494 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [CHAP. VI 



Letter 377 this I cannot say. By mere chance I stumbled yesterday on 

 a passage in Humboldt that a violet grows on the Peak of 

 Teneriffe in common with the Pyrenees. If Humboldt is right 

 that the Canary Is. which lie nearest to the continent have a 

 much stronger African character than the others, ought you 

 not just to allude to this? I do not know whether you admit, 

 and if so allude to, the view which seems to me probable, that 

 most of the genera confined to the Atlantic islands (I do not 

 say the species) originally existed in, and were derived from, 

 Europe, [and have] become extinct on this continent I should 

 thus account for the community of peculiar genera in the 

 several Atlantic islands. About the Salvages : is capital. I 

 am glad you speak of linking, though this sounds a little too 

 close, instead of being continuous. All about St. Helena is 

 grand. You have no faith, but if I knew any one who lived 

 in St. Helena I would supplicate him to send me home a cask 

 or two of earth from a few inches beneath the surface from 

 the upper part of the island, and from any dried-up pond, and 

 thus, as sure as I'm a wriggler, I should receive a multitude 

 of lost plants. 



I did suggest to you to work out proportion of plants 

 with irregular flowers on islands ; I did this after giving a 

 very short discussion on irregular flowers in my Ly thrum 

 paper. 2 But what on earth has a mere suggestion like this to 

 do with meum and tuum ? You have comforted me much 

 about the bigness of my book, which yet turns me sick when 

 I think of it. 



1 The Salvages are rocky islets about midway between Madeira and 

 the Canaries ; and they have an Atlantic flora, instead of, as might have 

 been expected, one composed of African immigrants. (Insular Floras, 

 p. 5 of separate copy.) 



* Linn. Soc.Journ., VIII., 1865, p. 169. 



END OF VOL, I. 



Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld,, London and Aylesbury, 



