ive
up politics, and science is done for. Many men can make fair M.P.'s; and
how few can work in science like him!

I have been reading a pamphlet by Verlot on "Variation of Flowers,"
which seems to me very good; but I doubt whether it would be worth your
reading. it was published originally in the "Journal d'Hort.," and
so perhaps you have seen it. It is a very good plan this republishing
separately for sake of foreigners buying, and I wish I had tried to get
permission of Linn. Soc. for my Climbing paper, but it is now too late.

Do not forget that you have my paper on hybridism, by Max Wichura.
(505/3. Wichura, M.E., "L'Hybridisation dans le regne vegetal etudiee
sur les Saules," "Arch. Sci. Phys. Nat." XXIII., page 129, 1865.)

I hope you are returned to your work, refreshed like a giant by your
huge breakfasts. How unlucky you are about contagious complaints with
your children!

I keep very weak, and had much sickness yesterday, but am stronger this
morning.

Can you remember how we ever first met? (505/4. See "Life and Letters,"
II., page 19.) It was in Park Street; but what brought us together? I
have been re-reading a few old letters of yours, and my heart is very
warm towards you.

LETTER 506. TO C. LYELL. Down, March 8th [1866].

(506/1. In a letter from Sir Joseph Hooker to Mr. Darwin on February
21st, 1866, the following passage occurs: "I wish I could explain to you
my crude notions as to the Glacial period and your position towards it.
I suppose I hold this doctrine: that there was a Glacial period, but
that it was not one of universal cold, because I think that the
existing distribution of glaciers is sufficiently demonstrative of the
proposition that by comparatively slight redispositions of sea and
land, and perhaps axis of globe, you may account for all the leading
palaeontological phenomena." This letter was sent by Mr. Darwin to Sir
Charles Lyell, and the latter, writing on March 1st, 1866, expresses
his belief that "the whole globe must at times have been superficially
cooler. Still," he adds, "during extreme excentricity the sun would make
great efforts to compensate in perihelion for the chill of a long winter
in aphelion in one hemisphere, and a cool summer in the other. I
think you will turn out to be right in regard to meridional lines of
mountain-chains by which the migrations across the equator took place
while there was contemporaneous tropical heat of certain lowlands, where
plan