6 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [Chap. VII 



Letter 382 more than the belief of a dozen physicists. Your remarks on 

 my regarding temperate plants and disregarding the tropical 

 plants made me at first uncomfortable, but I soon recovered. 

 You say that all botanists would agree that many tropical 

 plants could not withstand a somewhat cooler climate. But 

 I have come not to care at all for general beliefs without 

 the special facts. I have suffered too often from this : thus 

 I found in every book the general statement that a host 

 of flowers were fertilised in the bud, that seeds could not 

 withstand salt water, etc., etc. I would far more trust such 

 graphic accounts as that by you of the mixed vegetation on 

 the Himalayas and other such accounts. And with respect 

 to tropical plants withstanding the slowly coming on cool 

 period, I trust to such facts as yours (and others) about seeds 

 of the same species from mountains and plains having 

 acquired a slightly different climatal constitution. I know 

 all that I have said will excite in you savage contempt 

 towards me. Do not answer this rigmarole, but attack me to 

 your heart's content, and to that of mine, whenever you can 

 come here, and may it be soon. 



Letter 383 J- D. Hooker to C. Darwin. 



Kew, 1870. 



The following extract from a letter of Sir J. D. Hooker shows the 

 tables reversed between the correspondents. 



Grove is disgusted at your being disquieted about VV. 

 Thomson. Tell George from me not to sit upon you with his 

 mathematics. When I threatened your tropical cooling views 

 with the facts of the physicists, you snubbed me and the facts 

 sweetly, over and over again ; and now, because a scarecrow 



intimate relationship with Abyssinia, of whose flora it is a member, and 

 from which it is separated by 1800 miles of absolutely unexplored 

 country ; (2) the curious relationship with the East African islands, 

 which are still farther off; (3) the almost total dissimilarity from the 

 Cape flora." For Sir J. D. Hooker's general conclusions on the Cameroon 

 plants see Linn. Soc.Joitrn. VII., p. 180. More recently equally striking 

 cases have come to light : for instance, the existence of a Mediterranean 

 genus, Adcnocarpus, in the Cameroons and on Kilima Njaro, and nowhere 

 else in Africa ; and the probable migration of South African forms along 

 the highlands from the Natal district to Abyssinia. See Hooker, Linn. 

 Soc.Journ. XIV., 1874, pp. 144-5. 



