18431882] ARCTIC FLORA 469 



Pray thank Oliver heartily for his heap of references on Letter 356 

 poisons. 1 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. kirsuttssimum, 

 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 ? 



J. D. Hooker to C. Darwin. Letter 357 



[Nov. 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 



1 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. 



