222 THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 
the world under the most advantageous conditions. I 
know myself to be deficient in education and I can feel my 
abilities to be only second-rate, and so can only feel truly 
thankful that I have light enough to see to whom I owe the 
appreciation of my works by the pubhc. 
I have done a good deal here both with marsh and fossil 
plants. From one of your letters to my Father I think you 
possibly mistake the nature of my studies as connected with 
the Survey. I am no Geologist : my work is fossil botany ; 
as legitimately a branch of Botany as is Muscology ; fossil 
plants, though imperfect, are still jyure plants ; and, though 
dead as species, they form and show links between existing 
forms, upon which they throw a marvellous hght. 
Here also must be noted the beginnings of the close friend- 
ship with Charles Darwin which was to be lifelong. They 
had aheady been in close touch over botanical matters ; 
Hooker had been working out Darwin's plants from the Gala- 
pagos Islands ; now on October 10 he has gone to stay with 
Darwin in Kent for three days, and on January 14, 1847, again 
he goes for a visit of a week or ten days. 
