Mike Sutton admits that he has no proof for his claim that Darwin pagiarised Matthew

Mike Sutton (Fear and Loathing in Science, @ldk50074280),

the crank who keeps claiming that Darwin plagiarised Matthew, contradicts himself by admitting that ideas might have been floating around freely without proper attachment of references:

https://archive.ph/cf2Gc

Heinrich Schacht (ca. 1584 to 1654), a catholic missionary disguised as a mousetrap peddler

The Jesuit monk Henricus Schachtius went on an undercover mission in protestant Sweden, in the guise of a mousetrap maker and peddler. The image below shows him with some classical mousetraps. There's a dome-shaped cage trap at the near edge of the table, an unfinished double box-trap at its left edge, and a planchette or "dragin trappe with a great wyar" behind the dome cage (see here for dragin traps). There are also some tools, pieces of wood and wire on the table. A double box-trap with unset trap doors is standing in the niche behind Schacht.

 

From Mathias Tanner (1694, Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix... pp. 794-796)

Giovanni Battista Veraldi, a protestant Italian musician serving at the Royal Court in Stockholm betrayed Heinrich Schacht together with Swedish catholics, Zacharias Anthelius and Georg Bähr. Veraldi had jealously reported them to the authorities in 1624, because Bähr had had a love affair with Veraldi's wife. In his defense, Bähr claimed at trial that the musician had been impotent for eight years. The trial involved further Swedes. Zacharias Anthelius, Georg Bähr Ursinus, Nicolaus Campanius, Henricus Schachtius and Arnold Johan Messenius were sentenced to death. As a foreigner, however, Schacht was pardoned and he returned to Hamburg. The juvenile Messenius was exiled to a fortress in Finland, where he died in 1636.

References

Sture Lagercrantz, 1987. The Jesuit priest Heinrich Schacht and his mousetraps.
Förutvarande Institutionen för Allmän och Jämförande Etnografi vid Uppsala Universitet. Occasional Papers XII, Varia III: pp. 20–29.

A blog entry by Tommy Hansson with information on the trial in Sweden.

German edition of the Sociatas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix (entry on Schachtius: pp. 895-6).

The Origin of Specious: misunderstandings about Patrick Matthew’s evolutionary thinking

by J.F. Derry & Joachim L. Dagg. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 131, Issue 3, November 2020, Pages 706–715.

This article is a vaccine against BS claiming that Patrick Matthew's (1831) mechanism of evolution was identical with Charles Darwin's. We find differences large enough to set Matthew apart from Darwin and Wallace. For example, catastrophes knocked out competition and hence competitive natural selection in Matthew's scheme, so that speciation (during his phase of ramification after catastrophes) took place in the absence of natural selection. However, Matthew is interesting in his own right as an intermediate source between Cuvierian catastrophism & species fixity on the one hand and species transformism (as of Buffon, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin) on the other.

P.S.: The above link should get you through the paywall.

Buch Review: Charles Darwin did not mislead Joseph Hooker in their 1881 Correspondence about Leopold von Buch and Karl Ernst von Baer

This is a vaccine against BS claiming that Darwin lied to Hooker in 1881:

https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2020.1790659

Remarks on the Improvement of Live Stock (Anonymous 1825)

Who was the author of the "Remarks on the Improvement of Live Stock" (1825)?

The question is interesting, because this anonymous author wrote:

"Simply procuring the best Males and Females, is not, therefore, the only requisite to insure success in breeding; selection of the proper animals for such a purpose is a sine qua non—THE JUDGEMENT OF THE BREEDER IN MAKING THIS SELECTION CONSTITUTES THE GREAT ART OF IMPROVING; his abilities to discern the good and bad qualities of the animal, and to cross judiciously with others possessed of different properties in such a manner as to eradicate the bad, requires much attention and experience, but when once acquired and followed up, seldom fails of producing the desired effect. Breeding IN and IN* from the most perfect animal, however closely allied, will be found far more advantageous, than changing and crossing animals remote from each other in the peculiar characters of breed, which too frequently produces stock scarcely worth rearing." (Remarks on the Improvement on Live Stock, p. 5, emphases original)

I got no further than determining that the printer, Henry Chubb, was a publisher located on Market Square in "Saint John" in New Brunswick.

Update (31.12.2020): Martin Köchy informed me that he found a review article of the above book spread over two issues of the New England Farmer (16 Nov 1827, Vol. 6, No. 17, p. 134 & 23 Nov 1827, Vol. 6, No. 18, pp. 142-43). As this review also does not mention the author's name, it is probably lost.

 

"Walther May (1868-1926), Freethinker, Socialist, Zoologist and Historian of Darwinism" by Gaston Mayer (1987)

The below articles is translated from: Mayer, Gaston. 1987. Walther May (1868-1926), Freidenker, Sozialist, Zoologe und Historiker des Darwinismus. Mitteilungen des badischen Landesvereins für Naturkunde und Naturschutz, N.S. 14(2): 483-495. [For further posts on Walther May click on his name in the label menu above.]
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Walther May (1868-1926), Freethinker, Socialist, Zoologist and Historian of Darwinism

by

Gaston Mayer, Karlsruhe*

Freethinker, socialist, zoologist, and historian of Darwinism, these are the stations of the life, clouded by tragic, of the professor of zoology at the technical college/university of Karlsruhe, Dr. Walther May (1868-1926). He detailed his career/development himself in a biographical sketch (1904, see here), so that the following only took the basic facts from it complemented through other sources for the time reported as well as for his later years.

    Walther Viktor May was born on 12.6.1868 in Marburg as son of captain Alexis Ferdinand Conrad May (1835-1870), who fell at Gravelotte, and of Elisabeth Karoline Walther (1842-1922).^[1] He entered junior high school in Kassel on Michaelis 1878 (29 Sept) where he soon got into natural sciences and especially into Darwinism. He corresponded with Ernst Haeckel as a 16 year old already, in order to quench his thirst for knowledge. The liberal ideas of the French revolution also attracted him mightily. As a pupil he already published essays in various periodicals during the years 1886 to 1889 and a book "Statement of Beliefs of a Truth-seeker," wherein he summarized his freethinking and socialist views. After the end of his schooldays, Easter 1889, he went to Leipzig on 20 April, in order to study natural sciences at the university.Filled with the teachings of Darwin and Haeckel but also of Marx and Engels, he tried to spread thee with juvenile enthusiasm and found an opportunity in the newly founded freethinker club/union "Humboldt," which was largely supported by laborers, and became its chairman. The university's own court, however, forbade him this activity and also visiting any worker assemblies/gatherings, and it punished him with 4 days detention room [Karzer]. When he trespassed the prohibition thereafter and tried to talk about the world's creation and end, he got expelled from Leipzig university and relegated from visiting any other German university as well. Now he was "a free man," as he wrote himself, and wandered through Saxony from town to town, and he talked about Monism, Darwinism and Socialism. He reached Chemnitz on the 22.10.1891 and became editor of the social-democratic journal "Die Presse." As such he got into conflict with the press-law. He was accused of having justified theft from need/poverty and incriminated him

----------
Address of the author: G. Mayer, Friedrich-Wolff-Str. 77, D-77500 Karlsruhe 1

"What Ernst Haeckel means in my life" (Walther May 1914)

Walther May's second autobiographic article occurred in a collection of articles published in order to honor Ernst Haeckel on the occasion of his 80s birthday:

May, Walther. 1914. "Was Ernst Haeckel in meinm Leben bedeutet." In H. Schmidt (ed. on behalf of the Deutschen Monistenbund), Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken. Ein Buch der Verehrung und Dankbarkeit, pp. 273-286. Leipzig: Unesma GmbH.

May replicates much of his earlier autobiographic article honoring Darwin, which I have translated in an earlier post. That earlier post also gives some context concerning Walther May and why I translate his articles. (My hope to get any further insight into the question how May came to write the first article containing biographic information about Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) was in vain, unfortunately.)  

I will not replicate my translation in like fashion below but refer you to the earlier blog post for the identical sections. The interesting part comes after the departure of this article from its predecessor, anyway: when May dissents Haeckel's monistic ideology and contradicts his plant to organize a German Monistenbund. This seems to be a juicy detail, given that the article was published in a volume sponsored by that very Deutsche Monistenbund (apparently Haeckel had succeeded and the detractors of his plan failed) and meant to honor and thank Haeckel. 

The first few paragraphs of the earlier article are not reproduced by May in his current one. May picks up at the passage:

"My mother used to hold the Daheim, not because she would pay homage to its religious direction, but because it contained nice novels and pictures."

Daheim means "at home," but here refers to a periodical: Daheim. Ein deutsches Familienblatt mit Illustrationen. You can imagine this to be the German equivalent of English periodicals like the Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, an educational outlet with an agenda to enlighten the wider public (lower ranks) and foster their (self-)improvement while maintaining a conservative perspective.

The current article continues to replicate the earlier one until:

"Darwin now seemed to be the absolute character of the naturalist researcher, as the hero of scientific method."

Thereafter, the text departs from the earlier as follows:

"His agnosticism concerning the final questions, his tentative defense of his own theories, influenced me in a way similar to my earlier studies of Goethe and made me cautious

---[p. 282]---

cautious in judgement. I increasingly saw the difficulties confronting every scientific generalization, I increasingly saw myself surrounded by problems with which the human mind will struggle forever and in vain. I confronted the old question of Pilatus: "What is truth?" and I could not answer it. Haeckel's "Welträtsel" [Riddles of the Universe], which occurred in the same year that I got the assistant job in Karlsruhe, encountered me in this mood. The work left me cold, it did not offer me anything to overcome my skepticism. I knew Haeckel too much by rote already, whose previous works I had all studied, for this compilation of his ideas, which have been proclaimed for more than 30 years, to affect me. And as I now read the powerful refutations of Paulsen and Adickes, as I now made the whole literature on world-riddles my subject of study, my already shaken belief in the truth and infallibility of Haeckel's monism collapsed. The "Welträtsel" meant my renunciation of the philosophy that I had ingested with the "Natürliche Schöpfungs-geschichte."

    Of course this renunciation was no return to the church belief from which the "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte" had liberated me. I am as far from all ecclesiastical essence today as I was before. Since the age of 23 I am a dissident and always call myself such. But I have realized that the alternative between church belief and monism does not exist, that a multitude of philosophies/ideologies exist besides naturalistic monism that can also be aligned with the scientific evidence. I do not see any of these forms as the sole salvation, but I now take the idealistic systems as more credible than materialistic ones, systems that assume a mental/spiritual original/first cause and a rational sense/meaning in the world's hustle and bustle rather than systems that deny goals and aims of the world and reduce all events to a blind mechanism. 

    This did not stop me from aggregating a small band of my colleagues and 

---[p. 283]---

students in Karlsruhe, on the occasion of Haeckle's 70s birthday, where three orators honored Haeckel as human, philosopher, naturalist and artist, where the Haeckel statuette by Herold has been unveiled, where Jena has been praised as a Palladium of free science, where a commemorative with Haeckel's motto "Impavidi progrediamur" [impavid we progress] has been read, and where some jolly song from Reymond's "Laienbrevier des Haeckelismus" [Laity brevier of Haeckelism] has been such with enthusiasm. I also drew a parallel between Haeckel and Darwin back then, that has been published in my book "Goethe, Darwin, Humblodt, Haeckel" (Berlin 1904) and ended with the words: "The admirers of the aged savant from Jena will always regard as one of the brightest and most glorious phenomena that the great struggle of Darwinism has produced in the 19th century, the deep concurrence of these two minds [Darwin and Haeckel] that were so fundamentally different in character." 

    Two years later, however, I had to refuse signing a petition for the foundation of a German union of monism. Such a foundation goes against my convictions as I see the danger of dogmatization in every formal organization of a philosophy/ideology/ Weltanschauung. Kronenberg took the words right out of my mouth in his article in "Das Freie Wort" [periodical: "Das Freie Wort: Frankfurter Halbmonatsschrift für Fortschritt auf allen Gebieten des geistigen Lebens," Vol. 4, p. 785 (1905)]  about the dangers of the organization of monism that Haeckel strove for.

    "One cannot entirely fend off pessimistic forebodings on seeing an astute scholar and important researcher, again, give in to the deceptive illusion that has for centuries been the most dangerous threat to the liberal development of culture. Did history not yet teach us  well enough that Weltanschauungen [philosophies/ideoloiesd] have no socializing power and the less so the maturer, more comprehensive, differentiated and thoroughly educated they are? The socializing power of a Weltanschauung is so weak that, in the best case, some community-building results from it only after it has been rendered sapless and feeble, torpid in dogmata. And even then the damage is a double one: for the philosophy that had to increasingly degenerate inwardly, for the practical social life that increasingly stagnated and got impoverished. It cannot

---[p. 284]---

well be different. Because the Weltanschauung is necessarily the blossom of the personality. Even if it rests on a maximally broad scientific base, its actual existence, its essential core can only be determined individually. Hence it runs contrary to the most important element of community-building."

    From this point of view, I would have refused to join the Deutsche Monistenbund even if I had still been standing on the ground of Haeckel's monism. The further development of the Monistenbund, which I observed closely, did not manage to change my mind on this point. Meanwhile, Haeckel did not get out of my mind. I tried to appreciate him historically as far as this is at all possible with the lack of temporal distance, and I made him the subject of my lectures at the Technische Hochschule zu Karlsruhe in several subsequent summer terms. From these lectures issued my work "Ernst Haeckel. Attempt at a chronicle of his life and work/effect" (Leipzig 1909). It puts the main emphasis on the objective description of the content of Haeckel's works and the movements effected by them, but it abstains from detailing the character of Haeckel's personality. I tried to give a balanced account of the pro and contra and, in particular, to represent all opinions concerning the fight over the Welträtsel. I deliberately abstained from a final judgement of Haeckel's significance, indicated the line, however, on which a future historian of science will move according to my opinion. Haeckel received the book approvingly, despite the fact that it gave consideration to his fiercest critics. "I cordially thank you," he wrote to me, "for the kind consignment of your chronicle of my laborious life and especially for the trouble you took to the tedious study of my works and the objective representation of their controversial reception. I hope that your book will complement the biographies of Bölsche and Breitenbach, Keller and Lang in a fortunate manner and remove many misapprehensions. Anyway, it will contribute to spread the basic idea of development/evolution [Entwicklung] to wider circles. I have dedicated my life to the extension of this idea."

---[p. 285]---

There was now still left for me to draw the conclusion of my Haeckel studies and to sketch an overall picture of Haeckel's personality with all its strengths and weaknesses. I tried to do this on the occasion of his 77th birthday in an essay in "Westermanns Monatshefte" [a periodical].
    "If I was asked what the soul of his life's work was," I said there, "the power that created it and renders it effective, I would answer: the enthusiasm for truth and beauty. His imposing lifework would be unthinkable without this breath of enthusiasm that pervades his personality and his works, and his far reaching impact would be incomprehensible. Only a researcher that was inwardly burning with this fire of enthusiasm for the grand idea could create a work like the General Morphology in such a short time. We stand in awe till this very day before this giant achievement of a man driven by spirit, who assigned himself no smaller task than to organize a whole science anew. Without the fire of enthusiasm with which Haeckel defended his views, the basically cold and mechanistic world view of the "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte" would not have had its effect. Only through Haeckel's enthuisasm this most sober of all views of nature receives its poetic breeze, a religious character. This is the only way to understand the enormous impact of the Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte on wide circles of the educated and especially on the excitable youth."
    While I tried to explain the successes of Haeckel in this way through the character of his personality, I also conceded many main points to the critics of the "Welträtsel." But then I wrote:
    "Did all these critics spell the death sentence over Haeckel? Not at all! Haeckel acted as a powerful stimulating force in our time, he jolted the spirits into motion, he served as a role model by virtue of his idealism and his undaunted enthusiasm for a great idea. Nobody who read in his youth with a hot forehead and a glowing heart Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte;" nobody who, through the combative writings of this man

---[p. 285]---

got elated for the freedom of research; nobody who found purest pleasure for the beauty-thirsty eye in Haeckels "Kunstformen der Natur" and his colorful "Wanderbilder;" nobody, eventually, who could ever get into personal contact with Haeckel even once, will dare to pick up a stone against noble-human."   
    That was my last word on Haeckel. Today, three years later, I have nothing to add. Haeckel, again, received in the kindest way this word, which left nothing to be desired in respect of sincerety concerning the "Welträtsel." Trhee weeks later I had the pleasure to congratulate him personally in Jena, on the occasion of his 77th birthday. May these lines convince him at the conclusion of his 80th year of life that I will always remain aware of the influence that he had on my intellectual life and that I look up with gratitude and awe to the man, who offered his saving hand to me, when I was doomed.   

———

"Darwin in the Mirror of my Life." (Walther May 1903-04)

Walther May (1868-1926) was an assistant professor (no tenure) for forest zoology in Karlsruhe, Germany, who also wrote historical publications concerning the science of Goethe, Humboldt, Darwin, Haeckel and others. Given the recent revival of interest in Humboldt and the question what Darwin owed to the romantics, May's publications may merit a look. (I don't know them yet. Judging from the article translated below, they May be a bit pathetic.)

As I am generally more interested in what happened at the fringes rather than in the mainstream of science, my interest in May arose from his publication dealing with Patrick Matthew (1790-1874), the guy who published an apt formulation of the principle of natural selection in an appendix to a book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture in 1831. The article by May (1911. Darwin und Patrick Matthew. Zoologische Annalen 4: 280-295) was the first to give any biographical information about Matthew.

As it happened, Walther May's life also skated along the fringes of a German mainstream, and it was quite interesting and a little bit tragic. Alas, the only literature that can tell us anything about it are his own accounts and an article by Gaston Mayer (1913-2008):

May, Walther (1903-04). Darwin im Spiegel meines Lebens. Verhandlungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins in Karlsruhe 17: 3-32.

May, Walther (1914). Was Ernst Haeckel in meinem Leben bedeutet. In H. Schmidt (Hrsg. im Auftrag des deutschen Monistenbundes), Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken. Ein Buch der Verehrung und Dankbarkeit (pp. 273-286). Leipzig: Unesma GmbH.

Mayer, Gaston (1987). Walther May (1868-1926), Freidenker, Sozialist, Zoologe und Historiker des Darwinismus. Mitteilungen des Badischen Landesverbands für Naturkunde und Naturschutz, N.S. 14(2): 483-495.

[For translations of the second and third article click on "Walther May" in the menu of lables shown above the posts of this blog.]

Mayer is dead and so are the witnesses that he could still ask. For a start, I will translate the above articles into English. Those will be very long posts. Therefore, an abstract first:

May's Life Abridged

May's youth was guided by radical and romantic views, first Haeckel's and monism rather than Darwin's and naturalism, then Engles's and socialism rather than Marx's original writings. As a student, he was an active member of the free-thinker union, called Humboldt, in Leipzig. His talks during associations about monism, socialism and all that earned him an incarceration for four days by the University of Leipzig and a ban to talk at such meetings ever again. He did not care and was consequently sacked by the university and relegated forever from any German university.

    As a free man, he traveled Saxony from town to town and gave talks. Eventually, he became an editor for the journal Die Presse in Chemnitz in November 1891. A Christmas article for that journal, in December 1891, got him into conflict with the draconian Prussian press law. The harmless article merely justified the stealing out of poverty and need during the Christmas festivities. By 4th of March 1892, however, he got imprisoned for 1 year and 10 months in Zwickau for the 'crimes' of profanity, blasphemy, and calling for civil disobedience.

   Almost two years in prison for writing an article that sounds as if it would fit to the spirit of a Charles Dickens novel! He read Goethe during his time in jail and, for some odd reason, the scientific publications of the great romantic steered May away from his social romanticism. He wanted to become as 'objective' as Goethe. He also wrote a letter to the socialist party, while in prison, cancelling his membership.    After his release in January 1894 he began working as a corrector in the printing business of his uncle in Berlin. This was not a happy time, the only relief being his traveling to Tegel in the North of Berlin in order to visit the haunts of Alexander Humboldt. Finally, when he already showed first symptoms of lead poisoning, a private talk given before the family of his uncle moved the latter to write to Ernst Haeckel and beg him to help. And Haeckel helped! He visited the family in September 1894, listened to the young man, found his crimes most trifling, saw that the relegation of Leipzig university could not bind the one of Jena legally, and he helped May to get a stipend.
    Thus, in October 1895, began the happiest time in Walther May's life. Jena became his Shangri-La. He followed the traces that Goethe, Schiller, Humboldt, Döbereiner (chemist) and others had left in Jena and studied under Stahl, Kükenthal, Verworn, Johannes Walther and, foremost, the old but still active dean Haeckel. Paradoxically, again, the lectures of the great monist moved May away from radical monism and closer towards scientific research, but that was not due to an alienation between May and Haeckel.

If you got the impression of a hopelessly romantic young man, who did not study the originals in his youth and instead got indoctrinated by secondary ideologues, that was my impression too. However, beginning with his studies of Goethe during his prison sentence, he did study the originals, listen to the originals, and also started to read Darwin's original publications. And that, in his own words, turned him from a ideological fighter into a skeptical researcher. I will leave the abridgement at this happy point in May's life and leave the tragic sequel to the translation of Gaston Mayer's article in a later post. 

Translation of Walther May (1903-04):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Verhandlungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins in Karlsruhe    [vol. 17, p. 3]

Darwin im Spiegel meines Lebens.
By Dr. Walther May. [1868-1926]

When I leaf through the book of my life, I feel the Darwinian spirit whiff through it from early on. As a five year old boy [1873], with a silver Groschen in my pocket, I walked to the fair [market] in order to buy a toy, for the first time in my life at my own choice. I can still see myself standing in front of the colorful things of the ten-penny-booth [10 penny = 1 Groschen] on the Casseler Meßplatz yearning for a small wooden monkey with a red Röckchen [in old German literature, the word Rock does not necessarily mean a skirt for females but can also stand for uniforms or smart dress. The diminution Röckchen, here, did probably not mean a tutu but only that the monkey was small and hence its Rock was so too] on a yellow pole, not daring to ask for it. Finally, I overcome my inborn shyness, purchase the monkey and bring it home beaming with joy.

Mike Sutton is a malicious Fraud

Misrepresentation as a type of research misconduct

Nylenna et al. (1999) reviewed rules on research misconduct listing the following Danish definition:

Intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist. (Nylenna 1999, 58)

The University of Leicester lists types of research misconduct including:

Misrepresentation of data, such as by suppression of relevant findings, or knowingly, recklessly or by gross negligence presenting a flawed data interpretation (Types of misconduct in research 2020, item 5.i)

Nottingham Trent University, the former employer of Mike Sutton, also lists misrepresentation as a type of research misconduct in both its Code of Practice for Research and its Procedure for Investigating Alleged Research Misconduct.

Misrepresentation of data and/or interests and/or involvement (Code of Practice for Research 2019, p. 11, item 9.2.3)

Misrepresentation, defined as a deliberate attempt to misrepresent falsely or unfairly the ideas or work of others, whether or not for personal gain or enhancement. (Procedure for Investigating Alleged Research Misconduct 2015-16, p. 4, item xvi)

That is, if someone deliberately biases the interpretation of data in such a way as to deceive the readers, it will be a case of research misconduct.

Sutton’s misrepresentation of Selby (1842)

Mike Sutton's treatment of evidence from Prideaux John Selby (1842) concerning the evolutionary ideas of Patrick Matthew (1831) fulfills this definition, because he negligently proceeds from a historical source (Selby 1842) to an interpretation that perverts the historical message of that source into its opposite. Sutton writes:

In his own book on British forest trees, several times Selby adapted Matthew’s apparently unique phrase "greater power of occupancy" to "great power of occupancy" and was apparently first to be second once with Matthew's full original version (Selby 1842, p. 391), where he cited Matthew (1831) and revealed his apparent lack of understanding of one of Matthew's key concept of natural selection. (Sutton 2017, p. 43; see also Sutton 2014, p. 114f)

Selby did not understand Matthew’s power of occupancy as a concept of the comparative competitive advantages with respect to different conditions, so that a species could have the largest stamina under conditions that were not optimal for its growth but still worse for the growth of competitors.

The soil upon which most of the Abietinae prevail, is usually of a dry and cool quality; thus, the débris of granitic and other primitive rocks, and barren sandy districts, are very commonly occupied by Pine and fir forests, sometimes of enormous extent; the thick and close manner in which they grow, and the dense shade they produce, effectually preventing the vegetation of other species. Matthew, however, in his able treatise on naval timber seems to think that its indigenous location in such districts arises not so much from preference of soils of the nature above-mentioned, as from its having more power of occupancy in such soils than any other plant of the country; and this opinion he endeavours to support by stating that the Pinus sylvestris, planted in a good or rich soil, attains larger dimensions and its best timber properties, and that it is only driven from this superior soil by the greater power of occupancy possessed by the oak and other deciduous trees, an opinion in which we cannot altogether acquiesce, as we see no reason why the fir, if it grows with such additional vigour in a richer soil, as Mr. Matthew asserts, should, at the same time, be unable to maintain a contest with the oak or other trees. (Selby 1842, 391)

Where Matthew (1831) understood that pines could grow much better on rich soils in warmer climate, if competitors were kept at bay, Selby (1842) believed that pines do prefer poor soils and cooler climate. He, therefore, lacked the prerequisite for understanding Matthew’s idea that, after a catastrophe, remnant species would readily spread into free niches that had been cleared of competitors. He thus could not understand how natural selection could have transformed species, after catastrophes, even if Matthew had made the connection clear in his appendix. Despite Sutton's insistence to the contrary, the main text of Matthew (1831) says nothing about species transmutation. The appendix is the only place where he juxtaposed the ideas of natural selection and species transformation, but the relation of the two remained under-determined (Dagg 2018).

     In fact, Selby simply assumed that a species forming extensive tracts, occurring in masses, or forming natural forests had not only the greatest power of occupancy, there, but also optimal conditions and, vice verse, species that did not form the main tree species did also prefer other conditions of soil, climate etc. (see Selby 1842, 55, 101, 120, 299, 308f, 349, 364). For example, the oak did not exclude the pine from rich soils, but the pine preferred poor soils.

     This evidence suggests that Selby could not put the fragments of Matthew’s evolutionary aphorisms together, which were sprinkled over a text dealing mainly with practical matters of tree cultivation. Nevertheless, Sutton proceeds step by step to pervert his interpretation of this evidence into the opposite. He first turns Selby’s incomprehension of the prerequisite to understand Matthew’s idea of how catastrophes lead to species transformation into an “obvious enthusiasm” for the idea of natural selection:

Given Selby’s obvious enthusiasm for NTA [short for Matthew’s book: On Naval Timber and Arboriculture], repeatedly evidenced in his citations of Matthew’s natural selection concept of "greater power of occupancy" and his obvious respect for its author’s knowledge of arboriculture, it seems highly unlikely that he would not have discussed NTA, at the very least with other connected gentlemen of science. (Sutton 2017, p. 50; see also Sutton 2014, p. 122)

He then spin-doctors Selby’s rejection of Matthew's concept of competition into a purposeful but dishonest pose on Selby's part: 

Here then we see an example of exactly what Secord (2000) is talking about in terms of a gentleman scientist of the 1840s keeping himself on safe ground by politely critizising Matthew on a point of botanical and arboricultural expertise. By so doing, Selby has managed to critizise one important element of Matthew's natural process of selection without mentioning it outside of the practical issue of Selby’s apparent failure to understand why there might be a multi-factored natural process of selection in nature. (Sutton 2017, 59; see also 2014, 140)

The evidence suggests nothing of the kind. Instead, this evidence tells us that Selby did simply not understand those statements, scattered throughout the text and in the appendix, that were alien to the practical issues of arboriculture and could only be comprehended with a theory of evolution through natural selection already in mind (Dagg 2018). That is, Selby was not equipped to comprehend Matthew's evolutionary aphorisms, but Sutton claims the opposite.

Misrepresenting Selby’s role in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History

Alas, this is not the only misrepresentation by Sutton concerning Selby. For example, he puts Selby with other peripheral persons into “the epicentre of Darwin’s and Wallace’s” personal network, when that was clearly occupied by Joseph Dalton Hooker, Charles Lyell and others.

In this book I prove that other naturalists did read NTA, and this new knowledge is 100 percent veracious because those naturalists actually cited Matthew's book in the published literature. That three naturalists who cited NTA pre-1858—Loudon (1832), Chambers (1844) and Selby (1842)—were right at the epicenter of influence and facilitation of Darwin's and Wallace's published, so-called independent, discoveries of natural selection is a unique and new discovery about the greatest scientific discovery ever made. (Sutton 2014, p. 14)

For the record, Sutton has also dishonestly misrepresented the mentions of Matthew’s book by the others as well as the roles of the persons mentioning it, John Claudius Loudon and Robert Chambers in the above quote.

     Sutton also wrongly portrays John Selby and William Jardine as the chief editors of the journal in which the so-called Sarawak-law paper by Wallace (1855) occurred.

We can be absolutely 100 percent certain of the fact that Wallace and Darwin were indirectly influenced by Matthew via Loudon, who edited and published Blyth's 1835 and 1836 papers on evolution; the naturalist and editor, Robert Chambers, who famously published on the same subject in many editions of his influential and bestselling Vestiges of Creation; and Selby, who edited and published Wallace's 1855 Sarawak paper on natural selection. (Sutton 2014, p. 14-15)

Wallace's (1855) Sarawak paper’s editor and publisher, Prideaux John Selby (1842), read and cited NTA thirteen years earlier. Moreover, the naturalist William Jardine, co-editor of Wallace’s Sarawak paper, had the book in his possession for some time because he purchased Selby's copy (see Jackson 1992). (Sutton 2014, p. 72)

For a start, the fact that William Jardine purchased for Selby a copy of NTA (Jackson 1992), that Selby then cited it and that the two of them later jointly published Wallace's 1855 Sarawak paper, which is his first paper on evolution, creates massive doubt that Wallace arrived at his ideas independently, because this newly discovered fact brings Wallace, most incriminatingly, right into the center of Matthew's orbit, albeit via Wallace's immediate scientific associates who so greatly facilitated his career as an evolutionist. (Sutton 2014, 78-79; see also Sutton 2014, 185-187)

When Wallace (1855) published his Sarawak paper in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, the roles of Jardine and Selby in that journal were rather limited. It is true that William Jardine had founded a journal called Magazine of Zoology and Botany in 1836 and jointly conducted it with Prideaux John Selby and George Johnston (see Brock and Meadows 2003, 123ff). The journal was a financial failure, however, and Jardine had to subsidise it heavily. By 1837, they decided to sell their journal to Richard Taylor, and so did William J. Hooker (father of Joseph D. Hooker) for his failing Companion to the Botanical Magazine. Taylor fused the two journals into one, which first appeared in March 1838 as: “Annals of Natural History; or, Magazine of Zoology, Botany, and Geology. (Being a continuation of the ‘Magazine of Zoology and Botany,’ and Sir W. J. Hooker’s ‘Botanical Companion.’)” Taylor also gave the names of the former editors of the failed journals as conductors together with his. Taylor also bought the Magazine of Natural History from Edward Charlesworth, in 1840, who had bought it from its founder John Claudius Loudon two years previously. Taylor’s journal thus became: “The Annals and Magazine of Natural history, including Zoology, Botany, and Geology.” Keeping the former editors of the failed journals as co-conductors on the title page had two advantages. They contributed material to its contents and probably kept some subscribers to the failed journals as subscribers to the successor journal.

     As Taylor financed this journal, however, he conducted it on his own authority and availed himself of the help of his illegitimate son William Francis. [Together they were the founders of Taylor & Francis (Sheets-Pyenson 1981; Brock & Meadows 1998).] Jardine, Johnston and Selby even lamented about their waning influence on the journal’s contents in their private correspondence (Sheets-Pyenson 1981a, 240). On 6 June 1837, Taylor made his editorial politics clear to Jardine:

With regard to the conduct [...], it did not strike me that any difficulty would arise in adjusting our shares of responsibility [...] Whatever might be sent by yourself & your co-operators (who I am glad to learn are disposed to assist), or by Sir W. Hooker [J. D. Hooker’s father, former editor of another journal fused in Taylor’s] in his department, would be inserted, of course, in such quantities as our space in each number wd admit; but though I should in all doubtful cases be glad to avail myself of the opinion of such able advisers, yet I am likely also to receive contributions from friends here of such undoubted eminence, that you wd not think it necessary that I should forward them to you. (Taylor to Jardine, 6 June 1839, quoted in Brock and Meadows 1998, 124)

That is, articles sent directly to Taylor and Francis in London were unlikely to get into the hands of Jardine or Selby, who were free to contribute their own articles or those of friends they deemed worthy, but they were not generally involved in the daily editorial chores at Taylor’s publishing house in London. [Of the three former editors of the Magazine of Zoology and Botany, William Jardine, John Selby, and George Johnston, the latter was diligent in contributing articles.]

     Despite the move to London, the absorption of competing journals and continuity with them, the Annals and Magazine of Natural History was not an immediate economic success (Sheets-Pyenson 1981; Brock and Meadows 1998). Taylor strove to save costs wherever possible. He even wanted to save the postage for sending proofs of the contributions by his sub-editors back north and do the proof-reading in-house (Sheets-Pyenson 1981a, 236; 1981b, 25). While Jardine could keep Taylor from this by suggesting a scheme to sent the proofs at a cheaper postage (Sheets-Pyenson 1981a, 236), Taylor would not have forwarded direct submissions to his London office northward, apart from exceptional cases that he, Francis, or his London staff could not handle themselves.

     Wallace’s mediator in London, Samuel Stevens, probably sent Wallace’s Sarawak paper directly to Taylor and Francis in London, and they probably edited and published it there without sequestering opinions from their Northern consultant naturalists. Jardine had retired by 1850, anyway, whereas Selby lingered on, on the title page of the journal, until 1860 (Brock and Meadows 1998,appendix 5). However, Selby loathed the chores of reviewing and proof-reading, even when he still was one of three chief-editors before Jardine sold their journal to Taylor (Sheets-Pyenson 1981a, 231). His contribution to Taylor’s successor journal remained below what was expected of him from its very beginning in 1838 (Sheets-Pyenson 1981a, 238; Jackson 1992, 10).

Conclusion

Sutton (2014; 2017) clearly stated that Selby (1842) did not comprehend Matthew’s conception of competition. Hence Sutton’s spin doctoring this into an allegedly deliberate move by Selby is a deliberate move by Sutton in turn. He dishonestly misrepresents Selby (1842) in order to mislead his readers. Again, Sutton (2014; 2017) cited Brock and Meadows (1998) as well as Jackson (1992). Hence, he was fully aware of the limited roles that Selby and Jardine played in Taylor’s Annals and Magazine of Natural History.

     He deliberately misleads his readers to regard them as connoisseurs of Matthew’s evolutionary ideas, as central figures in the publication of Darwin’s and Wallace’s works, and to assume a publishing process similar to today’s peer review with reviews, corrections and proofs being sent back and fro around the world with an inevitable correspondence between author (Wallace) and editor (allegedly Selby). Taken together, this is a clear case of research misconduct.

References

• Brock, W.H. and Meadows, A.J. 1998. The Lamp of of Learning. Two Centuries of Publishing by Taylor & Francis. Taylor & Francis.

• Code of Practice for Research. 2019. Nottingham Trent University. Accessed 01.02.2020: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0031/796900/Code-of-Practice-for-Research-201819.pdf.

• Dagg, J.L. 2018. Comparing the respective transmutation mechanisms of Patrick Matthew, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 123(4), 864-878.

• Darwin, C. 1858. I. Extract from an unpublished work on Species, by C. Darwin Esq., consisting of a portion of a Chapter entitled 'On the variation of Organic Beings in a state of Nature; on the Natural Means of Selection; on the Comparison of Domestic Races and true Species.' II. Abstract of a Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray, Boston, U.S., dated Down, September 5th, 1857. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3(20 Aug): 46-53. [darwin-online.org.uk]

• Darwin, C. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray.

• Jackson, C.E. 1992. Prideaux John Selby: A Gentleman Naturalist. The Spredden Press.

• Matthew, P. 1831. On Naval Timber and Arboriculture. Adam Black, Edinburgh; Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, London. [Hathi Trust: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044102888526&view=1up&seq=9]

• Nylenna, M., Andersen, D., Dahlquist, G., Sarvas, M. & Aakvaag, A. 1999. Handling scientific dishonesty in the Nordic countries. The Lancet 354: 57-61.

• Procedure for investigating alleged research misconduct. 2015-16. Nottingham Trent University. Accessed 01.02.2020: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/204300/procedure-for-investigating-alleged-research-misconduct.pdf.

• Selby, P.J. 1842. A history of British Forest-trees, indigenous and introduced. John van Voorst. [Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/historyofbritish00selb/page/n10]

• Sheets-Pyenson, S. 1981a. From the north to the Red Lion Court: the creation and early years of the Annals of Natural History. Archives of Natural History 10(2): 221-249.

• Sheets-Pyenson, S. 1981b. A measure of success: The publication of Natural History journals in early Victorian Britain. Publishing History 9: 21-36.

• Sutton, M. 2014. Nullius in Verba: Darwin's Greatest Secret. Thinker Media, Inc.

• Sutton, M. 2017. Nullius in Verba: Darwin's Greatest Secret. CreateSpace, Independent Publishing Platform.

• Types of misconduct in research. 2020. University of Leicester. Accessed 29.01.2020: www2.le.ac.uk/offices/researchsupport/integrity/code-of-conduct/6-research-misconduct/6-2-types-of-misconduct-in-research.

• Wallace, A.R. 1858. On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3(20 Aug): 53-62. [http://darwin-online.org.uk]

Darwin's correspondence concerning Hooker's address to the British Association for the Aadvancement of Science (1881)

The correspondence between Darwin and Hooker, which concerns the latter's address for the 51st meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), delivered at York on 1 September 1881, has never been published as an ongoing discourse. However, the context usually turns out to be important in historical issues. Stitching together isolated quotes from decades apart and from various sources can easily lead to a patchwork of facts that biases their interpretation.

Therefore, this post is a transcription of the whole Hooker-Darwin correspondence on Hooker's BAAS-address. Both hands are very difficult to read and I had some help by Roland Jackson (@RolandJackson, author of The Ascent of John Tyndall) with some of Hooker's letters. When transcriptions already existed in the form of published collections of either Darwin's or Hooker's letters, I used them. As mentioned above, however, none of the available publications give this BAAS-1881 related correspondence between Darwin and Hooker in full. That is, available transcriptions lack a lot of context. The following transcriptions remain a cloze in places. However, the links to scans of the originals at Cambridge University are given before each transcript, so that readers can confer to them. Suggestions for missing words are welcome.

P.S.: On 20 August 1881, Hooker asked Darwin about a publication of Karl Ernst von Baer (1859. Ueber Papuas und Alfuren). Translations of the relevant passages of Baer's essay can be found in the previous post. Darwin's reply, on 21 August 1881, also refers to Leopold von Buch (1825. Physicalische Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln; 1836 in French). Translations of the relevant passages of Buch can be found in an earlier post.

Darwin–Hooker Correspondence: Feb.–Sept. 1881

Uncertain words in square brackets: []. Illegible words indicated by 6 spaces: _____. [My own comments are in square brackets and in green.]

Darwin to Hooker, 26 Feb. 1881

Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00509

Part transcript: More Letters of Darwin.

“My dear Hooker

It was a real pleasure to me to see your hand-writing again, for it is a long time since I have heard of you. What a bore about the [mumps]; but I am very glad that you will soon have complete rest & change, in which [latter] I have [unbounded] faith. I suppose that Lady Hooker goes with you & I hope she may enjoy herself. Pray give her my kindest [simpathy]. I had vaguely thought whether I would pay you a call at Kew, but thought that you would [firstly] be too busy, & it seems that you will be on the road before I could come.

I sh^d think that you might make a very interesting address on geograph. Distrib. [Could] you give a little history of the subject. I, for one, sh^d like to read such history in petto; but I can see one very great difficulty, that you yourself ought to figure most prominently in it; & this you would not do, for you are just the man to treat yourself in a dishonourable manner! I shd very much like to see you discuss some of Wallace’s views, especially his ignoring the all powerful effects of the Glacial period with respect to alpine plants. I do not know what you think, but it appears to me that he exaggerates enormously the influence of debacles or [slips] & new surface of soil being exposed for the reception of wind-blown seeds. What kinds of seeds have the plants which are common to the distant mountain-summits in Africa? Wallace lately wrote to me about the mountain-plants of Madagascar being the same with those on mountains in Africa, & seemed to think it proved dispersal by the wind, without apparently having inquired what sort of seeds the plants bore. I suppose it w^d be travelling too far (though for geographical section the discussion ought to be far reaching) but I shd like to see the European or Northern element in the C. of Good Hope flora discussed. I cannot swallow Wallace’s view that European plants travelled down the Andes, tenated the hypothetical Antarctic continent (in which I quite believe), & thence spread to S. Australia & the Cape of G. Hope.

Mosley told me not long ago that he proposed to search at Kerguelen Land the coal beds most carefully, and was absolutely forbidden to do so by Sir W. Thomson, who said that he would undertake the work, and he never one visited them. This put me in a passion. I hope that you will keep your intention and make an address on distribution. Though I differ so much from Wallace, his “Island Life” seems to me a wonderful book.

Farewell. I do hope that you may have a most prosperous journey. Give my kindest remembrances to Asa Gray”

Hooker to Darwin, 12 June 1881

Hooker (20 Aug 1881) asks Darwin about von Baer, Darwin (21 Aug 1881) replies about von Buch

The inquiry below was prompted by the following twitter-exchange:

All that matters is that Darwin knew about von Buch in 1837, and denied it in 1881.

— Hugh Dower (@HughDower) 15. Januar 2019

---------
As shown in the previous post, Karl Ernst von Baer had, independently of Charles Darwin, taken patterns of the geographic distribution of organisms to indicate the mutability and common descent of species and varieties (Baer 1859, 74ff). Charles Darwin learned about this case from a publication of Rudoph Wagner (1861. Zoologisch-antropologische Unetrsuchungen) that gave excerpts of Baer's essay on the pages 50-52. He, therefore, added Baer to the Historical Sketch of the 4th edition of his Origin of Species (1866, p. xxi).

Joseph Dalton Hooker, in turn, asked Charles Darwin about Baer, on the occasion of preparing an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) about research on the geographical distribution of organisms to be delivered on 1 September 1881 in York. Hooker wanted to know whether anybody had used the idea of species mutability to explain the existence of representative species in very distant locations. In particular, he asked:

"Of all the followers of Latreille [he probably meant Lamarck], in the mutability of species any one of them use this in explanation of (see end) representative species in very distant locations? Von Baer, as you point out, was convinced by the facts of geog. distribution that all species were descended from one parent form, and I suppose must have been led to this by the phenomena of representation. Can you tell me if this was so? I d have no time to consult the Zoog. & Anthrop. Untersuch. [He meant the essay of Rudoph Wagner with the excerpts of Baer (1859) that Darwin (1866) had given as a source in his Historical Sketch.]

[Some parts omitted; "see end" above referred to the postscript below.]

P.S. What I want to know if any one ever suggested that the representative for an instance of an Azorean plant by a Canarian was due to their having in common parents the offspring of which diverged samely from the parent type but converged in those localities, either through both varying in the same direction or by one varying in the direction of the other." (Hooker to Darwin, 20 August 1881, my transcription with some help of Roland Jackson, author of The Ascent of John Tyndall)

That is, Hooker inquired about von Baer and about a peculiar situation where two species on two distant islands diverge from a parental form on the mainland, but in convergent directions. This combination of the name von Baer and mentioning of the Canaries must have evoked a memory of Leopold von Buch's Physical Description of the Canary Islands in Darwin, for he replied about von Buch rather than von Baer.

"My dear Hooker

I cannot aid you much or at all. I sh^d think that no one could have thought on the modification of species, without thinking of representative species.— But I feel sure that no discussion of any importance had been published on this subject before the Origin; for if I had known of it, I sh^d assuredly have alluded to it in the Origin, as I wished to gain support from all quarters. I did not then know of Von Buch’s view (alluded to in my Historical Introduction in all the later editions). Von Buch published his “Isles Canaries” in 1836 and he here briefly argues that plants spread over a continent & vary, & the varieties in time come to be species. He also argues that closely allied species have been thus formed in the separate valleys of the Canary Islands, but not on the upper and open parts. [Marginalia written vertically at the left edge:] I could lend you Von Buch’s Book if you like: I have just consulted the passage. [End of marginalia] I have not Baers papers, but as far as I remember the subject is not fully discussed by him." (Darwin to Hooker, 21 August 1881, emphases added)

While Darwin could not have known Baer's essay of 1859, when he was writing his Origin of Species in 1858/9, he did take notes on the French translation of Buch's Descriptio Physique des Iles Canaries in his Notebook B (1837/8, p. 156 + 158, see here).

This raises the question why Darwin said that he did not know Buch's views in 1859?
1. Malcolm J. Kottler (1978. Annals of Science 35: 275-297, footnote 25) thought that Darwin had completely forgotten his reading and abstracting of the relevant passages of Buch's book.
2. Hugh Dower (2009. Darwin's Guilty Secret) believed that Darwin's statement was a conscious lie with the purpose to emphasize his originality to Hooker: "Darwin even told an unequivocal lie, in a letter to Hooker, about his not having known about Leopold von Buch's contribution to evolution theory, while the notebooks show that he did." (see also Dower's Appendix, here)
3. Neither Kottler nor Dower considered the context, in which Hooker had asked Darwin about von Baer + the Canaries. This offers the third possibility that Darwin confused the names of von Baer and von Buch in his reply. This would imply an intended sequence of mentioning Buch-Baer-Buch-Baer, however, rather than Buch-Buch-Buch-Baer (see bold font in above transcript).

Given that Hooker did not ask about von Buch in the first place and did not inquire into a priority issue in the second, it seems unlikely that Darwin was lying to Hooker on purpose, in order to diminish the importance of von Buch. In that case, he could simply have remained silent rather than dropping Buch's name in the first and then having to lie to his friend in the second. On the contrary, Darwin even offered Hooker to lend him his exemplar of Buch's book, which could have lead Hooker to include Buch into his BAAS address. In my opinion, Darwin's reply shows a considerable degree of confusion and/or senescence (he died in April 1882), but not necessarily dishonesty.

Anyway, the recorded Darwin-Hooker correspondence that relates to Hooker's BAAS address is completely void of any mention of von Buch except for the one by Darwin on 21 August 1881. Hooker's BAAS address, delivered on 1 September 1881 in York, does not mention Buch either, although a comprehensive review should have done so. Darwin's brother, Erasmus Alvey, died on 26 August 1881. Therefore, it seems likely that the time was too short and life too chaotic for the borrowing of the book and proper inclusion of Leopold von Buch in Hooker's BAAS address to come to pass. The next recorded letter in the Darwin-Hooker correspondence is a condolence (Hooker to Darwin 29 August 1881) and three days later Hooker already delivered his BAAS address in York.

Karl Ernst von Baer (1859) independently arrived at species modification and common descent

The very year that Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, Karl Ernst von Baer published an essay that is remarkable in that it he also arrived at the conclusion that species can transform (though not in a teleological/Lamarckian way) and that common descent explains the patterns of geographic distribution of organisms (Baer 1859. Über Papuas und Alfuren. Ein Commentar zu den beiden ersten Abschnitten der Abhandlung Crania Selecta ex Thesauris Anthropologicis Academiae Imperialis Petropolitanae. Aus den Memoires de l'Académie Impériale des sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, Sixieme série, Sciences naturelles, Tome VIII, besonders abgedruckt).

Rudolph Wagner had quoted excerpts of Baer's essay in one of his own essays in 1861 (Zoologisch-anthroplgische Untersuchunge. Die Forschung über Hirn- und Schädelbildung des Menschen in ihrer Anwendung auf einige Proleme der allgemeinen Natur- und Geschichtswissnschaft. Göttingen: Verlag der Dietrichschen Buchhandlung. (Besonders abgedruckt aus dem neunten Bande der Abhandlungen der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen) and concluded:

"Man sieht, wie hier zwei verschiedene Naturforscher, Darwin und Baer, ohne von einander zu wissen, auf ähnliche Ideen kommen, nur dass dabei dieser [Baer] besonnener, limitierter zu Werke geht." (Wagner 1861, p. 52)

One sees, here, how two different naturalists, Darwin and Baer, arrive at similar ideas without knowing of each other, only that this one [Baer] goes about it more level-headed and restricted. (My translation)

Therefore, Charles Darwin (1866. ) added Baer to the Historical Sketch of the 4th edition of his Origin of Species saying:

"Von Baer, towards whom all zoologists feel so profound a respect, expressed about the year 1859 (see Prof. Rudolph Wagner, 'Zoologisch-Anthropologische Untersuchungen,' 1861, s. 51) his conviction, chiefly grounded on the laws of geographical distribution, that forms now perfectly distinct have descended from a single parent-form." (Darwin 1866, p. xxi)

By the way, this Rudolph Wagner was not Moritz Wagner with whom Darwin had a spat about Leopold von Buch. Moritz Wagner, ironically, embraced Buch just like Darwin had done many years before him (see previous post), but tried to champion Buch's as the better theory. In particular, Moritz Wagner insisted on the need of geographic isolation/ separation as a prerequisite to speciation. This later disagreement seems to go back to Darwin's principle of divergence, which allowed Darwin to regard isolation not as a necessary prerequisite but a facilitating factor.
      In the following quote of Baer's (1859) original, the excerpts that Wagner (1861) gave are highlighted. The page numbers are in the 70s for the offprint (Sonderdruck) and in the 300s for the periodical (Memoires de l'Académie). My English translation follows below the German original.

Leopod von Buch's Description of the Canary Islands impressed the young Charles Darwin

Darwin's Notebook B (1837-38), on the transmutation of species, states:

"Von Buch. — Canary Islands, French Edit. Flora of Isl^ds very poor. (p. 145) 25 plants. St. Helena without ferns, analogous to nearest continent: poorness in exact proportion to distance (?) & similarity of type (?)" (Darwin 1837-38, p. 156)

"I can understand in one small island species would not be manufactured. but why they should be manu Does it not present analogy to what takes place from time? Von Buch distinctly states that permanent varieties become species p. 147, p. 150, not being crossed with others. — Compares it to languages. But how do plants cross? — — admirable discussion." (Darwin 1837-38, p. 158)

Leopold von Buch, Wikimedia commons, public domain

Leopold von Buch is undoubtedly a very important predecessor of Charles Darwin. It is, therefore, interesting to take a closer look at Buch's statements that influenced Darwin. Darwin's notes in his Notebook B (see quotes above) relate to Physicalische Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln (Leopold von Buch 1825, p. 130 and 133f), which Darwin read in its French translation by C. Boulanger, Description Physique des Iles Canaries (Léopold de Buch 1836, p. 144f + 147ff). As German is my mother-tongue, I will depart from the original German passages and translate them into English.

"Der bekannte französische Naturforscher Du Petit Thouars fand auf der Insel Tristan d'Acunha in 37°21' südlicher Breite, und deren Spitzen sich in die Wolken verlieren, von phänerogamen Pflanzen nicht mehr als 25 verschiedene Arten, von denen einige an das Cap, andere an das beinahe gleich weit entfernt gelegene Amerika erinnern, und in St. Helena steigt ihre Anzahl, nach Roxburgh's (sic) Catalog, ebenfalls auf nicht mehr als 36 Arten." (von Buch 1825, 130)

The famous French naturalist Du Petit Thouars discovered no more than 25 species of phanerogamous plants on the island Tristan d'Acunha in 37°21' southern latitude, whose peaks trail off into the clouds, some of them are redolent of the Cap and others of the almost equally distant America. And on St. Helena their number rises to no more than 36 species according to Roxburgh's catalogue. (My translation)

The next passage from Buch (1825, 133f or 1836, 147ff) seems odd in that Buch first describes a process of species transformation on continents and thereafter seems to describe the identical process in closer detail for islands, yet he separates the two descriptions by the sentence "Nicht so auf Inseln" (Not so on islands), as if he was about to propose a very different process for islands. The only difference, however, is that the varieties on continents need to depart from each other spatially to vast distances, whereas the same isolation is supposed to be possible on much smaller spatial scales on islands.

"Die Individuen der Gattungen auf Continenten breiten sich aus, entfernen sich weit, bilden durch Verschiedenheit der Standörter (sic), Nahrung und Boden Varietäten, welche, in ihrer Entfernung nie von anderen Varietäten gekreuzt und dadurch zum Haupttypus zurückgebracht, endlich constant und zur eigenen Art werden. Dann erreichen sie vielleicht auf anderen Wegen auf das Neue die ebenfalls veränderte vorige Varietät, beide nun als sehr verschieden und sich nicht wieder miteinander vermischende Arten. Nicht so auf Inseln. Gewöhnlich in enge Thäler oder in den Bezirk schmaler Zonen gebannt, können sich die Individuen erreichen und jede gesuchte Fixirung einer Varietät wieder zerstören. Es ist dies ungefähr so, wie Sonderbarkeiten oder Fehler der Sprache zuerst durch das Haupt einer Familie, dann durch Verbreitung dieser selbst, über einen ganzen District einheimisch werden. Ist dieser abgesondert und isolirt, und bringt nicht die stete Verbindung mit andern die Sprache auf ihre vorige Reinheit zurück, so wird aus dieser Abweichung ein Dialekt. Verbinden natürliche Hindernisse, Wälder, Verfassung, Regierung, die Bewohner des abweichenden Districts noch enger, und trennen sie sie noch schärfer von den Nachbarn, so fixirt sich der Dialekt, und es wird eine völlig verschiedene Sprache. —
     Deswegen eben, ist es so wichtig, den Standort genau anzugeben, und zu bezeichnen, an welchem die Pflanzen auf den Inseln sich finden. Er hat fast jederzeit etwas Eigenthümliches. Ist er durch natürliche Hindernisse, durch Bergreihen, welche mehr scheiden, als bedeutende Entfernungen über dem Meer, von andern Orten sehr getrennt, so kann man immer dort ganz neue, in anderen Theilen der Insel nicht vorkommende Pflanzenarten erwarten. Vielleicht hat ein glücklicher Zufall, durch eine besondere Verbindung von Umständen den Saamen über die Berge gebracht. Sich selbst an der abgeschlossenen Stelle überlassen, wird dann auch hier im Laufe der Zeiten die aus den neuen Bedingungen des Wachstums entstandene Varietät zur eigenen Art, welche sich immer mehr von ihrer ersten ursprünglichen Form entfernt, je länger sie ungestört in dieser eingeschlossenen Gegend erhalten wird." (von Buch 1825, p. 133)

On continents, the individuals of a genus spread, depart far from each other, develop through the differences in the location, nutrition and soil varieties which, in their distance, never cross with other varieties and thus never get drawn back to the main type, eventually get constant and become their own species. They may then reach on another route, again, the also altered previous variety, both now as very different species that do no longer mix with each other. Not so on islands. Usually banished in steep valleys or narrow zones, the individuals can reach each other and destroy each sought fixation of a variety. This is similar to the oddities or mistakes in language that are first propagated by the head of a family and then, spread with the family itself, become native to a whole district. If the latter is separated and isolated, and if the first contact with others does not bring the language back to its previous purity, then the deviation will become a dialect. If natural barriers, forests, constitution, government connect the inhabitants of the deviant district and separate them even sharper from the neighbors, then the dialect will get fixed and it will become a completely different language. —
     Therefore, it is important to indicate the location/site/habitat exactly and to specify on which ones the plants on the islands can be found. It [the location] almost always has something peculiar. If it is isolated from other locations by natural barriers, mountain ranges, which separate more than considerable distances over the sea, then one can expect to find new plant species that do not occur in other parts of the island. Maybe a lucky coincidence has brought the seeds over the mountain range by some special combination of conditions. Left to their own in the isolated location, the variety that develops because of the new conditions of growth will, in the course of time, become an own species which departs the farther from its first original form the longer it remains undisturbed in this isolated area. (My translation)

The next passage from Buch (1825, 134 or 1836, 149) is significant because it shows that

Did Darwin lie to Hooker in 1881?

[Update: See also the new publication at the Annals of Science.] 

This blog entry resulted from an e-mail discussion with Julian Derry (@JFDerry) on the occasion of Hugh Dower charging that Charles Darwin lied to his friend Joseph Hooker in a letter of 21 Aug. 1881 about his knowledge of Leopold von Buch's book on the Canary Islands. Darwin's letter to Hooker, 21 Aug. 1881, belongs to an ongoing correspondence between the two concerning an address that Hooker was to deliver at 1 Sept. 1881 during the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in York. For some odd reason, this BAAS related correspondence between Darwin and Hooker has never been published in full. However, the context usually turns out to be important in historical issues. Stitching together isolated quotes from decades apart and from various sources can easily lead to a patchwork of facts that biases their interpretation. Therefore, a previous post provided a transcription of the whole Hooker-Darwin correspondence that concerned Hooker's BAAS-address of 1881.

The charge
On 21 August 1881, eight months before his death, Charles Darwin wrote to Hooker:

"I did not then know of Von Buch's views (alluded to in my Historical Introduction in all the later editions)." (Darwin 1881, Aug 21. Letter to Hooker)

By "then" he meant the time when he was writing his book On the Origin of Species (1859). This statement of Darwin is false because Darwin's Notebook B (1837-38), on the transmutation of species, has the following entries:

"Von Buch. — Canary Islands, French Edit. Flora of Isl^ds very poor. (p. 145) 25 plants. St. Helena without ferns, analogous to nearest continent: poorness in exact proportion to distance (?) & similarity of type (?)" (Darwin 1837-38, p. 156)

"I can understand in one small island species would not be manufactured. but why they should be manu Does it not present analogy to what takes place from time? Von Buch distinctly states that permanent varieties become species p. 147, p. 150, not being crossed with others. — Compares it to languages. But how do plants cross? — — admirable discussion." (Darwin 1837-38, p. 158)

Hugh Dower has taken this as proof that Darwin purposely lied to Hooker, in 1881, in order to deceive his friend about the originality of his book On the Origin of Species (see Dower's Appendix at patrickmatthew.com/hugh dower.html). Dower collected more evidence on Darwin and Buch showing that Darwin strongly disagreed with Buch's geological theory about Craters of Elevation. This was a Neptunist theory about the origin of craters, accounting for large craters through the upheaval of the Earth's crust into a bubble-like mass and its subsequent bursting and collapse at the summit. Darwin (1844. Geological observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle) had tried to bring Von Buch's theory into agreement with the opposite one that craters are the remains of volcanic eruptions but regretted having done so later. Hence, Darwin's disavowal of Von Buch's views on the geological origin of craters is irrelevant to the current issue of Buch's views on the origin of plant varieties and species.

Buch's original statements

Leopold von Buch is undoubtedly a very important predecessor of Charles Darwin. It is, therefore, interesting to take a closer look at Buch's statements that influenced Darwin. Darwin's notes in his Notebook B (see quotes above) relate to Physicalische Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln (Leopold von Buch 1825, p. 130 and 133f), which Darwin read in its French translation by C. Boulanger, Description Physique des Iles Canaries (Léopold de Buch 1836, p. 144f + 147ff). As German is my mother-tongue, however, I will depart from the original German passages and translate them into English below.

"Der bekannte französische Naturforscher Du Petit Thouars fand auf der Insel Tristan d'Acunha in 37°21' südlicher Breite, und deren Spitzen sich in die Wolken verlieren, von phänerogamen Pflanzen nicht mehr als 25 verschiedene Arten, von denen einige an das Cap, andere an das beinahe gleich weit entfernt gelegene Amerika erinnern, und in St. Helena steigt ihre Anzahl, nach Roxburgh's (sic) Catalog, ebenfalls auf nicht mehr als 36 Arten." (von Buch 1825, 130)

The famous French naturalist Du Petit Thouars discovered no more than 25 species of phanerogamous plants on the island Tristan d'Acunha in 37°21' southern latitude, whose peaks trail off into the clouds, some of them are redolent of the Cap and others of the almost equally distant America. And on St. Helena their number rises to no more than 36 species according to Roxburgh's catalogue. (My translation)

The next passage from Buch (1825, 133f or 1836, 147ff) seems odd in that Buch first describes a process of species transformation on continents and thereafter seems to describe the identical process in closer detail for islands, yet he separates the two descriptions by the sentence "Nicht so auf Inseln" (Not so on islands), as if he was about to propose a very different process for islands. The only difference, however, is that the varieties on continents need to depart from each other spatially to vast distances, whereas the same isolation is supposed to be possible on much smaller spatial scales on islands.

"Die Individuen der Gattungen auf Continenten breiten sich aus, entfernen sich weit, bilden durch Verschiedenheit der Standörter (sic), Nahrung und Boden Varietäten, welche, in ihrer Entfernung nie von anderen Varietäten gekreuzt und dadurch zum Haupttypus zurückgebracht, endlich constant und zur eigenen Art werden. Dann erreichen sie vielleicht auf anderen Wegen auf das Neue die ebenfalls veränderte vorige Varietät, beide nun als sehr verschieden und sich nicht wieder miteinander vermischende Arten. Nicht so auf Inseln. Gewöhnlich in enge Thäler oder in den Bezirk schmaler Zonen gebannt, können sich die Individuen erreichen und jede gesuchte Fixirung einer Varietät wieder zerstören. Es ist dies ungefähr so, wie Sonderbarkeiten oder Fehler der Sprache zuerst durch das Haupt einer Familie, dann durch Verbreitung dieser selbst, über einen ganzen District einheimisch werden. Ist dieser abgesondert und isolirt, und bringt nicht die stete Verbindung mit andern die Sprache auf ihre vorige Reinheit zurück, so wird aus dieser Abweichung ein Dialekt. Verbinden natürliche Hindernisse, Wälder, Verfassung, Regierung, die Bewohner des abweichenden Districts noch enger, und trennen sie sie noch schärfer von den Nachbarn, so fixirt sich der Dialekt, und es wird eine völlig verschiedene Sprache. —

     Deswegen eben, ist es so wichtig, den Standort genau anzugeben, und zu bezeichnen, an welchem die Pflanzen auf den Inseln sich finden. Er hat fast jederzeit etwas Eigenthümliches. Ist er durch natürliche Hindernisse, durch Bergreihen, welche mehr scheiden, als bedeutende Entfernungen über dem Meer, von andern Orten sehr getrennt, so kann man immer dort ganz neue, in anderen Theilen der Insel nicht vorkommende Pflanzenarten erwarten. Vielleicht hat ein glücklicher Zufall, durch eine besondere Verbindung von Umständen den Saamen über die Berge gebracht. Sich selbst an der abgeschlossenen Stelle überlassen, wird dann auch hier im Laufe der Zeiten die aus den neuen Bedingungen des Wachstums entstandene Varietät zur eigenen Art, welche sich immer mehr von ihrer ersten ursprünglichen Form entfernt, je länger sie ungestört in dieser eingeschlossenen Gegend erhalten wird." (von Buch 1825, p. 133)

On continents, the individuals of a genus spread, depart far from each other, develop through the differences in the location, nutrition and soil varieties which, in their distance, never cross with other varieties and thus never get drawn back to the main type, eventually get constant and become their own species. They may then reach on another route, again, the also altered previous variety, both now as very different species that do no longer mix with each other. Not so on islands. Usually banished in steep valleys or narrow zones, the individuals can reach each other and destroy each sought fixation of a variety. This is similar to the oddities or mistakes in language that are first propagated by the head of a family and then, spread with the family itself, become native to a whole district. If the latter is separated and isolated, and if the first contact with others does not bring the language back to its previous purity, then the deviation will become a dialect. If natural barriers, forests, constitution, government connect the inhabitants of the deviant district and separate them even sharper from the neighbors, then the dialect will get fixed and it will become a completely different language. —

     Therefore, it is important to indicate the location/site/habitat exactly and to specify on which ones the plants on the islands can be found. It [the location] almost always has something peculiar. If it is isolated from other locations by natural barriers, mountain ranges, which separate more than considerable distances over the sea, then one can expect to find new plant species that do not occur in other parts of the island. Maybe a lucky coincidence has brought the seeds over the mountain range by some special combination of conditions. Left to their own in the isolated location, the variety that develops because of the new conditions of growth will, in the course of time, become an own species which departs the farther from its first original form the longer it remains undisturbed in this isolated area. (My translation)

The last passage from Buch (1825, 134 or 1836, 149) noted by Darwin (1837-38) is significant because it shows that Buch subscribed to the old doctrine that the conditions of life (e.g., soil, climate) produce varieties* and illustrates the lack of natural selection from Buch's scheme. This is important, because claims of Darwin's plagiarism or dishonesty tend to mix up the different parts of evolutionary theory. 

[...] welche Verschiedenheit in dem Pyrethrum, und dabei solche Aehnlichkeit, dass man sehr leicht geneigt wird, alle Arten dieser Gattung aus einem gemeinschaftlichen Stamme entsprungen zu glauben! Diese verschiedenen Arten finden sich fast nirgends vereinigt, sondern fast jede ist an ihr eigenes Thal, oder an ihren eigenen District gefesselt. Auch die Verschiedenheit der Cinerarien ist nicht so groß, dass man sie nicht für Erzeugnisse der Insel selbst halten könnte, welche durch Verschiedenheit des Standortes, Bodens und des Clima bewirkt worden sind." (Buch 1825, 134)

[...] what difference in the Pyrethrum, and what similarity at the same time, that one is easily inclined to believe that all these species arose from one stem! These different species were almost nowhere found together, but each is bound to its own valley or its own district. The difference between Cinerarien is also not too big to regard them as products of the island itself, which were caused through differences in the location, soil and climate. (My translation)

* [Darwin never completely rid himself of this doctrine, then established, now dated. He even began The Origin of Species stating: "WHEN we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other, than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. When we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature." (Darwin 1859, p. 7)]

The full Darwin-Hooker correspondence on BAAS 1881 raises doubts

While the full correspondence between Darwin and Hooker concerning Hooker's BAAS-address does not exclude the possibility that Darwin purposely lied to Hooker, several things stand out as thwarting such a simple judgement.

 

1. Hooker never asked Darwin about Von Buch and never inquired about a priority issue.

2. Hooker instead asked Darwin about Von Baer, who had published an article in 1859 that came around to the same conclusion as Von Buch had much earlier. 

 

Darwin did not known about this article by Von Baer, when writing his Origin of Species in 1858-59. He might even have mixed up the names of Buch and Bear once, when he denied having known "Von Buch's views" while writing the Origin. But this is just a speculation. While it would render Darwin's statement a true "I did not then know Von Baer's views," it would at the same time require Darwin to jump from mentioning Buch to Baer to Buch to Baer (instead of Buch, Buch, Buch, Baer; see transcription below).

3. Buch's scheme of a natural origin of varieties and species did not include an idea of competition or natural selection as preserving favorable varieties. Why should Darwin deny knowledge of Von Buch, when he readily credited "the elder" (Augustine Pyramus) De Candolle's far closer call to natural selection in the main text of the 1st edition of On the Origin of Species (Darwin 1859, 65), that is, even before the Historical Sketch has been added. Augustin De Candolle had stated:

"Toutes les plantes d'un pays, toutes celles d'un lieu donné, sont dans un état de guerre les unes relativement aux autres. Toutes sont douées de moyens de réproduction et de nutrition plus ou moins efficaces. Les premières qui s'établissent par hasard dans une localité donnée, tendent, par cela même qu'elles occupent l'espace, à en exclure les autres espèces: les plus grandes étouffent les plus petites; les plus vivaces remplacent celles dont la durée est plus courte; les plus fécondes s'emparent graduellement de l'espace que pourraient occuper celles qui se multiplient plus difficilement." (De Candolle 1820, 26)

All the plants of a country, all those of a given location, are in a state of war with each other. All are endowed with means of reproduction and nutrition more or less effective. The first that establish themselves by chance in a given location, tend, by the mere fact that they occupy the ground, to exclude other species: the biggest stifle the smaller; the more perennial replace those with a shorter duration; the most fertile gradually seize the space that could otherwise be filled by slower multiplying ones. (My translation)

4. Hooker's issue was about representative species. Species on islands represent larger taxa on the mainland. That is, they belong to the same taxon but there are far fewer (often only one) species of that taxon on the islands than on the mainland. Hooker inquired whether Darwin knew of any case of representative species on different islands diverging from the parental form on the mainland, but in convergent directions. He suggested that the Canaries and the Azores might be the proper islands where such a case of convergent divergence could be expected. This combination of Hooker mentioning Von Baer and the Canaries seems to have prompted Darwin to remember Von Buch's work on the Canaries and his garbled reply to Hooker. Anyway, Hooker did not pick up Darwin's hint to Buch in his address to the BAAS in York.

Transcription of correspondence between C. Darwin and J.D. Hooker, February – September 1881

Uncertain words in square brackets: []. Illegible words indicated by 6 spaces: _____.

Darwin to Hooker, 26 Feb. 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00509
Part transcript: More Letters of Darwin.

“My dear Hooker

It was a real pleasure to me to see your hand-writing again, for it is a long time since I have heard of you. What a bore about the _____ ; but I am very glad that you will soon have complete _____ & change, in which [latter] I have un… faith. I suppose that Lady Hooker goes with you & I hope she may enjoy herself. Pray give her my kindest _____ . I had vaguely thought whether I would pay you a call at Kew, but thought that you would _____ be too busy, & it seems that you will be on the road before I could come.

I sh^d think that you might make a very interesting address on geograph. Distrib. [Could] you give a little history of the subject. I, for one, sh^d like to read such history in petto; but I can see one very great difficulty, that you yourself ought to figure most prominently in it; & this you would not do, for you are just the man to treat yourself in a dishonourable manner! I shd very much like to see you discuss some of Wallace’s views, especially his ignoring the all powerful effects of the Glacial period with respect to alpine plants. I do not know what you think, but it appears to me that he exaggerates enormously the influence of debacles or [slips] & new surface of soil being exposed for the reception of wind-blown seeds. What kinds of seeds have the plants which are common to the distant mountain-summits in Africa? Wallace lately wrote to me about the mountain-plants of Madagascar being the same with those on mountains in Africa, & seemed to think it proved dispersal by the wind, without apparently having inquired what sort of seeds the plants bore. I suppose it w^d be travelling too far (though for geographical section the discussion ought to be far reaching) but I shd like to see the European or Northern element in the C. of Good Hope flora discussed. I cannot swallow Wallace’s view that European plants travelled down the Andes, tenated the hypothetical Antarctic continent (in which I quite believe), & thence spread to S. Australia & the Cape of G. Hope.

Mosley told me not long ago that he proposed to search at Kerguelen Land the coal beds most carefully, and was absolutely forbidden to do so by Sir W. Thomson, who said that he would undertake the work, and he never one visited them. This put me in a passion. I hope that you will keep your intention and make an address on distribution. Though I differ so much from Wallace, his “Island Life” seems to me a wonderful book.

Farewell. I do hope that you may have a most prosperous journey. Give my kindest remembrances to Asa Gray”

Hooker to Darwin, 12 June 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00104-00150

“Dear Darwin,

can you [conveniently] send me a few plants of [Oxalis corniculata] – to grow – we are quite out of it. & you have plenty near you. I am groaning as usual, – now under the incubus of the Sectional Presidency of the B. A. in York (Geography), which I was ass enough to accept because of Lubbock. Kew is [becoming] [more] [toilsome] than [ever], & I can [rarely] get an [hour] for “Genera plant.^m,” which I have been doing the Palms for 16 months at least; the most difficult task I ever undertook. They are evidently a very ancient group & much dislocated structurally and geographically.

     My wife is vastly the better for her Italian trip, though the good of it is [not] likely to [last] long under the hurry & worry of this “Home of ______ of all natives” - She is [inquiring] about a farm house at Knock-[holt] to take the children to in autumn. Should she fail in her ______ she may ask Mrs Darwin if she knows of any place for them in your neighbourhood.

Ever affectedly, Joseph Hooker”

Darwin to Hooker, 15 June 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00513/1

“My dear Hooker

it was [real] pleasure to me to see once again your well-known hand-writing on the [outside] of your [note]. I do not know how long you have returned from [Italy], but I am very sorry that you are so bothered [always] with work & visits. I cannot but think that you are too kind & civil to visitors, & too conscientious about your official work. But a man cannot cure his virtues anymore than his vices, after early growth, so you must bear your burthen. It is, however, a [great] misfortune for science that you have so very little spare time for the Genera. I can well believe what an awful job the Palms must be.

Even their size must be very inconvenient. You & Bentham must hate the monocotyledons, for what work the [Orchideae] must have been & Graminaceae & Cyperaceae will be.

I am rather despondent about myself & my troubles [are] of an exactly opposite nature to yours, for idleness is downright misery to me, as I find here, as I cannot forget my discomfort for an hour. I have not the heart or [strength] at my age to begin any investigation, lasting years, which is the only thing, which I enjoy; & I have [no] little jobs which I can do. So I must look forward to Down [grave-yard] as the sweetest place on this Earth.

This place is magnificently beautiful & I enjoy the scenery, though weary of it; & the weather has been very cold & almost always hazy. I am so glad that your tour has [answered] for Lady Hooker. I doubt whether Knock-[holt] w^d be a pleasant place: it is about [800] ft higher & much [exposed] to all the winds of [Heaven]. We return [home] in the first week of July & sh^d be truly [glad] to aid Lady Hooker in any [possible] manner which she will suggest.

I have written to my gardener to send you plants of Oxalis corniculata (& seeds if possible): I sh^d think so [common] a weed was never [asked] for before. & what a poor [return] for the hundreds of plants which I have [received] from Kew!

I hope that I have not bothered for writing so long a [post]; & I did not intend to do so. If Asa Gray has returned with you, [please] give him my kindest [remembrances]. [Frank] is working under De Berg whom he likes very much, [at Strasburg] & [seems pretty happy].

______ ______ friend, Charles Darwin”

Hooker to Darwin, 18 June 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00104-00152.

“Dear Darwin,

Common as you [may], regard Oxalis corniculata, it was not what I intended to ask for, but a commoner, the wood-sorrel! [O. acetosella]. I had no idea you were away from home. I fear I have bothered you in vain by stupidly asking for the wrong plant (it has not [come] yet). However I cannot regret having got so long a letter from you, & with something of yourself in it too. I quite understand your misery at finding yourself when you have “all [play]” offered you, & no work to fall back upon! I should be as bad; but then I know not the condition. When I go away I have work that I can always take with me, official or other: & my misery is the lots accumulating at home. I cannot tell you how I long to throw off the trammels of official [life] & do like Bentham: it is horrid at 63, after 42 years of Public Service too, to have to work [as a pot boiler] over & above official hours. – but then it is my own fault. A man who marries & has a family [late] in life must pay for it.

I hear [that] Grey is dying. Mr & Mrs [Symonds] (my wifes parents) are here, & [insist] on the children going to them in the holidays so that we shall not want [Emma quartered] at Knock[holt] or ______ ______ poor Rolleston is dead. His wife is I hear suffering from acute mania, but some at any rate of her medical attendants regard it as temporary. They have 4 children, & the eldest only 17. We have lost no end of friends this year, & it is difficult to resist the [pessimist] view of creation, when I look back however, & especially my beloved friend to the days I have spent in intercourse with you & yours, that view takes wings to itself flies away: it is a horrid world [to be sure], but it could have been worse.

I am ______ ______ about my address for York: of which I fear you will [hear] more than you [wish] cure for [doing] incubation.”


Darwin to Hooker, 20 June 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00516.

“My dear Hooker,

your letter has cheered me, and the world does not look a quarter so black as it did when I wrote before. Your friendly words are worth their weight in gold.

I ______ you [have] got Ox. acetosella by the time if not, despatch the enclosed card & you will receive specimens. – I do not believe Ox. acetosella will even grow long except in [the] [dense], shade, – a fact which agrees with [Batelius’] experiments on the movement of the leaflets, given in my last book. – Tear up my [card], if plant not wanted, & do not acknowledge [receipt]. I am very sorry to learn about [Rolleston] & Gray – the former is a horrid case. I liked much the little I ever saw of him. This morning we heard of the death (a blissful release from suffering) of Mc [Lennan], who has left uncompleted a book more valuable, [perhaps], than Primitive [marriage]. Your address must be a horrid bore, the whole subject of Geographical Distribution has been a frightfully big one. – I wish I c^d be of any [use] to you; but that’s out of the question, as [the] subject has gone much out of my mind. You ought to keep steadily before your mind, what a splendid [amount] of grand work you have done.

Ever yours affectionately, Charles Darwin”

Hooker to Darwin, 4 August 1881
From Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (pp. 223ff).

“Dear Darwin

I am groaning over my address to York after a fashion with which I have more than once bored you awfully. – Now do believe me when I say that it is an unspeakable relief to me to groan towards you; – & I will have done.

I am trying to formulate my ideas on the subject of the several stages of discoveries or ideas by which the Geog. Distrib. (of plants) has been brought up to be a science & to its present level, & showing that these stages have all been erected on ideas first entertained by great voyagers of travellers, thus “hitching” myself on to the sympathies of a geographical audience! Something in this following sort of way:

1. Tournefort’s enunciation of the likeness between the vegetation of successive elevations and degrees of latitude: the true bearings of which have come out only now that we know that said vegetations are affiliated in fact as well as in appearance.

2. Humboldt’s showing that great Natural Orders, Gramineae, Leguminosae, Compsitae, etc., are subject to certain laws of increase or decrease relatively to other plants, in going polewards (in both hemispheres) and skywards. I should also refer parenthetically to his construction of the isothermals as so great an engine towards the advancement of Geog. Bot.

          Now will you give me your idea as to whether I should be right in calling Humboldt the greatest of scientific travellers, or only the most accomplished, – or most prolific? It is the custom to disparage Humboldt now as a shallow man, but when I think of what he did through his own observations during travel, for Geographical distribution of plants, for Meteorology, for Magnetism, for Topography, for Physical Geography and Hydrography, for Ethnology, for political history of Spanish America and for Antiquity of Mexico—besides the truth and picturesqueness of his descriptions of scenery and all else—I am constrained to regard him as the first of scientific travellers; do you? This is however a digression.

3. Lyell’s showing that distribution is not a thing of the present only or of the present condition of climates and present outline and contours of lands, and Forbes’ Essay on the British Flora.

4. The establishment of the permanence since the Silurian period of the present continents and oceans. Were you not the first to insist on this, or at least point this out? Do you not think that Wallace’s summing up of the proof of it is good? (I know I once disputed the doctrine, or rather could not take it in—but let that pass!)

5. The Evolution theory.

6. The discovery of fossil warm plants in high Northern regions, leading to exact ideas as to effect of glacial period as shown by Gray’s Essay.

7. I must wind up with the doctrine of general distribution being primarily from North to south and always along existing continents, with no similar general flow from S to N.—thus supporting the doctrine which has its last expression in Dyer’s Essay read before the Geog. Soc., and referred to in my last R.S. Address (1879, p. 15). Now if this is accepted, we may not too hastily throw overboard Saporta’s doctrine of the boreal origination of the main types of vegetation; and if this again is accepted we cannot altogether neglect Buffon’s argument that vegetation should have commenced where the cooling globe was first cold enough to support it, i.e. at a pole; and lastly, if this is accepted I must bring in Buffon’s speculation in its proper chronological order, and put it as No. 2 of the stages that have led up to our state of knowledge. But I am disposed to regard Saporta’s and Buffon’s views as too speculative for that and to introduce them at the end. What do you think of this point, and of it all?

            It is not even on paper, and how I am to get it all in shape before the end of the month passes my limited powers of prevision.

            I have to take some part in this Congress [the Internal Medical Congress held in London, in August 1881], and by request give a Garden Party on Saturday—it will be a dreadful ordeal I fear (except it rains!).”

Darwin to Hooker, 6 Aug. 1881
From Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 3, p. 246ff

“MY DEAR HOOKER,—For Heaven's sake never speak of boring me, as it would be the greatest pleasure to aid you in the slightest degree and your letter has interested me exceedingly. I will go through your points seriatim, but I have never attended much to the history of any subject, and my memory has become atrociously bad. It will therefore be a mere chance whether any of my remarks are of any use.

Your idea, to show what travellers have done, seems to me a brilliant and just one, especially considering your audience.

1. I know nothing about Tournefort’s works.

2. I believe that you are fully right in calling Humboldt the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived. I have lately read two or three volumes again. His Geology is funny stuff; but that merely means that he was not in advance of his age. I should say he was wonderful, more for his near approach to omniscience than for originality. Whether or not his position as a scientific man is as eminent as we think, you might truly call him the parent of a grand progeny of scientific travellers, who, taken together, have done much for science.

3. It seems to me quite just to give Lyell (and secondarily E. Forbes) a very prominent place.

4. Dana was, I believe, the first man who maintained the permanence of continents and the great oceans. … When I read the Challenger’s conclusion that sediment from the land is not deposited at greater distances than 200 to 300 miles from the land, I was much strengthened in my old belief. Wallace seems to me to have argued the case excellently. Nevertheless, I would speak, if I were in your place, rather cautiously; for T. Mellard Reade has argued lately with some force against the view; but I cannot call to mind his arguments. If forced to express a judgment, I should abide by the view of approximate permanence since Cambrian days.

5. The extreme importance of the Arctic fossil plants, is self-evident. Take the opportunity of groaning over [our] ignorance of the Lignite Plants of Kerguelen Land, or any Antarctic land. It might do good.

6. I cannot avoid feeling sceptical about the travelling of plants from the North except during the Tertiary period. It may of course have been so and probably was so from one of the two poles at the earliest period, during Pre-Cambrian ages; but such speculations seem to me hardly scientific, seeing how little we know of the old Floras. I will now jot down without any order a few miscellaneous remarks.

I think you ought to allude to Alph. De Candolle's great book, for though it (like almost everything else) is washed out of my mind, yet I remember most distinctly thinking it a very valuable work. Anyhow, you might allude to his excellent account of the history of all cultivated plants.

How shall you manage to allude to your New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego work? if you do not allude to them you will be scandalously unjust.

The many Angiosperm plants in the Cretacean beds of the United States (and as far as I can judge the age of these beds has been fairly well made out) seems to me a fact of very great importance, so is their relation to the existing flora of the United States under an Evolutionary point of view. Have not some Australian extinct forms been lately found in Australia? or have I dreamed it?

Again, the recent discovery of plants rather low down in our Silurian beds is very important. Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants. I have sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated continent, perhaps near the South Pole.

Hence I was greatly interested by a view which Saporta propounded to me, a few years ago, at great length in MS. and which I fancy he has since published, as I urged him to do—viz., that as soon as flower-frequenting insects were developed, during the latter part of the secondary period, an enormous impulse was given to the development of the higher plants by cross-fertilization being thus suddenly formed.

A few years ago I was much struck with Axel Blytt's* [*See footnote, Vol. iii. p. 215.] Essay showing from observation, on the peat beds in Scandinavia, that there had apparently been long periods with more rain and other with less rain (perhaps connected with Croll's recurrent astronomical periods), and that these periods had largely determined the present distribution of the plants of Norway and Sweden. This seemed to me a very important essay.

I have just read over my remarks and I fear that they will not be of the slightest use to you.

I cannot but think that you have got through the hardest, or at least the most difficult, part of your work in having made so good and striking a sketch of what you intend to say; but I can quite understand how you must groan over the great necessary labour.

I most heartily sympathise with you on the successes of B. and R.: as years advance what happens to oneself becomes of very little consequence, in comparison with the careers of our children.

Keep your spirits up, for I am convinced that you will make an excellent address.

Ever yours affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN”

Hooker to Darwin, 11 Aug. 1881
From Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (pp. 225ff).

“My dear Darwin,

Your letter and memos have been unspeakable comforts—for I was beginning to despair of making any Address anything but a budget of snippets of facts and ideas, and you have both helped and encouraged me to give one part of it at any rate a consecutive scientific character.

            Then too the revival of our scientific correspondence and interchange of ideas is extraordinarily pleasing to me, who regard myself as your pupil.

            I am indeed glad that your old appreciation of Humboldt is no more dimmed than is mine. I have been re-reading all his Geog. Bot. Essays, and it is impossible to deny their supreme ability and approach to originality. I wish I had time to write, and space to give to all I thing of them—his ‘Distribution Arithmetices’ of the great groups, expressed in definite proportions, is a stroke of originality, if not of genius, and I have called it a sort of parallel (?) (I can’t find a good word!) to his Isothermal lines.

            I cannot find a reference to the permanence of continents in your ‘Coral Reefs’ – a book by the way that shook my confidence in that theory more than all others put together, and the effect of which it has required years of thought to eliminate or rather to overlay. I thought the idea was first published in your ‘Geological Observations,’ of which I cannot find my copy (but shall). Any of Dana’s works must have been long after both. Where does he ‘reclaim,’ and where does J. Mellard Reade publish his vies? I may have long cogitated over the fact that the main water parting Asia is not coincident with the greater elevations of that continent but runs obliquely from S.W. to N.E., and I sometimes determined by huge sedimentary deposits as in Upper India, at others by very low mountains—does this not imply vast oscillations over an already formed land of continental extension?

            I am doubtful about going into the Flora of part ages, beyond the Tertiary. I quite believe in the sudden development of the mass of Phanerogams being due to the introduction of flower-feeding insects, through we must not forget that insects occur in the coal and may have been flower-feeding too.

            I have dealt with Saporta’s view of the polar origin of Floras in my last R.S. Address. I hope we may talk over them and many other such matters when too late for my Address!

            It appears to me that the great Botanical question to settle is, whether the main endemic Southern temperate types originated there and spread Northwards, or whether they originated in the North and have only just reached the South, and have increased and multiplied there (to be turned out in time by the Northern perhaps). The balance of evidence seems to favor the latter view, and if Palaeontologists are to be believed in crediting our tertiaries (even polar ones?) with Proteaceae, it would tend to confirm this view, as do the Cycadeae, not about extinct in the N. Hemisphere and swarming in the South.

            Buffon’s and Saporta’s views of life originating at a pole, because a pole must have first cooled low enough to admit of it, is perhaps more ingenious than true—but is there any reason opposed to it? If conceded, the question arises, did life originate at both Poles or one only? Or if at both was it simultaneously? – but this is the deepest abyss of idle speculation.

Ever yours affecly. J. D. Hooker”

Darwin to Hooker, 12 August 1881
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00524.

“My dear Hooker

I can answer hardly any of your questions, but am able to send you by this post Blytt’s first essay, which [please] at [some] [time] return. – My memory [failed] me; I can find nothing about permanence of continents or oceans in my [Coral] Book; but as in [1^st edit.] of Origin (p. 309) when I allude to the subject I refer to [Coral] [Reefs], this, I suppose, [deceived] my memory. I am almost sure that Dana’s letter was in Nature, I think in the current year. [Reade’s] article, I believe, was in the Geological Mag., but as I resolved never again to [write] on [such a] difficult subject, I unfortunately kept no record & read the articles merely for amusement.

I think that I must have expressed myself badly about Humboldt. I should have said that he was more remarkable for his astounding knowledge than for originality. I have always looked at him as, in fact, the founder of the geographical distribution of organisms. I thought that I had read that extinct fossil plants belonging to Australian forms had lately been found in Australia, and all such cases seem to me very interesting, as bearing on development.

I have been so astonished at the apparently sudden coming in of the higher phanerogams, that I have sometimes fancied that development might have slowly gone on for an immense period in some isolated continent or large island, perhaps near the South Pole. I poured out my idle thoughts in writing, as if I had been talking with you.

No fact has so interested me for a heap of years as your case of the plants on the equatorial mountains of Africa; and Wallace tells me that some one (Baker?) has described analogous cases on the mountains of Madagascar (398/1. See Letter 397, note.)...I think that you ought to allude to these cases.

I most fully agree that no problem is more interesting than that of the temperate forms in the southern hemisphere, common to the north. I remember writing about this after Wallace’s book appeared, and hoping that you would take it up. The frequency with which the drainage from the land passes through mountain-chains seems to indicate some general law—viz., the successive formation of cracks and lines of elevation between the nearest ocean and the already upraised land; but that is too big a subject for a note.

I doubt whether any insects can be shown with any probability to have been flower feeders before the middle of the Secondary period. Several of the asserted cases have broken down. Your long letter has stirred many pleasant memories of long past days, when we had many a discussion and many a good fight.”

Hooker to Darwin, 20 Aug. 1881
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00104-00162.

“Dear Darwin

Just a few last words before I commit my vaporings to the public. Of all the followers of Latreille, in the mutability of species any one of them use this in explanation of (see end) representative species in very distant [locations]? Von Baer, as you point out, was convinced by the facts of geog. distribution that all species were descended from one parent form, & I suppose must have been led to this by the [phenomena] of representation. Can you tell me if this was so? I d have no time to consult the Geog. & Anthrop. of ______ .

            I find that Dana was the first (of all I have yet found), who [broached] the [doctrine] of permanence of position of ______ Continents. You somewhere do the same for ______ Oceans,

& I read it lately, but for the life of me cannot turn the passage up. Also in the origin you imply this. But I do not know anyone except Wallace who has summed up all the arguments for it; & marshalled them with convincing force. I know Blytt’s paper & have it, & thought at the time very highly of it, & my opinion is strengthened by reperusal. I gave a sketch of it as the last advance towards a knowledge of the laws of geograph. distributn. I shall return your copy soon with thanks.

            Josph Hooker

P.S. What I want to know if any one ever suggested that the [representative] [for] an instance of an Azorean plant by a Canarian was due to their having in common parents the offspring of which diverged [samely] from the parent type but converged in those [localities], either through both varying in the same direction or by one varying in the direction of the other.”

Darwin to Hooker, 21 Aug. 1881
From: More letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 2.
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00528/1.

“My dear Hooker

I cannot aid you much or at all. I sh^d think that no one could have thought on the modification of species, without thinking of representative species.— But I feel sure that no discussion of any importance had been published on this subject before the Origin; for if I had known of it, I sh^d assuredly have alluded to it in the Origin, as I wished to gain support from all quarters. I did not then know of Von Buch’s view (alluded to in my Historical Introduction in all the later editions). Von Buch published his “Isles Canaries” in 1836 and he here briefly argues that plants spread over a continent & vary, & the varieties in time come to be species. He also argues that closely allied species have been thus formed in the separate valleys of the Canary Islands, but not on the upper and open parts.

[Marginalia written vertically at the left edge:] I could lend you Von Buch’s Book if you like: I have just consulted the passage. [End of marginalia]

            I have not Baers papers, but as far as I remember the subject is not fully discussed by him.— I quite agree about Wallace’s position on the Ocean & Continent question. — To return to Geograph. Distribution as far as I know no one ever discussed the [meaning of the] relation between representative species, before I did as I suppose Wallace did in his paper before Linn. Soc. Von Buch’s is the nearest approach to such discussion known to me.

Ever yours, Charles Darwin”

Hooker to Darwin, 29 Aug. 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00104-00166.

“My dear Darwin

            I have just seen the announcement of your brother’s death & must send you a few words of heartfelt sympathy. I [have] somehow ______ to think them the happiest, who, like myself, ______ ______ ______ when very young. It seems now as if they [would] then be but ______ ______ , – a blunder no doubt – but we know better what an ______ ______ ______ having lived ______ ______ ______ as you & your brother have.

            It was in your mother’s house near ______ that I first became acquainted with you. & shall never forget his kind face & kinder ______ . That was nearly 40 years ago! - I [will] remember thinking him then quite an ______ man & yet ______ he was then ______ 40.

            Ever my ______ , Joseph Hooker”

Darwin to Hooker, 30 Aug. 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00530.

“My dear Hooke,

Your note ha pleased me much. The death of Erasmus is a very heavy loss to all of us, for he had a most affectionate disposition. He always appeared to me the most pleasant & [clearest] headed man,  whom I have ever known. ______ will seem a ______ place to me without his presence; but I will not ______ ______ ______ him. I am deeply glad that he died without any great suffering, after a very short illness from mere weakness, & not from any definite disease. He had become quite weary of life! I cannot quite agree with you about the death of the old & ______ . Death in the latter case, when there is a bright future ______ ______ quiet never to be wholly {obliterated].

Farewell my old & dear friend. I remember the little room, where we first met.
            Ever yours, Charles Darwin”

Aftermath

Darwin to Hooker, 3&4 Sept. 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00095-00532.

3^rd Sept.:

“My dear Hooker

I have this minute finished reading your splendid, but too short, address. I cannot doubt that it will have been fully appreciated by the geographers at York: if not they are asses & fools.”

4^th Sept.:

“After letting my enthusiasm thus escape, I suddenly felt burst up & had to stop.

I am sorry that I forgot to remind you in relation to A. Blytt that S.B. Skertchly (of the Geolog. Survey) has observed androgen facts in the peat bog of the Cambridgeshire fens; & I Believe that he had come to this conclusion before he knew of Blytt’s views; at least I remember writing to tell him of them. You speak (p. 10) of a glacial period being “inferred” in the S. ______ : surely this is too weak a term considering the enormous number of ______ angular [enatic] [blocks] of ______ [rocks] in the Tertiary plains of Patagonia far from the Andes, & in the ______ ______ of Chiloe, likewise ______ in a Tertiary formation & far for the Andes. That seems to me a capital argument (p. 11) “the several S. temperate ______” an ______ intimately related ______. I shd like to see this argument worked out in detail. But my chief motive for writing in as fullness: a young Patagonian native of ______ ______ in the ______ seems to be an enthusiast about Geograph. Distribution, ______ ______ (& such a man in such a place is a prodigy) & he has published on land mollusca & insects. He wrote to me to ask for hints, so I have told him to attend to ask chance [introductions] & have given him ______, (when ______ is ______) & I sent him Wallace’s big book. Amongst other prints I told him to collect the plants from the highest mountains of the several islands. He ______ that he has made a collection from 2 hills, but these are only 480 & 384 meters high, & offers to send them to anyone whom I might suggest. I have told him that I would mention this to you, but that I thought that the heights were not nearly great enough. Please tell me whether they are worth sending to Kew, or should I tell him to keep them, until he can get other collectings. His name is F. d’Arruda Furtado.

I have no large note-paper with black edges, so have written on this.

Ever yours Ch. Darwin

By the way you pile in your address honours on my old bald head.”

Hooker to Darwin, 7 Sept. 1881
Original: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00104-00168.

“Dear Darwin

Can you kindly get me some more tubers of ______, for the Centre de Paris, who ______ ______ (______) marvellously ______ ______ tells me that ______ ______ is the only species of the genus that ______ (we ______ ______ ______ ______), all the seeds & most other ______ gradually ______ ______. ______ is a ______, ______ ______ ______, & he tells me that he has at Chateau d’Eau 10,000 plants in flower in May (of terrestrial ______). He has not ______ at all!

______ ______ you sent me ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ & form a beautiful ______, but I ______ not like to disturb it. ______ ______ tells me that ______ ______ formed ______ ______ ______ ______ that he refrained from disturbing it & so has it not in his garden & as he has sent me too ______ of ______ ______ I should like to return ______ him some ______ from you, ______ ______ ______ ______.
            Your criticism ______ Southern ______ ______ is just. My ______ ______ was ______ ______ hasty condensation of matter. What I should have said, was […]

I have heard that Skertchly is a brave observer, but I should much like to know what he has written on peat-bogs. Though I am so overwhelmed with work must I doubt if I could read it. Yet I do hope to live to work out the relations of the southern temperate plants. I do wish I could throw off my official duties here; I am getting so weary of them; & Dyer does them so well; but I could not nearly afford it yet.

There is a tremendously interesting ______ to be worked out in Azores. ______ huge trunks of Cypresses are found there buried in the ground, yet the Cypress is ______ in this island. There must be other preserved plants where these trunks are found. Whether or no, the history of these trunks wants clearing up.

I shall be very glad to see the mountain plants & name them for your friend. I think 3300 is the ______ Azorean altitude.
Lubbock did [capitally] ______ ______ ______.
Joseph Hooker”

Further links
Darwin-Hooker letters at Cambridge University Library.Transcription of Darwin letters, also the one to Hooker, 21 August 1881.
Hooker’s address to the BAAS, 1 Sept. 1881, York, pp. 727-738.
Darwin’s mention of von Baer’s views in the Historical Sketch of the 5^th ed. of the Origin.
Wagner’s account of von Baer’s views on geographic distribution and common descent.