More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I [270]
Hooker wrote, "You must not suppose me to be a champion of continental connection, because I am not agreeable to trans-oceanic migration...either hypothesis appears to me well to cover the facts of oceanic floras, but there are grave objections to both, botanical to yours, geological to Forbes'.")
The following interesting letters give some of Sir Joseph's difficulties.)
Kew, August 4th, 1866.
You mention ("Journal") no land-birds, except introduced, upon St. Helena. Beatson (Introduction xvii) mentions one (367/2. Aegialitis sanctae- helenae, a small plover "very closely allied to a species found in South Africa, but presenting certain differences which entitle it to the rank of a peculiar species" (Wallace, "Island Life," page 294). In the earlier editions of the "Origin" (e.g. Edition III., page 422) Darwin wrote that "Madeira does not possess one peculiar bird." In Edition IV., 1866, page 465, the mistake was put right.) "in considerable numbers," resembles sand- lark--is called "wire bird," has long greenish legs like wires, runs fast, eyes large, bill moderately long, is rather shy, does not possess much powers of flight. What was it? I have written to ask Sclater, also about birds of Madeira and Azores. It is a very curious thing that the Azores do not contain the (non-European) American genus Clethra, that is found in Madeira and Canaries, and that the Azores contain no trace of American element (beyond what is common to Madeira), except a species of Sanicula, a genus with hooked bristles to the small seed-vessels. The European Sanicula roams from Norway to Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde, Cameroons, Cape of Good Hope, and from Britain to Japan, and also is, I think, in N. America; but does not occur in the Azores, where it is replaced by one that is of a decidedly American type.
This tells heavily against the doctrine that joins Atlantis to America, and is much against your trans-oceanic migration--for considering how near the Azores are to America, and in the influence of the Gulf-stream and prevalent winds, it certainly appears marvellous. Not only are the Azores in a current that sweeps the coast of U. States, but they are in the S.W. winds, and in the eye of the S.W. hurricanes!
I suppose you will answer that the European forms are prepotent, but this is riding prepotency to death.
R.T. Lowe has written me a capital letter on the Madeiran, Canarian, and Cape Verde floras.
I misled you if I gave you to understand that Wollaston's Catalogue said anything about rare plants. I am worked and worried to death with this lecture: and curse myself as a soft headed and hearted imbecile to have accepted it.
LETTER 368. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, Monday [August 6th, 1866].
Again thanks for your letter. You need not fear my not doing justice to your objections to the continental hypothesis!
Referring to page 344 again (368/1. "Origin of Species," Edition III., pages 343-4: "In some cases, however, as by the breaking of an isthmus and the consequent irruption of a multitude of new inhabitants, or by the final subsidence of an island, the extinction may have been comparatively rapid."), it never occurred to me that you alluded to extinction of marine life: an isthmus is a piece of land, and you go on in the same sentence about "an island," which quite threw me out, for the destruction of an isthmus makes an island!
I surely did not say Azores nearer to Britain and Newfoundland "than to Madeira," but "than Madeira is to said places."
With regard to the Madeiran coleoptera I rely very little on local distribution of insects--they are so local themselves. A butterfly is a great rarity in Kew, even a white, though we are surrounded by market gardens. All insects are most rare with us, even the kinds that abound on the opposite side of Thames.
So with shells, we have literally none--not a Helix even, though they abound in the lanes 200 yards off the Gardens. Of the 89 Dezertas insects [only?] 11 are peculiar. Of the 162 Porto Santan 113 are Madeiran and 51 Dezertan.
The following interesting letters give some of Sir Joseph's difficulties.)
Kew, August 4th, 1866.
You mention ("Journal") no land-birds, except introduced, upon St. Helena. Beatson (Introduction xvii) mentions one (367/2. Aegialitis sanctae- helenae, a small plover "very closely allied to a species found in South Africa, but presenting certain differences which entitle it to the rank of a peculiar species" (Wallace, "Island Life," page 294). In the earlier editions of the "Origin" (e.g. Edition III., page 422) Darwin wrote that "Madeira does not possess one peculiar bird." In Edition IV., 1866, page 465, the mistake was put right.) "in considerable numbers," resembles sand- lark--is called "wire bird," has long greenish legs like wires, runs fast, eyes large, bill moderately long, is rather shy, does not possess much powers of flight. What was it? I have written to ask Sclater, also about birds of Madeira and Azores. It is a very curious thing that the Azores do not contain the (non-European) American genus Clethra, that is found in Madeira and Canaries, and that the Azores contain no trace of American element (beyond what is common to Madeira), except a species of Sanicula, a genus with hooked bristles to the small seed-vessels. The European Sanicula roams from Norway to Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde, Cameroons, Cape of Good Hope, and from Britain to Japan, and also is, I think, in N. America; but does not occur in the Azores, where it is replaced by one that is of a decidedly American type.
This tells heavily against the doctrine that joins Atlantis to America, and is much against your trans-oceanic migration--for considering how near the Azores are to America, and in the influence of the Gulf-stream and prevalent winds, it certainly appears marvellous. Not only are the Azores in a current that sweeps the coast of U. States, but they are in the S.W. winds, and in the eye of the S.W. hurricanes!
I suppose you will answer that the European forms are prepotent, but this is riding prepotency to death.
R.T. Lowe has written me a capital letter on the Madeiran, Canarian, and Cape Verde floras.
I misled you if I gave you to understand that Wollaston's Catalogue said anything about rare plants. I am worked and worried to death with this lecture: and curse myself as a soft headed and hearted imbecile to have accepted it.
LETTER 368. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, Monday [August 6th, 1866].
Again thanks for your letter. You need not fear my not doing justice to your objections to the continental hypothesis!
Referring to page 344 again (368/1. "Origin of Species," Edition III., pages 343-4: "In some cases, however, as by the breaking of an isthmus and the consequent irruption of a multitude of new inhabitants, or by the final subsidence of an island, the extinction may have been comparatively rapid."), it never occurred to me that you alluded to extinction of marine life: an isthmus is a piece of land, and you go on in the same sentence about "an island," which quite threw me out, for the destruction of an isthmus makes an island!
I surely did not say Azores nearer to Britain and Newfoundland "than to Madeira," but "than Madeira is to said places."
With regard to the Madeiran coleoptera I rely very little on local distribution of insects--they are so local themselves. A butterfly is a great rarity in Kew, even a white, though we are surrounded by market gardens. All insects are most rare with us, even the kinds that abound on the opposite side of Thames.
So with shells, we have literally none--not a Helix even, though they abound in the lanes 200 yards off the Gardens. Of the 89 Dezertas insects [only?] 11 are peculiar. Of the 162 Porto Santan 113 are Madeiran and 51 Dezertan.