26 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [CHAP. VII 



Letter 397 without apparently having inquired what sorts of seeds the 

 plants bore. 



I suppose it would be travelling too far (though for the 

 geographical section the discussion ought to be far-reaching), 

 but I should like to see the European or northern element in 

 the Cape of Good Hope flora discussed. I cannot swallow 

 Wallace's view that European plants travelled down the 

 Andes, tenanted the hypothetical Antarctic continent (in 

 which I quite believe), and thence spread to South Australia 

 and the Cape of Good Hope. 



Moseley told me not long ago that he proposed to search 

 at Kerguelen Land the coal beds most carefully, and was 

 absolutely forbidden to do so by Sir W. Thomson, who said 

 that he would undertake the work, and he never once visited 

 them. This puts me in a passion. I hope that you will keep 

 to your intention and make an address on distribution. 

 Though I differ so much from Wallace, his Island Life seems 

 to me a wonderful book. 



Farewell. I do hope that you may have a most prosperous 

 journey. Give my kindest remembrances to Asa Gray. 



Letter 398 To J. D. Hooker. 



Down, Aug. I2th, 1881. 



... I think that I must have expressed myself badly 

 about Humboldt I should have said that he was more 

 remarkable for his astounding knowledge than for originality. 

 I have always looked at him as, in fact, the founder of the 

 geographical distribution of organisms. I thought that I had 

 read that extinct fossil plants belonging to Australian forms 

 had lately been found in Australia, and all such cases seem to 

 me very interesting, as bearing on development. 



I have been so astonished at the apparently sudden coming 

 in of the higher phanerogams, that I have sometimes fancied 

 that development might have slowly gone on for an immense 

 period in some isolated continent or large island, perhaps near 

 the South Pole. I poured out my idle thoughts in writing, as 

 if I had been talking with you. 



No fact has so interested me for a heap of years as your 

 case of the plants on the equatorial mountains of Africa ; 

 and Wallace tells me that some one (Baker ?) has described 



