1866.] DISTRIBUTION. 339 



only man I ever knew who would care to get out of bed at 

 such a time at night in order to make the correction immedi- 

 ately, instead of waiting till next morning. But as the cor- 

 rection only had reference to a flimsy hypothesis, I certainly 

 was very much impressed by this display of character."] 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, December 10 [1866]. 



.... I have now read the last No. of H. Spencer.* I 

 do not know whether to think it better than the previous 

 number, but it is wonderfully clever, and I dare say mostly 

 true. I feel rather mean when I read him : I could bear, and 

 rather enjoy feeling that he was twice as ingenious and clever 

 as myself, but when I feel that he is about a dozen times 

 my superior, even in the master art of wriggling, I feel ag- 

 grieved. If he had trained himself to observe more, even if 

 at the expense, by the law of balancement, of some loss of 

 thinking power, he would have been a wonderful man. 



.... I am heartily glad you are taking up the Distribu- 

 tion of Plants in New Zealand, and suppose it will make 

 part of your new book. Your view, as I understand it, 

 that New Zealand subsided and formed two or more small 

 islands, and then rose again, seems to me extremely proba- 

 ble When I puzzled my brains about New Zealand, I 



remember I came to the conclusion, as indeed I state in the 

 ' Origin,' that its flora, as well as that of other southern lands, 

 had been tinctured by an Antarctic flora, which must have ex- 

 isted before the Glacial period. I concluded that New Zea- 

 land never could have been closely connected with Australia, 

 though I supposed it had received some few Australian forms 

 by occasional means of transport. Is there any reason to 

 suppose that New Zealand could have been more closely 

 connected with South Australia during the glacial period, 

 when the Eucalypti, &c., might have been driven further 

 North? Apparently there remains only the line, which I 



* ' Principles of Biology.' 



