Chapter 226

I thank you for your very kind and deeply interesting letter of March 1st, received yesterday, and for the present of your work, which no doubt I shall soon receive from Dr. Hooker. (574/1. "Flora Fossilis Arctica," Volume III., 1874, sent by Prof. Heer through Sir Joseph Hooker.) The sudden appearance of so many Dicotyledons in the Upper Chalk appears to me a most perplexing phenomenon to all who believe in any form of evolution, especially to those who believe in extremely gradual evolution, to which view I know that you are strongly opposed. (574/2. The volume referred to contains a paper on the Cretaceous Flora of the Arctic Zone (Spitzbergen and Greenland), in which several dicotyledonous plants are described. In a letter written by Heer to Darwin the author speaks of a species of poplar which he describes as the oldest Dicotyledon so far recorded.) The presence of even one true Angiosperm in the Lower Chalk makes me inclined to conjecture that plants of this great division must have been largely developed in some isolated area, whence owing to geographical changes, they at last succeeded in escaping, and spread quickly over the world. (574/3. No satisfactory evidence has so far been brought forward of the occurrence of fossil Angiosperms in pre-Cretaceous rocks. The origin of the Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons remains one of the most difficult and attractive problems of Palaeobotany.) (574/4. See Letters 395, 398.) But I fully admit that this case is a great difficulty in the views which I hold. Many as have been the wonderful discoveries in Geology during the last half-century, I think none have exceeded in interest your results with respect to the plants which formerly existed in the Arctic regions. How I wish that similar collections could be made in the Southern hemisphere, for instance in Kerguelen's Land.

The death of Sir C. Lyell is a great loss to science, but I do not think to himself, for it was scarcely possible that he could have retained his mental powers, and he would have suffered dreadfully from their loss. The last time I saw him he was speaking with the most lively interest about his last visit to you, and I was grieved to hear from him a very poor account of your health. I have been working for some time on a special subject, namely insectivorous plants. I do not know whether the subject will interest you, but when my book is published I will have the pleasure of sending you a copy.

I am very much obliged for your photograph, and enclose one of myself.