprised at my collection from
James Island differing from others, as the damp upland district (where I
slept two nights) is six miles from the coast, and no naturalist except
myself probably ever ascended to it. Cuming had never even heard of it.
Cuming tells me that he was on Charles, James, and Albemarle Islands,
and that he cannot remember from my description the Scalesia, but thinks
he could if he saw a specimen. I have no idea of the origin of the
distribution of the Galapagos shells, about which you ask. I
presume (after Forbes' excellent remarks on the facilities by which
embryo-shells are transported) that the Pacific shells have been borne
thither by currents; but the currents all run the other way.
(PLATE: EDWARD FORBES 1844? From a photograph by Hill & Adamson.)
LETTER 20. EDWARD FORBES TO C. DARWIN.
(20/1. Edward Forbes was at work on his celebrated paper in the
"Geological Survey Memoirs" for 1846. We have not seen the letter of
Darwin's to which this is a reply, nor, indeed, any of his letters to
Forbes. The date of the letter is fixed by Forbes's lecture given at
the Royal Institution on February 27th, 1846 (according to L. Horner's
privately printed "Memoirs," II., page 94.))
Wednesday. 3, Southwark Street, Hyde Park. [1846].
Dear Darwin
To answer your very welcome letter, so far from being a waste of time,
is a gain, for it obliges me to make myself clear and understood
on matters which I have evidently put forward imperfectly and with
obscurity. I have devoted the whole of this week to working and writing
out the flora question, for I now feel strong enough to give my promised
evening lecture on it at the Royal Institution on Friday, and, moreover,
wish to get it in printable form for the Reports of our Survey.
Therefore at no time can I receive or answer objections with more
benefit than now. From the hurry and pressure which unf |