THE DARWIN- WALLACE JUBILEE 465 



At [Sir] F. Darwin's request he promptly put together his 

 remembrances of what he said to the deputation, though he 

 would have liked to have a week to shape it. As he sent the 

 draft on July 3, he added : 



To F. Darwin 



was indeed a gleeful thing to me having your father's 

 son as a member of the deputation. 



I am overwhelmed with addresses, British, French, 

 Swedish, Norsk, German, Dutch, Italian, Finnish ! Austrian, 

 and Russian, all too elaborate to answer cursorily. 



What really is wanted are portable phonographs that we 

 could send by post, charged with our worded answers to such 

 communications. 



I hope I am right in saying I was the oldest living Fellow 

 R.S. 



The chief event of 1908 was the jubilee of the communi- 

 cation of the Darwin- Wallace paper to the Linnean Society 

 in 1858. Hooker was the sole survivor of those immediately 

 concerned, and though now ninety-one, accepted the Society's 

 invitation to speak on the subject. He it was to whom Darwin, 

 then in great distress over the illness and death of one of his 

 children, had first confided Wallace's unexpected letter ; he 

 had first suggested the joint publication and the obtaining of 

 Lyell's judgment, and had offered to write to Wallace ex- 

 plaining matters. But one or two of the letters that then 

 passed were missing ; and he wrote anxiously to [Sir] F. 

 Darwin, who had gone over all the existing material in 

 the ' More Letters,' for documentary confirmation of his 

 recollections. But even when satisfied that his memory 

 had not deceived him, his hatred of reclame raised other 

 doubts, and he begged not only [Sir] F. Darwin, but his 

 brothers WilHam and George, to say if they ' entertain the 

 smallest doubt of the expediency or propriety of telling the 

 public of the part I took.' 



The address was delivered at the afternoon meeting of 

 the Linnean on July 1. Hooker had intended not to go to 

 the evening meeting, ' remembering that the soirees of the 



