I855-] GERMINATION EXPERIMENTS. 4^ 



triumph. The children at first were tremendously eager, and 

 asked me often, " whether I should beat Dr. Hooker ! " The 

 cress and lettuce have just vegetated well after twenty-one 

 days' immersion. But I will write no more, which is a great 

 virtue in me ; for it is to me a very great pleasure telling you 

 everything I do. 



... If you knew some of the experiments (if they may be 

 so-called) which I am trying, you would have a good right 

 to sneer, for they are so absurd even in my opinion that I dare 

 not tell you. 



Have not some men a nice notion of experimentising? 

 I have had a letter telling me that seeds must have great 

 power of resisting salt water, for otherwise how could they 

 get to islands ? This is the true way to solve a problem ! 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down [1855]. 



My dear Hooker, — You have been a very good man to 

 exhale some of your satisfaction in writing two notes to me ; 

 you could not have taken a better line in my opinion ; but 

 as for showing your satisfaction in confounding my experi- 

 ments, I assure you I am quite enough confounded — those 

 horrid seeds, which, as you truly observe, if they sink they 

 won't float. 



I have written to Scoresby and have had a rather dry 

 answer, but very much to the purpose, and giving me no 

 hopes of any law unknown to me which might arrest their 

 everlasting descent into the deepest depths of the ocean. By 

 the way it was very odd, but I talked to Col. Sabine for half 

 an hour on the subject, and could not make him see with 

 respect to transportal the difficulty of the sinking question ! 

 The bore is, if the confounded seeds will sink, I have been 

 taking all this trouble in salting the ungrateful rascals for 

 nothing. 



Everything has been going wrong with me lately ; the fish 

 at the Zoolog. Soc. ate up lots of soaked seeds, and in imagi- 



