i 



FIEST MEETING WITH DAEWIN 487 



ments on the living action of plants, sure of sympathy, yet 

 begging Hooker, if he could spare time to read these letters, 

 at least to waste none of his too busy hours in answering 

 hem, saying : 



It is a pleasure to me to write to you, as I have no one 

 to talk to about such matter as we write on. But I seriously 

 beg you not to write to me, unless so inclined ; for busy as 

 you are and seeing many people, the case is very different 

 between us (June 19, 1860). It is the greatest temptation 

 to me to write ad infinitum to you (July 19, 1856). 



As to direct botanical aid, he wrote with enthusiastic appre- 

 ciation and careful criticism of Hooker's publications, which 

 bore so closely on his own work. But this was the smallest 

 part of their scientific interchange. Though he repeatedly 

 insists 'Do not answer questions merely out of good nature ' ['of 

 which towards me you have a most abundant stock * (April 8, 

 1857), * as wonderful as mesmerism ' (1846)], it was the unstinted 

 privilege of the elder friend to ask, as it was the privilege of the 

 younger to answer from the fulness of his botanical knowledge, 

 a host of questions bearing on the relations and distribution of 

 individual plants and groups of plants, wherein lie answers to 

 some of the riddles of Hfe. 



The beginnings of this friendship have been told by Hooker 

 himself in the ' Life of Darwin,' ii. 19. 



My first meeting with Mr. Darwin [he tells us] was in 

 1839, in Trafalgar Square. I was walking with an officer 

 who .aad been his shipmate for a short time in the Beagle 

 seven years before, but who had not, I beheve, since met 

 him. I was introduced ; the interview was of course brief, 

 and the memory that I carried away and still retain was 

 that of a rather tall and rather broad-shouldered man, with 

 a slight stoop, an agreeable and animated expression when 

 talking, beetle brows, and a hollow but mellow voice ; and 

 that his greeting of his old acquaintance was sailor-like — 

 that is, delightfully frank and cordial. [^ ! 



It has akeady been told how the proofs of the 'Voyage of the 

 Beagle ' reached him through the Lyells in the spring of that 



