I844-] GALAPAGOS FLORA. 385 



fast ripening into friendship. The letter is chiefly of interest 

 as showing the sort of problems then occupying my father's 

 mind :] 



Dear Hooker, — I hope you will excuse the freedom of 

 my address, but I feel that as co-circum-wanderers and as 

 fellow labourers (though myself a very weak one) we may 

 throw aside some of the old-world formality. ... I have just 

 finished a little volume on the volcanic islands which we 

 visited. I do not know how far you care for dry simple 

 geology, but I hope you will let me send you a copy. I 

 suppose I can send it from London by common coach con- 

 veyance. 



... I am going to ask you some Jiiore questions, though I 

 daresay, without asking them, I shall see answers in your 

 work, when published, which will be quite time enough for 

 my purposes. First for the Galapagos, you will see in my 

 Journal, that the Birds, though peculiar species, have a most 

 obvious S. American aspect : I have just ascertained the 

 same thing holds good with the sea-shells. It is so with 

 those plants which are peculiar to this archipelago ; you state 

 that their numerical proportions are continental (is not this a 

 very curious fact .?) but are they related in forms to S. Amer- 

 ica. Do you know of any other case of an archipelago, with 

 the separate islands possessing distinct representative species? 

 I have always intended (but have not yet done so) to examine 

 Webb and Berthelot on the Canary Islands for this object. 

 Talking with Mr. Bentham, he told me that the separate 

 islands of the Sandwich Archipelago possessed distinct repre- 

 sentative species of the same genera of Labiatse : would not 

 this be worth your enquiry .? How is it with the Azores ; to 

 be sure the heavy western gales would tend to diffuse the 

 same species over that group. 



I hope you will (I dare say my hope is quite superfluous) 



attend to this general kind of affinity in isolated islands, 



though I suppose it is more difficult to perceive this sort of 



relation in plants, than in birds or quadrupeds, the groups of 



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