Volume I Part 54 (1/2)
I have had this copied, that it might not bore you too much to read it.
A few words more. When equatorial productions were dreadfully distressed by fall of temperature, and probably by changed humidity, and changed proportional numbers of other plants and enemies (though they might favour some of the species), I must admit that they all would be exterminated if productions exactly fitted, not only for the climate, but for all the conditions of the equatorial regions during the Glacial period existed and could everywhere have immigrated. But the productions of the temperate regions would have probably found, under the equator, in their new homes and soils, considerably different conditions of humidity and periodicity, and they would have encountered a new set of enemies (a most important consideration); for there seems good reason to believe that animals were not able to migrate nearly to the extent to which plants did during the Glacial period. Hence I can persuade myself that the temperate productions would not entirely replace and exterminate the productions of the cooled tropics, but would become partially mingled with them.
I am far from satisfied with what I have scribbled. I conclude that there must have been a mundane Glacial period, and that the difficulties are much the same whether we suppose it contemporaneous over the world, or that longitudinal belts were affected one after the other. For Heaven's sake forgive me!
LETTER 353. TO H.W. BATES. March 26th [1861].
I have been particularly struck by your remarks on the Glacial period.
(353/1. In his ”Contributions to the Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley,”
”Trans. Entom. Soc.” Volume V., page 335 (read November 24th, 1860), Mr. Bates discusses the migration of species from the equatorial regions after the Glacial period. He arrives at a result which, he points out, ”is highly interesting as bearing upon the question of how far extinction is likely to have occurred in equatorial regions during the time of the Glacial epoch.”...”The result is plain, that there has always (at least throughout immense geological epochs) been an equatorial fauna rich in endemic species, and that extinction cannot have prevailed to any extent within a period of time so comparatively modern as the Glacial epoch in geology.” This conclusion does not support the view expressed in the ”Origin of Species” (Edition I., chapter XI., page 378) that the refrigeration of the earth extended to the equatorial regions. (Bates, loc. cit., pages 352, 353.)) You seem to me to have put the case with admirable clearness and with crus.h.i.+ng force. I am quite staggered with the blow, and do not know what to think. Of late several facts have turned up leading me to believe more firmly that the Glacial period did affect the equatorial regions; but I can make no answer to your argument, and am completely in a cleft stick. By an odd chance I have only a few days ago been discussing this subject, in relation to plants, with Dr. Hooker, who believes to a certain extent, but strongly urged the little apparent extinction in the equatorial regions. I stated in a letter some days ago to him that the tropics of S. America seem to have suffered less than the Old World.
There are many perplexing points; temperate plants seem to have migrated far more than animals. Possibly species may have been formed more rapidly within tropics than one would have expected. I freely confess that you have confounded me; but I cannot yet give up my belief that the Glacial period did to certain extent affect the tropics.
LETTER 354. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 25th [1862].
I have almost finished your Arctic paper, and I must tell you how I admire it. (354/1. ”Outlines of the Distribution of Arctic Plants”
[Read June 21st, 1860], ”Linn. Soc. Trans.” XXIII., 1862, page 251. The author's remarks on Mr. Darwin's theories of Geographical Distribution are given at page 255: they are written in a characteristically generous spirit.) The subject, treated as you have treated it, is really magnificent. Good Heaven, what labour it must have cost you! And what a grand prospect there is for the future. I need not say how much pleased I am at your notice of my work; for you know that I regard your opinion more than that of all others. Such papers are the real engine to compel people to reflect on modification of species; any one with an enquiring mind could hardly fail to wish to consider the whole subject after reading your paper. By Jove! you will be driven, nolens volens, to a cooled globe. Think of your own case of Abyssinia and Fernando Po, and South Africa, and of your Lebanon case (354/2. See ”Origin,” Edition VI., page 337.); grant that there are highlands to favour migration, but surely the lowlands must have been somewhat cooled. What a splendid new and original evidence and case is that of Greenland: I cannot see how, even by granting bridges of continuous land, one can understand the existing flora. I should think from the state of Scotland and America, and from isothermals, that during the coldest part of Glacial period, Greenland must have been quite depopulated. Like a dog to his vomit, I cannot help going back and leaning to accidental means of transport by ice and currents. How curious also is the case of Iceland. What a splendid paper you have made of the subject. When we meet I must ask you how much you attribute richness of flora of Lapland to mere climate; it seems to me very marvellous that this point should have been a sort of focus of radiation; if, however, it is unnaturally rich, i.e. contains more species than it ought to do for its lat.i.tude, in comparison with the other Arctic regions, would it not thus falsely seem a focus of radiation? But I shall hereafter have to go over and over again your paper; at present I am quite muddy on the subject. How very odd, on any view, the relation of Greenland to the mountains of E. N. America; this looks as if there had been wholesale extinction in E. N. America. But I must not run on. By the way, I find Link in 1820 speculated on relation of Alpine and Arctic plants being due to former colder climate, which he attributed to higher mountains cutting off the warm southern winds.
LETTER 355. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, November 2nd, 1862.
Did I tell you how deeply pleased I was with Gray's notice of my Arctic essay? (355/1. ”American Journal of Science and Arts,” x.x.xIV., and in Gray's ”Scientific Papers,” Volume I., page 122.) It was awfully good of him, for I am sure he must have seen several blunders. He tells me that Dr. Dawson (355/2. A letter (No. 144) by Sir J.D. Hooker, dated November 7th, 1862, on this subject occurs in the Evolutionary section.) is down on me, and I have a very nice lecture on Arctic and Alpine plants from Dr. D., with a critique on the Arctic essay--which he did not see till afterwards. He has found some mares' nests in my essay, and one very venial blunder in the tables--he seems to HATE Darwinism--he accuses me of overlooking the geological facts, and dwells much on my overlooking subsidence of temperate America during Glacial period--and my a.s.serting a subsidence of Arctic America, which never entered into my head. I wish, however, if it would not make your head ache too much, you would just look over my first three pages, and tell me if I have outraged any geological fact or made any oversights. I expounded the whole thing twice to Lyell before I printed it, with map and tables, intending to get (and I thought I had) his imprimatur for all I did and said; but when here three nights ago, I found he was as ignorant of my having written an Arctic essay as could be! And so I suppose he either did not take it in, or thought it of little consequence. Hector approved of it in toto. I need hardly say that I set out on biological grounds, and hold myself as independent of theories of subsidence as you do of the opinions of physicists on heat of globe! I have written a long [letter]
to Dawson.
By the way, did you see the ”Athenaeum” notice of L. Bonaparte's Basque and Finnish language?--is it not possible that the Basques are Finns left behind after the Glacial period, like the Arctic plants? I have often thought this theory would explain the Mexican and Chinese national affinities. I am plodding away at Welwitschia by night and Genera Plantarum by day. We had a very jolly dinner at the Club on Thursday. We are all well.
LETTER 356. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 4th [1862].
I have read the pages (356/1. The paper on Arctic plants in Volume XXIII. of the Linnean Society's ”Transactions,” 1860-62.) attentively (with even very much more admiration than the first time) and cannot imagine what makes Dr. D. accuse you of a.s.serting a subsidence of Arctic America. (356/2. The late Sir J.W. Dawson wrote a review (signed J.W.D) of Hooker's Arctic paper which appeared in the ”Canadian Naturalist,”
1862, Volume VII., page 334. The chief part of the article is made up of quotations from Asa Gray's article referred to below. The remainder is a summary of geological arguments against Hooker's views. We do not find the accusation referred to above, which seems to have appeared in a lecture.) No doubt there was a subsidence of N. America during the Glacial period, and over a large part, but to maintain that the subsidence extended over nearly the whole breadth of the continent, or lasted during the whole Glacial period, I do not believe he can support.
I suspect much of the evidence of subsidence during the Glacial period there will prove false, as it largely rests on ice-action, which is becoming, as you know, to be viewed as more and more subaerial. If Dawson has published criticisms I should like to see them. I have heard he is rabid against me, and no doubt partly in consequence, against anything you write in my favour (and never was anything published more favourable than the Arctic paper). Lyell had difficulty in preventing Dawson reviewing the ”Origin” (356/3. Dawson reviewed the ”Origin” in the ”Canadian Naturalist,” 1860.) on hearsay, without having looked at it. No spirit of fairness can be expected from so bia.s.sed a judge.
All I can say is that your few first pages have impressed me far more this reading than the first time. Can the Scandinavian portion of the flora be so potent (356/4. Dr. Hooker wrote: ”Regarded as a whole the Arctic flora is decidedly Scandinavian; for Arctic Scandinavia, or Lapland, though a very small tract of land, contains by far the richest Arctic flora, amounting to three-fourths of the whole”; he pointed out ”that the Scandinavian flora is present in every lat.i.tude of the globe, and is the only one that is so” (quoted by Gray, loc. cit. infra).) from having been preserved in that corner, warmed by the Gulf Stream, and from now alone representing the entire circ.u.mpolar flora, during the warmer pre-Glacial period? From the first I have not been able to resist the impression (shared by Asa Gray, whose Review (356/5. Asa Gray's ”Scientific Papers,” Volume I., page 122.) on you pleased me much) that during the Glacial period there must have been almost entire extinction in Greenland; for depth of sea does not favour former southerly extension of land there. (356/6. In the driving southward of the vegetation by the Glacial epoch the Greenland flora would be ”driven into the sea, that is, exterminated.” (Hooker quoted by Gray, loc. cit.
page 124.) I must suspect that plants have been largely introduced by sea currents, which bring so much wood from N. Europe. But here we shall split as wide as the poles asunder. All the world could not persuade me, if it tried, that yours is not a grand essay. I do not quite understand whether it is this essay that Dawson has been ”down on.” What a curious notion about Glacial climate, and Basques and Finns! Are the Basques mountaineers--I hope so. I am sorry I have not seen the ”Athenaeum,” but I now take in the ”Parthenon.” By the way, I have just read with much interest Max Muller (356/7. Probably his ”Lectures on the Science of Language,” 1861-64.); the last part, about first origin of language, seems the least satisfactory part.
Pray thank Oliver heartily for his heap of references on poisons.
(356/8. Doubtless in connection with Darwin's work on Drosera: he was working at this subject during his stay at Bournemouth in the autumn of 1862.) How the devil does he find them out?
I must not indulge [myself] with Cypripedium. Asa Gray has made out pretty clearly that, at least in some cases, the act of fertilisation is effected by small insects being forced to crawl in and out of the flower in a particular direction; and perhaps I am quite wrong that it is ever effected by the proboscis.
I retract so far that if you have the rare C. hirsutissimum, I should very much like to examine a cut single flower; for I saw one at a flower show, and as far as I could see, it seemed widely different from other forms.
P.S.--Answer this, if by chance you can. I remember distinctly having read in some book of travels, I am nearly sure in Australia, an account of the natives, during famines, trying and cooking in all sorts of ways various vegetable productions, and sometimes being injured by them. Can you remember any such account? I want to find it. I thought it was in Sir G. Grey, but it is not. Could it have been in Eyre's book?
LETTER 357. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. [November 1862].
...I have speculated on the probability of there having been a post-Glacial Arctic-Norwego-Greenland in connection, which would account for the strong fact, that temperate Greenland is as Arctic as Arctic Greenland is--a fact, to me, of astounding force. I do confess, that a northern migration would thus fill Greenland as it is filled, in so far as the whole flora (temperate and Arctic) would be Arctic,--but then the same plants should have gone to the other Polar islands, and above all, so many Scandinavian Arctic plants should not be absent in Greenland, still less should whole Natural Orders be absent, and above all the Arctic Leguminosae. It is difficult (as I have told Dawson) to conceive of the force with which arguments drawn from the absence of certain familiar ubiquitous plants strike the botanists. I would not throw over altogether ice-transport and water-transport, but I cannot realise their giving rise to such anomalies, in the distribution, as Greenland presents. So, too, I have always felt the force of your objection, that Greenland should have been depopulated in the Glacial period, but then reflected that vegetation now ascends I forget how high (about 1,000 feet) in Disco, in 70 deg, and that even in a Glacial ocean there may always have been lurking-places for the few hundred plants Greenland now possesses. Supposing Greenland were repeopled from Scandinavia over ocean way, why should Carices be the chief things brought? Why should there have been no Leguminosae brought, no plants but high Arctic?--why no Caltha pal.u.s.tris, which gilds the marshes of Norway and paints the housetops of Iceland? In short, to my eyes, the trans-oceanic migration would no more make such an a.s.semblage than special creations would account for representative species--and no ”ingenious wriggling” ever satisfied me that it would. There, then!