INFOEMATION FOR DARWIN - 245 
Beview, containing an article on Ross's Voyage, written, I 
suspect, by Sir D. Brewster. There is the most flaming 
flattery in it of my share in the book — especially the chapter 
on Cattle Hu7iting. Pray tell my mother of this : (I suspect 
I must be a sort of humbug after all). My Journal shall be 
copied and sent, as soon as I can get settled : for I know you 
want it. You ma}^ easily suppose that, surrounded* with 
plants to dry, information of every kind to secure, &c., a 
Griffin, like myself, has his hands sufficiently full of occupa- 
tion. I try hard to understand everything as I go on, — 
but I am sorry to find the attempt is hopeless ! 
But people were not to be persuaded that an Indian hill 
storm which he describes to his sister Elizabeth could be inferior 
to an Antarctic storm. 
Though more tremendous looking from the thunder and 
lightning, it was not so strong as many S. Polar squalls 
I have felt. People won't believe that here, and so I say 
nothing about it. 
A double letter to Darwin (February 20, and ]March 4 and 16, 
1848) which opens with the words, ' Though our correspondence 
has not ebbed so low for full four years, you have been "so 
constantly in my thoughts that it appears far from strange to 
be writing to you,' and ends with ' love to the children,' is too 
long to quote in full. It answers many questions on which 
Darwin had asked him to obtain information ; e.g. on the habits 
of the Cheetah and the way in which it is used in hunting and 
its curious refusal to hunt more than one season ; on the exten- 
sion of different species, v/here he finds an apparently undefined 
rule ; the Soane, for instance, in the case of the antelopes and 
the gaur, in providing a line of demarcation, like the Obi in 
Siberia, which Humboldt, when Hooker visited him in 1845, 
adduced as * dividing two Botanical regions, and (being) one 
of the strong arguments against the migration of plants, as 
large rivers do not in other cases prevent what is considered 
migration.' So of elephants, dogs, cattle, squirrels, swallows, 
saurians ; the desiccation by destruction of forests ; local 
geology : in short, ' I am perfectly bewildered by the facts 
hourly thrown before me, whose importance I can scarce 
appreciate from my ignorance of Indian natural history ; 
