18431882] E. FORBES 411 



me a most valuable one, and I must have purchased it had Letter 318 

 you not most kindly given it, and so rendered it even far 

 more valuable to me. When you compare a species to 

 another, you sometimes do not mention the station of the 

 latter (it being, I presume, well known), but to non-botanists 

 such words of explanation would add greatly to the interest 

 -not that non-botanists have any claim at all for such 

 explanations in professedly botanical works. There is one 

 expression which you botanists often use (though, I think, 

 not you individually often), which puts me in a passion 

 viz., calling polleniferous flowers " sterile," as non-seed- 

 bearing. 1 Are the plates from your own drawings ? They 

 strike me as excellent. So now you have had my presump- 

 tuous commendations on your great work. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 319 



Down, Friday [1845-6]. 



It is quite curious how our opinions agree about Forbes' 

 views. 2 I was very glad to have your last letter, which was 

 even more valuable to me than most of yours are, and that is 

 saying, I assure you, a great deal. I had written to Forbes 

 to object about the Azores 3 on the same grounds as you had, 

 and he made some answer, which partially satisfied me, but 

 really I am so stupid I cannot remember it. He insisted 

 strongly on the fewness of the species absolutely peculiar to 

 the Azores most of the non-European species being common 

 to Madeira. I had thought that a good sprinkling were 

 absolutely peculiar. Till I saw him last Wednesday I thought 

 he had not a leg to stand on in his geology about his post- 

 Miocene land ; and his reasons, upon reflection, seem rather 

 weak : the main one is that there are no deposits (more 

 recent than the Miocene age) on the Miocene strata of Malta, 

 etc., but I feel pretty sure that this cannot be trusted as 

 evidence that Malta must have been above water during all 

 the post-Miocene period. He had one other reason, to my 



1 See Letter 16, p. 48. 



2 See Letter 20. 



3 Edward Forbes supposed that the Azores, the Madeiras, and Canaries 

 " are the last remaining fragments " of a continent which once connected 

 them with Western Europe and Northern Spain. LyelFs Principles, 

 Ed. XL, Vol. II., p. 410. See Forbes, op. cit. 



