My dear Hooker

I have forwarded your letter to Lyell at his request: I did not do so at first on account of the nice little sentence about M^rs Busk “being no end of times better than Lyell’s friends”²   I cut off this part, & told him it was about a private affair, & sent the remainder.³ I dare say there is a great deal of truth in your remarks on the glacial affair but we are in a muddle & shall never agree.⁴ I am bigotted to the last inch, & will not yield. I cannot think how you can attach so much weight to the physicists, seeing how Hopkins Hennessey, Haughton & Thompson have enormously disagreed about the rate of cooling of the crust;⁵ remembering Herschel’s speculations about cold space,⁶ & bearing in mind all the recent speculations on change of axis;⁷ I will maintain to the death that y^r case of Fernando Po & Abyssinia is worth ten times more than the belief of a dozen physicists.⁸

Your remarks on my regarding temperate plants & disregarding the tropical plants made me at first uncomfortable, but I soon recovered.⁹ You say that all Botanists would agree that many tropical plants could not withstand a somewhat cooler climate. But I have come not to care at all for general beliefs without the special facts. I have suffered too often from this; thus I found in every book the general statement that a host of flowers were fertilised in the bud,¹⁰—that seeds could not withstand salt-water &c &c.—¹¹ I would far more trust such graphic accounts, as that by you of the mixed vegetation on the Himalayas¹² & other such accounts. And with respect to Tropical plants withstanding the slowly coming on cool period I trust to such facts as yours (& others) about seeds of same species from mountains & plains having acquired a slightly different climatal constitution.¹³ I know all that I have said will excite in you savage contempt towards me. Do not answer this rigmarole, but attack me to your heart’s content & to that of mine, whenever you can come here, & may it be soon.—¹⁴

Hearty thanks, my dear kind friend for all that you say about my improved health; but it is hardly so good as you suppose. Twenty-four hours never pass without 5 or 6 paroxysms of great discomfort of stomach & singing head

Here is a horrid bore (though at same time it pleases me a little) my work on Domestication is stopped for a month or two by a new Edit. of Origin being wanted.¹⁵

Your’s ever affectionately | Ch. Darwin