DARWIN CHARLES: (1809-1882) English naturalist, famous for his theory of evolution published in On the Origin of Species (1859). A fine A.L.S., C. Darwin, two pages, oblong 8vo, n.p. (Down, Kent), n.d. (annotated as received on 23rd January 1867), to Joseph Dalton Hooker (´My dear H.´). Darwin announces ´I shd. much like Miquel´s photograph´ and remarks ´Give him my address & do not bother yourself with sending it´, further thanking Hooker for his ´pleasant letter just received´ and commenting ´We are very glad Mrs. H. goes on well´. In a postscript of five lines to the verso Darwin also states ´You had better not send, if in earnest, the earth from St. Helena to me, as I could not distinguish commonest weed from the rarest now extinct plant´. Docketed by Hooker with the date of receipt to the lower left corner. With a slightly irregular lower edge (where Darwin neatly tore the paper from a larger sheet) and with very minimal, light traces of former mounting to the left edge of the verso. VG

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) English botanist and explorer, a founder of geographical botany who served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and was Charles Darwin´s closest friend.

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (1811-1871) Dutch botanist whose main focus of study was on the flora of the Dutch East Indies.

The present letter was written in response to Hooker´s letter of 20th January 1867 in which he had informed Darwin of Miquel´s request to exchange carte-de-visite photographs (´I grieve to bother you on such a subject - I am sick & tired of this Carte Correspondence´) and also updated his friend on the health of his wife, Frances Harriet Hooker, who had just given birth to their son, Reginald Hawthorn Hooker (´My wife goes on well but has a horrid face-ache - & Reginald blooms & squeaks´). In the same letter Hooker had made an assurance to Darwin, ´By jove I will write out next mail to the Governor of St. Helena for boxes of earth; & you shall have them to grow´.

Hooker´s letter, in its turn, had been written as a reply to Darwin´s letter of 15th January 1867 in which Darwin gently berated his friend, ´You have no faith, but if I knew any one who lived in St. Helena I wd. supplicate him to send me home a cask or two of earth from a few inches beneath the surface from the upper parts of the Island, & from any little dried up pond, & thus as sure as I am a wriggler I should revive a multitude of lost plants´.

In his Origin of Species Darwin had described the viability of seeds in pond mud and seawater, writing ´I do not believe that botanists are aware how charged the mud of ponds is with seeds: I have tried several little experiments, but will here give only the most striking case: I took in February three table-spoonfuls of mud from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little pond; this mud when dry weighed only 6¾ ounces; I kept it covered up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it grew; the plants were of many kinds, and were altogether 537 in number; and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup! Considering these facts, I think it would be an inexplicable circumstance if water-birds did not transport the seeds of fresh-water plants to vast distances, and if consequently the range of these plants was not very great'.

Hooker had published a lecture on ´Insular Floras´ in the Gardeners' Chronicle for 12th January 1867 in which he provided 'a brief outline of Mr. Darwin's arguments in favour of trans-oceanic migration'. The topic of St Helena and its seed deposits resulted from this paper, Hooker writing concerning the elimination of the island's flora: 'The botany of St. Helena is thus most interesting; it resembles none other in the peculiarity of its indigenous vegetation, in the great rarity of the plants of other countries, or in the number of species that have actually disappeared within the memory of living men. In 1839 and 1843 I in vain searched for forest trees and shrubs that flourished in tens of thousands not a century before my visit, and still existed as individuals 20 years before that date. Of these I saw in some cases no vestige, in others only blasted and lifeless trunks cresting the cliffs in inaccessible places. Probably 100 St. Helena plants have thus disappeared from the Systema Naturæ since the first introduction of goats on the island. Every one of those was a link in the chain of created beings, which contained within itself evidence of the affinities of other species, both living and extinct, but which evidence is now irrecoverably lost. If such be the fate of organisms that lived in our day, what folly it is to found theories on the assumed perfection of a geological record which has witnessed revolutions in the vegetation of the globe, to which that of the Flora of St. Helena is as nothing'.

Provenance: Darwin´s letter was previously part of a collection of autograph letters formed by by Hooker's uncle, Rev Dr Dawson William Turner (1815–1885), and has only appeared on the market once previously, having been discovered in 2019.