[[1]]
Royal Gardens Kew
Muckross
Killarney
Aug 22. 1878
My dear [Asa] Gray
Here I am with my wife immured in a little inn to which we came yesterday to view the beauties of Killarney. Which we've ever since been denied by torrents of rain accompanied by a furious gale which for aught I know has blown here ever since I sighted the S[outh] of Ireland last October. It is a beastly climate. How different from Nevada!. We left Kew 10 days ago, my wife to Pendock where she weaned left Josey *1 for she had been troubled with Neuralgia diarrhea[sic] which did not agree with the infant) & I to a short visit in N[orth].Wales. -- We met at Dublin & spent the Association[?] week there pleasantly enough, though without Harvey *2 there is no Botanist to keep up the Herbarium at the [Trinity] College. Wright *3 went away no one knows why. [David] Moore *4 is in great face at the garden which is in excellent order & full of fine & rare & well grown things.
[Daniel] Hanbury turned up at Kew 5 weeks ago & I had him out & asked him to join us in Dublin, which he did. I had also [Charles Dwight] Marsh & [Robert Henry] Lamborn [Lambourne]! but neither came to Dublin. I have just yesterday heard from Lamborn at Chamonix. I also saw [George] Davidson of the Pacific
[[2]] Crack Survey for a few minutes at Kew, & Wyman & Fanny both of whom I begged would come & spend a day with us, but they were too busy in London also Dale? of the E[ast] Coast Survey spent a day with me & seemed to enjoy it. So you see I had America once again & many pleasant souvenirs.--
I was hard at work for a fortnight before leaving at the unicellular anthered amaranths for Gen[era] Plant[arum] which I had been working at for 3 years off & on & have settled the genera pretty well, reverting much to old [Carl Friedrich Philip von] Martius basing the genera very much on habit as the staminal formula utterly deserts me & the stigma is a very uncertain character. I will send you a sketch before printing.
I had hoped to send you a lot of matter for our Report but could not for I have much family matters of my own & sister Maria McG[ilvray] to attend to -- she has been most dangerously ill with attacks in the brain, her husband is "used up" & no good at all -- one son alone is doing anything for himself (Tea planting on a Tea plantation in India) & none of the dau[ghte]rs are married. Charlie [Charles Paget Hooker] has been again plucked[?] at the 1st[?] Bach[elor] of Medicine Exams at L[ondon] U[niversity] & I am going to send him to study at Edinburgh boarding him with a tutor for 2 years. This after paying in advance for his whole medical studies at St. Bartholomew’s is an awful pull on me. Charlie is not idle
[[3]] or dissipated in any way, but holds learning cheap will not read & study & gives his whole time & energy (of which he has plenty) to hospital work dressing etc. He is terribly cut up at this 2nd "ploughing" & it will I hope do him great good. My friends think he had best begin de]novo quite afresh, & away from the school where his failures are so well known. Brian [Harvey Hodgson Hooker] came out well at the L[ondon] U[niversity] Matriculation (1st class) & I have sent him to Germany (Barmen near Dusseldorf) to read German till October, when I shall put him to the School of Mines & see how far he is fit for a scientific career.
Poor [John] Smith had another dreadful attack of heart complaint just as I left (angina pectoris this time, whatever that may be) -- the worst he has had, & his life was almost despaired of -- he has however rallied. & I left [William Thiselton--]Dyer in charge who talks of Switzerland in Sept[ember] or October with Harriet [Thiselton--Dyer née Hooker] who is not strong.
I have brought here to Ireland with me a heap of unanswered letters from you & shall begin with yours of July 4th.
Thanks for missive[?] to Wesley which I have acted upon.
[Harvey Wilson "H.W"] Harkness confirms [John] Muir's statement as to the troughs made by Sequoia trunks & most positively, of course I have no opinion of my own.
How stupid of me to forget the Miocene Flora of Iceland! which I knew of -- it is
[[4]] well my letters to you are not publications!ished
Our difference as to "gouging out" of granite is probably verbal one. I never intended it to be understood that the glaciers had imitated the valley, but I think that the mass of material has been removed by glaciers & that they have given its sides their configuration to a much greater extent than you do. A glacier enduring for ages in such a valley must have carried away an incredible amount of shale & not merely "scraped the sides". -- that sort of granite offers no resistance to Ice such as Limestone Porphyry slate other metamorphic rocks do.
Just regard the amount of solid rock on the lateral & medial moraines of any glacier at any one time add the ground detritus of sides & bottom & sum up the annual loss of material -- it is stupendous -- you say you see no proof of anything more than "glaciers smoothing the sides a little" -- I saw proof of enormous removal of stuff, in moraines everywhere & no doubt had we gone down the valley we should have carried old glacial detritus to its mouth. As to your "seeing no proof" I do not see the force of this except you have made a study of glaciation -- a *5 non--botanist "sees no proof" of Ruscus being allied to asparagus! You have not lived alongside glaciers for months, & watched day by day what they do & what they must have done.
Surely Draba Streptocarpa is a derivative of D[raba]. incana not aurea -- I speak without the book.
I am very stubborn about Greenland & have asked Dyer to review the subject. Certainly Platanthera hyperborea is European if books are to be trusted.
[[5]] You make no allowance for the great rarity in America of so many Greenland plants. I mean such as just cross Baffins Bay or turn up in one or two places in America.
Surely you are mistaken in saying Arenaria uliginosa = Rossii! -- I speak without the book but if my memory serves me Rossii = rubella.
I must turn up what Ed[ition] Forbes writes of contemporaneity of Europe & S[outh] India formations. I think it was chalk in Jurassic after all. *6 Surely my letter did not lead you to the impression that he brought out a contemporaneity of Miocene Flora of Greenland S[outhern] Europe.
Yes you have written Phlox Sibirica from Greenland.
Now for yours of July 15th -- I am glad to hear of the Chilian types in W[est] N[orth] America. -- but may retort your proval apropros of Greenland "Ponderante non enumarantia" &c". -- alias Lambertiana Cupressi -- C[upressus] Macrocarpa must stand for our Cypress point thing -- but where did the main form of it more generally called macrocarpa come from? . We saw it planted everywhere in California. No doubt it is just such a form as fastigiata is of orientalis -- but it is odd that we do not know its origin.
C[upressus] Goveniana -- is a wholly different plant. Moore of Dublin has original plants & I have secured a specimen for you.
I must now get to the bottom of C[upressus] Macnabiana.
I deny that the Equator is the Grandfather of Climate -- it is the Grandmother, the Poles are the Grandfathers. i.e. it is the alternate heating & cooling of the most extra tropical areas that kick up the bubbling[?]
I cannot comprehend you calling olive a deciduous
[[6]] tree or that but few deciduous trees bear the severe[?] droughts well. We must be at cross purposes.
No doubt Lambert's 1858 study of C. Lambertiana came from Fucha[?] & was collected by [Franz Josef Ivanovich] Ruprecht (I suppose) I have a notion that it was [Adam Johann von] Krusensterns? expedition he went on & which went along the N[orth] W[est] American coast. If I think of it I will when I write ask [Carl Johann] Maximowicz or Regel
What is Wright's West Texan 589. A 1 celled -- anthered amaranth with alternate leaves !?!! If so I must make of it a new genus.
Assuredly you should try for an English market for your Introd[uction] to Morphology & classification *7 I will consult MacMillan about it when I get back. It is much wanted -- but all the world is mad after physiology & Histology & Morphology pure & classification are despised on the continent, & Britain is following suite fast.
[Julius von] Sachs has & near published a History of Botany holding up to Linnaeus to contempt!
Sir Trevor Lawrence withdrew has postponed his motion about opening Kew till next session. a horrid nuisance as it keeps the employees here in a fever -- It would have been certainly thrown out this session -- This time last year we were at George Town. With love to Mrs Gray & a million good wishes from your aff[ectionate] | J D Hooker [signature]
ENDNOTES
1. Joseph Symonds Hooker (1877--1940). Joseph Hooker's first child with his second wife Lady Hyacinth Hooker.
2. William Henry Harvey (1811--1866). Irish botanist who specialised in algae. Chair of Botany and Curator of the Herbarium at Trinity College, Dublin.
3. Edward Percival Wright (1834--1910). Irish Opthalmic surgeon, zoologist and botanist. Lecturer in zoology and Curator of the Museum at Trinity College Dublin, also founder of the Natural History Review.
4. David Moore, formerly Muir (1807--1879). Director of the Royal Dublin Society's botanic garden at Glasnevin, now the National Botanic Gardens.
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