I will take your letter seriatim. There is good evidence that S.E. England was dry land during the Glacial period. I forget what Austen says, but Mammals prove, I think, that England has been united to the Continent since the Glacial period. I don't see your difficulty about what I say on the breaking of an isthmus: if Panama was broken through would not the fauna of the Pacific flow into the W. Indies, or vice versa, and destroy a multitude of creatures? Of course I'm no judge, but I thought De Candolle had made out his case about small areas of trees. You will find at page 112, 3rd edition "Origin," a too concise allusion to the Madeira flora being a remnant of the Tertiary European flora. I shall feel deeply interested by reading your botanical difficulties against occasional immigration. The facts you give about certain plants, such as the heaths, are certainly very curious. (366/2. In Hooker's lecture he gives St. Dabeoc's Heath and Calluna vulgaris as the most striking of the few boreal plants in the Azores. Darwin seems to have been impressed by the boreal character of the Azores, thus taking the opposite view to that of Sir Joseph. See Letter 370, note.) I thought the Azores flora was more boreal, but what can you mean by saying that the Azores are nearer to Britain and Newfoundland than to Madeira?--on the globe they are nearly twice as far off. (366/3. See Letter 368.) With respect to sea currents, I formerly made enquiries at Madeira, but cannot now give you the results; but I remember that the facts were different from what is generally stated: I think that a ship wrecked on the Canary Islands was thrown up on the coast of Madeira.

You speak as if only land-shells differed in Madeira and Porto Santo: does my memory deceive me that there is a host of representative insects?

When you exorcise at Nottingham occasional means of transport, be honest, and admit how little is known on the subject. Remember how recently you and others thought that salt water would soon kill seeds. Reflect that there is not a coral islet in the ocean which is not pretty well clothed with plants, and the fewness of the species can hardly with justice be attributed to the arrival of few seeds, for coral islets close to other land support only the same limited vegetation. Remember that no one knew that seeds would remain for many hours in the crops of birds and retain their vitality; that fish eat seeds, and that when the fish are devoured by birds the seeds can germinate, etc. Remember that every year many birds are blown to Madeira and to the Bermudas. Remember that dust is blown 1,000 miles over the Atlantic. Now, bearing all this in mind, would it not be a prodigy if an unstocked island did not in the course of ages receive colonists from coasts whence the currents flow, trees are drifted and birds are driven by gales. The objections to islands being thus stocked are, as far as I understand, that certain species and genera have been more freely introduced, and others less freely than might have been expected. But then the sea kills some sorts of seeds, others are killed by the digestion of birds, and some would be more liable than others to adhere to birds' feet. But we know so very little on these points that it seems to me that we cannot at all tell what forms would probably be introduced and what would not. I do not for a moment pretend that these means of introduction can be proved to have acted; but they seem to me sufficient, with no valid or heavy objections, whilst there are, as it seems to me, the heaviest objections on geological and on geographical distribution grounds (pages 387, 388, "Origin" (366/4. Edition III., or Edition VI., page 323.) to Forbes' enormous continental extensions. But I fear that I shall and have bored you.

LETTER 367. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(367/1. In a letter of July 31st, Sir J.D. Hooker wrote, "You must not suppose me to be a champion of continental connection, because I am not agreeable to trans-oceanic migration...either hypothesis appears to me well to cover the facts of oceanic floras, but there are grave objections to both, botanical to yours, geological to Forbes'.")

The following interesting letters give some of Sir Joseph's difficulties.)

You mention ("Journal") no land-birds, except introduced, upon St. Helena. Beatson (Introduction xvii) mentions one (367/2. Aegialitis sanctae- helenae, a small plover "very closely allied to a species found in South Africa, but presenting certain differences which entitle it to the rank of a peculiar species" (Wallace, "Island Life," page 294). In the earlier editions of the "Origin" (e.g. Edition III., page 422) Darwin wrote that "Madeira does not possess one peculiar bird." In Edition IV., 1866, page 465, the mistake was put right.) "in considerable numbers," resembles sand- lark--is called "wire bird," has long greenish legs like wires, runs fast, eyes large, bill moderately long, is rather shy, does not possess much powers of flight. What was it? I have written to ask Sclater, also about birds of Madeira and Azores. It is a very curious thing that the Azores do not contain the (non-European) American genus Clethra, that is found in Madeira and Canaries, and that the Azores contain no trace of American element (beyond what is common to Madeira), except a species of Sanicula, a genus with hooked bristles to the small seed-vessels. The European Sanicula roams from Norway to Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde, Cameroons, Cape of Good Hope, and from Britain to Japan, and also is, I think, in N. America; but does not occur in the Azores, where it is replaced by one that is of a decidedly American type.

This tells heavily against the doctrine that joins Atlantis to America, and is much against your trans-oceanic migration--for considering how near the Azores are to America, and in the influence of the Gulf-stream and prevalent winds, it certainly appears marvellous. Not only are the Azores in a current that sweeps the coast of U. States, but they are in the S.W. winds, and in the eye of the S.W. hurricanes!