1S44 — 1S5S] SIR J. D. HOOKER 39 



most valuable biographical material. But it should not be forgotten that, 

 quite apart from this, science owes much to this memorable friendship, 

 since without Hooker's aid Darwin's great work would hardly have been 

 carried out on the botanical side. And Sir Joseph did far more than supply 

 knowledge and guidance in technical matters : Darwin owed to him a 

 sympathetic and inspiriting comradeship which cheered and refreshed 

 him to the end of his life. 



A sentence from a letter to Hooker written in 1845 shows, quite as 

 well as more serious utterances, how quickly the acquaintance grew into 

 friendship. 



"Farewell ! What a good thing is community of tastes ! I feel as if 

 I had known you for fifty years. Adios." And in illustration of the 

 permanence of the sympathetic bond between them, we quote a letter 

 of 1 88 1 written forty-two years after the first meeting with Sir Joseph in 

 Trafalgar Square (see Life and Letters, II., p. 19). Mr. Darwin wrote : 

 " Your letter has cheered me, and the world does not look a quarter 

 so black this morning as it did when I wrote before. Your friendly 

 words are worth their weight in gold." 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 13 



Down, Thursday [Jan. nth, 1844]^ 



My dear Sir 



I must write to thank you for your last letter, and to 

 tell you how much all your views and facts interest me. I 

 must be allowed to put my own interpretation on what you 

 say of " not being a good arranger of extended views " — which 

 is, that you do not indulge in the loose speculations so 

 easily started by every smatterer and wandering collector. 

 I look at a strong tendency to generalise as an entire evil. 



What you say of Mr. Brown is humiliating ; I had 

 suspected it, but would not allow myself to believe in such 

 heresy. Fitz-Roy gave him a rap in his preface, 1 and made 

 him very indignant, but it seems a much harder one would 

 not have been wasted. My cryptogamic collection was sent 



1 In the preface to the Surveying I "oyages of the " Adventure " and the 

 "Beagle" 1826-30, forming Vol. I. of the work, which includes the later 

 voyage of the Beagle, Captain Fitz-Roy wrote (March, 1839): "Captain 

 King took great pains in forming and preserving a botanical collection, 

 aided by a person embarked solely for that purpose. He placed this 

 collection in the British Museum, and was led to expect that a first-rate 

 botanist would have examined and described it ; but he has been 

 disappointed." A reference to Robert Brown's dilatoriness over King's 

 collection occurs in the Life and Letters, I., p. 274, note. 



