414 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [CHAP. VI 



Letter 319 send the Galapagos scraps to you. I direct this to Kew, as I 

 suppose, after your sister's marriage (on which I beg to send 

 you my congratulations), you will return home. 



There are great fears that Falconer will have to go out to 

 India this will be a grievous loss to Palaeontology. 



Letter 320 To J. D. Hooker. 



Down, April loth [1846]. 



I was much pleased to see and sign your certificate for the 

 Geological Society]; we shall thus occasionally, I hope, meet. 1 



I have been an ungrateful dog not to have thanked you 

 before this for the cake and books. The children and their 

 betters pronounced the former excellent, and Annie wanted 

 to know whether it was the gentleman " what played with 

 us so." I wish we were at a more reasonable distance, that 

 Emma and myself could have called on Lady Hooker with 

 our congratulations on this occasion. It was very good of 

 you to put in both numbers of the Hort. Journal. I think 

 Dean Herbert's article well worth reading. I have been so 

 extravagant as to order M[oquin] Tandon, 2 for though I have 

 not found, as yet, anything particularly novel or striking, yet 

 I found that I wished to score a good many passages so as to 

 re-read them at some future time, and hence have ordered the 

 book. Consequently I hope soon to send back your books. 

 I have sent off the Ascension plants through Bunsen to 

 Ehrenberg. 



There was much in your last long letter which interested 

 me much ; and I am particularly glad that you are going to 

 attend to polymorphism in our last and incorrect sense in 

 your works ; I see that it must be most difficult to take any 

 sort of constant limit for the amount of possible variation. 

 How heartily I do wish that all your works were out and 

 complete ; so that I could quietly think over them. I fear 

 the Pacific Islands must be far distant in futurity. I fear, 

 indeed, that Forbes is going rather too quickly ahead ; but 

 we shall soon see all his grounds, as I hear he is now correct- 

 ing the press on this subject ; he has plenty of people who 

 attack him ; I see Falconer never loses a chance, and it is 



1 Sir Joseph was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1846. 



2 Probably Elements de Teratologie Vegctale : Paris, 1841. 



