LETTER 376. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 9th [1867].

I like the first part of your paper in the "Gard. Chronicle" (376/1. The lecture on Insular Floras ("Gard. Chron." January 1867).) to an extraordinary degree: you never, in my opinion, wrote anything better. You ask for all, even minute criticisms. In the first column you speak of no alpine plants and no replacement by zones, which will strike every one with astonishment who has read Humboldt and Webb on Zones on Teneriffe. Do you not mean boreal or arctic plants? (376/2. The passage which seems to be referred to does mention the absence of BOREAL plants.) In the third column you speak as if savages (376/3. "Such plants on oceanic islands are, like the savages which in some islands have been so long the sole witnesses of their existence, the last representatives of their several races.") had generally viewed the endemic plants of the Atlantic islands. Now, as you well know, the Canaries alone of all the archipelagoes were inhabited. In the third column have you really materials to speak of confirming the proportion of winged and wingless insects on islands?

Your comparison of plants of Madeira with islets of Great Britain is admirable. (376/4. "What should we say, for instance, if a plant so totally unlike anything British as the Monizia edulis...were found on one rocky islet of the Scillies, or another umbelliferous plant, Melanoselinum...on one mountain in Wales; or if the Isle of Wight and Scilly Islands had varieties, species, and genera too, differing from anything in Britain, and found nowhere else in the world!")

I must allude to one of your last notes with very curious case of proportion of annuals in New Zealand. (376/5. On this subject see Hildebrand's interesting paper "Die Lebensdauer der Pflanzen" (Engler's "Botanische Jahrbucher," Volume II., 1882, page 51). He shows that annuals are rare in very dry desert-lands, in northern and alpine regions. The following table gives the percentages of annuals, etc., in various situations in Freiburg (Baden):--

Annuals. Biennials. Perennials. Trees and Shrubs. Sandy, dry, and stony places: 21 11 65 3

Dry fields: 6 4 90

Damp fields: 12 2 77 9

Woods and copses: 3 2 65 31

Water: 3 97

Cultivated land: 89 11

Are annuals adapted for short seasons, as in arctic regions, or tropical countries with dry season, or for periodically disturbed and cultivated ground? You speak of evergreen vegetation as leading to few or confined conditions; but is not evergreen vegetation connected with humid and equable climate? Does not a very humid climate almost imply (Tyndall) an equable one?

I have never printed a word that I can remember about orchids and papilionaceous plants being few in islands on account of rarity of insects; and I remember you screamed at me when I suggested this a propos of Papilionaceae in New Zealand, and of the statement about clover not seeding there till the hive-bee was introduced, as I stated in my paper in "Gard. Chronicle." (376/6. "In an old number of the "Gardeners' Chronicle" an extract is given from a New Zealand newspaper in which much surprise is expressed that the introduced clover never seeded freely until the hive-bee was introduced." "On the Agency of Bees in the Fertilisation of Papilionaceous Flowers..." ("Gard. Chron." 1858, page 828). See Letter 362, note.) I have been these last few days vexed and annoyed to a foolish degree by hearing that my MS. on Domestic Animals, etc., will make two volumes, both bigger than the "Origin." The volumes will have to be full-sized octavo, so I have written to Murray to suggest details to be printed in small type. But I feel that the size is quite ludicrous in relation to the subject. I am ready to swear at myself and at every fool who writes a book.