temperate plants and disregarding the tropical plants made me at first
uncomfortable, but I soon recovered. You say that all botanists would
agree that many tropical plants could not withstand a somewhat cooler
climate. But I have come not to care at all for general beliefs without
the special facts. I have suffered too often from this: thus I found in
every book the general statement that a host of flowers were fertilised in
the bud, that seeds could not withstand salt water, etc., etc. I would far
more trust such graphic accounts as that by you of the mixed vegetation on
the Himalayas and other such accounts. And with respect to tropical plants
withstanding the slowly coming on cool period, I trust to such facts as
yours (and others) about seeds of the same species from mountains and
plains having acquired a slightly different climatal constitution. I know
all that I have said will excite in you savage contempt towards me. Do not
answer this rigmarole, but attack me to your heart's content, and to that
of mine, whenever you can come here, and may it be soon.


LETTER 383. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN.
Kew, 1870.

(383/1. The following extract from a letter of Sir J.D. Hooker shows the
tables reversed between the correspondents.)

Grove is disgusted at your being disquieted about W. Thomson. Tell George
from me not to sit upon you with his mathematics. When I threatened your
tropical cooling views with the facts of the physicists, you snubbed me and
the facts sweetly, over and over again; and now, because a scarecrow of x+y
has been raised on the selfsame facts, you boo-boo. Take another dose of
Huxley's penultimate G. S. Address, and send George back to college.
(383/2. Huxley's Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, 1869