The first denying all heredity (all transmission except specific) whatever. The second coming near to deny that we are genetically descended from our great-great- grandfathers; and insisting that evidently affiliated languages, e.g. Latin, Greek, Sanscrit, owe none of their similarities to a community of origin, are all autochthonal; Agassiz admits that the derivation of languages, and that of species or forms, stand on the same foundation, and that he must allow the latter if he allows the former, which I tell him is perfectly logical."
Is not this marvellous?
Ever yours, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 4 [1861].
My dear Hooker,
I was delighted to get your long chatty letter, and to hear that you are thawing towards science. I almost wish you had remained frozen rather longer; but do not thaw too quickly and strongly. No one can work long as you used to do. Be idle; but I am a pretty man to preach, for I cannot be idle, much as I wish it, and am never comfortable except when at work. The word holiday is written in a dead language for me, and much I grieve at it. We thank you sincerely for your kind sympathy about poor H. [his daughter]...She has now come up to her old point, and can sometimes get up for an hour or two twice a day...Never to look to the future or as little as possible is becoming our rule of life. What a different thing life was in youth with no dread in the future; all golden, if baseless, hopes.
...With respect to the 'Natural History Review' I can hardly think that ladies would be so very sensitive about "lizards' guts;" but the publication is at present certainly a sort of hybrid, and original illustrated papers ought hardly to appear in a review. I doubt its ever paying; but I shall much regret if it dies. All that you say seems very sensible, but could a review in the strict sense of the word be filled with readable matter?
I have been doing little, except finishing the new edition of the 'Origin,' and crawling on most slowly with my volume of 'Variation under Domestication'...
[The following letter refers to Mr. Bates's paper, "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley," in the 'Transactions of the Entomological Society,' vol.5, N.S. (The paper was read November 24, 1860.) Mr. Bates points out that with the return, after the glacial period, of a warmer climate in the equatorial regions, the "species then living near the equator would retreat north and south to their former homes, leaving some of their congeners, slowly modified subsequently...to re-people the zone they had forsaken." In this case the species now living at the equator ought to show clear relationship to the species inhabiting the regions about the 25th parallel, whose distant relatives they would of course be. But this is not the case, and this is the difficulty my father refers to. Mr. Belt has offered an explanation in his 'Naturalist in Nicaragua' (1874), page 266. "I believe the answer is that there was much extermination during the glacial period, that many species (and some genera, etc., as, for instance, the American horse), did not survive it...but that a refuge was found for many species on lands now below the ocean, that were uncovered by the lowering of the sea, caused by the immense quantity of water that was locked up in frozen masses on the land."]
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 27th [March 1861].
My dear Hooker,
I had intended to have sent you Bates's article this very day. I am so glad you like it. I have been extremely much struck with it. How well he argues, and with what crushing force against the glacial doctrine. I cannot wriggle out of it: I am dumbfounded; yet I do believe that some explanation some day will appear, and I cannot give up equatorial cooling. It explains so much and harmonises with so much. When you write (and much interested I shall be in your letter) please say how far floras are generally uniform in generic character from 0 to 25 degrees N. and S.