488 THE MAKING OF THE ' OKIGIN ' 
year, while he was hurrying on the last of his medical studies 
in order to take his degree before sailing with Eoss, and how, 
there being no other time available, he slept with them under 
his pillow, and read them before getting up in the morning. 
They impressed me profoundly, I might say despairingly, 
with the variety of acquirements, mental and physical, 
required in a naturalist who should follow in Darwin's 
footsteps, whilst they stimulated me to enthusiasm in the 
desire to travel and observe. 
In the letters from the Antarctic there are several references 
to Darwin, who saw various of these letters through the Lyells. 
The correspondence between them, as has been told on 
p. 169, began in December 1843, when Darwin wrote to con- 
gratulate him on his return (CD. ii. 21) and urged the import- 
ance of correlating the Fuegian Flora with that of the Cordillera 
and of Europe, at the same time offering his own collections 
of plants from the Galapagos Islands, from Patagonia and 
Fuegia for examination. 
This led to me sending him an outline of the conclusions 
I had formed regarding the distribution of plants in the 
southern regions, and the necessity of assuming the destruc- 
tion of considerable areas of land to account for the relations 
of the flora of the so-called Antarctic Islands. I do not sup- 
pose that any of these ideas were new to him, but they led 
to an animated and lengthy correspondence full of instruction. 
Only the first two or three letters open with the formal 
* My dear Sir ' of the period ; by February 1844 Darwin 
inaugurates ' Dear Hooker ' to his * co-circum-wanderer and 
fellow labourer,* while from the day of his impending departure 
to India the ' very truly ' or ' very sincerely ' of either signature, 
gradually merging in ' Ever yours,' is lost in ' Your affectionate 
friend ' or ' Yours affectionately ' maintained by both to the 
end. 
Acquaintance ripened swiftly into friendship. * Farewell ! ' 
Darwin concludes a letter in 1845. ' What a good thing is 
community of tastes ! I feel as if I had known you for fifty 
years. Adios 1 ' And ' forty years on * the sympathetic 
