VAEIETY OP WOEK 83 



And August 13 : 



I suppose I must read the N.B. [The North British 

 Review, where Prof. Fleeming Jenkin's 1 review of Darwinism 

 touched on Hooker also], but I never read now, and am getting 

 very tired of the struggle, not for life, thank God, but of life, 

 and am getting overweighted with duties for the Colonial 

 and Foreign Office which want endless supplies of seeds and 

 forest trees, &c., that I alone can procure, and I only through 

 personal correspondence with people, who would snap their 

 fingers at official requests. The D. of A. [Duke of Argyll, 

 now Secretary for India] has further requested me to superin- 

 tend the publication of a Flora Sylvatica of India, that will 

 give me a lot of trouble. I think he is paying me off for 

 my kick at Nat. Theology Address [Presidential Address 

 at the meeting of the British Association in 1868 : see below, 

 p. 118]. 



While the ' Genera Plantarum ' continued its laborious 

 course, and the no less laborious ' Flora of British India ' 

 advanced for the first stage of publication in 1872, 2 Hooker 

 was still busy with other botanical work. Some consisted of 

 important works left unfinished by the death of their authors, 

 but which no one else was prepared to complete. Thus he 

 writes to Darwin (November 19, 1867) : 



As for me, I have been, and am, sic vos non 

 rather too much even for my liking and I really do like that 

 sort of dilettanteing for my neighbours. I have just con- 

 cluded Boott's Carices, and am at the distribution of the 

 copies (as much bother as anything). I am printing Harvey's 

 ' Genera of Cape Plants,' and revising the English edition 

 of De Candolle's ' Laws of Botanical Nomenclature,' which 

 will be a good thick pamphlet. 



1 Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (1833-85), Professor of Engineering at 

 Edinburgh, in 1868 criticised Natural Selection on mathematical grounds. 

 It was, he urged, an infinitesimal chance that an individual with a particular 

 variation should meet with a similarly varying mate and so propagate the 

 variation. At that time neither the frequency and extent of variation nor the 

 actuarial ' expectation ' of its reproduction had been investigated. 



* Seven vols. 8vo. Vol. i., 1872-5. The seventh volume was not com- 

 pleted till 1897. 



