What a splendid lot of work you have in hand.
Ever yours, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 13th [1858].
...I have been a little vexed at myself at having asked you not "to pronounce too strongly against Natural Selection." I am sorry to have bothered you, though I have been much interested by your note in answer. I wrote the sentence without reflection. But the truth is, that I have so accustomed myself, partly from being quizzed by my non-naturalist relations, to expect opposition and even contempt, that I forgot for the moment that you are the one living soul from whom I have constantly received sympathy. Believe [me] that I never forget for even a minute how much assistance I have received from you. You are quite correct that I never even suspected that my speculations were a "jam-pot" to you; indeed, I thought, until quite lately, that my MS. had produced no effect on you, and this has often staggered me. Nor did I know that you had spoken in general terms about my work to our friends, excepting to dear old Falconer, who some few years ago once told me that I should do more mischief than any ten other naturalists would do good, [and] that I had half spoiled you already! All this is stupid egotistical stuff, and I write it only because you may think me ungrateful for not having valued and understood your sympathy; which God knows is not the case. It is an accursed evil to a man to become so absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
I was in London yesterday for a few hours with Falconer, and he gave me a magnificent lecture on the age of man. We are not upstarts; we can boast of a pedigree going far back in time coeval with extinct species. He has a grand fact of some large molar tooth in the Trias.
I am quite knocked up, and am going next Monday to revive under Water-cure at Moor Park.
My dear Hooker, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. November 1858.
...I had vowed not to mention my everlasting Abstract to you again, for I am sure I have bothered you far more than enough about it; but, as you allude to its previous publication, I may say that I have the chapters on Instinct and Hybridism to abstract, which may take a fortnight each; and my materials for Palaeontology, Geographical Distribution, and Affinities, being less worked up, I dare say each of these will take me three weeks, so that I shall not have done at soonest till April, and then my Abstract will in bulk make a small volume. I never give more than one or two instances, and I pass over briefly all difficulties, and yet I cannot make my Abstract shorter, to be satisfactory, than I am now doing, and yet it will expand to a small volume...
[About this time my father revived his old knowledge of beetles in helping his boys in their collecting. He sent a short notice to the 'Entomologist's Weekly Intelligencer,' June 25th, 1859, recording the capture of Licinus silphoides, Clytus mysticus, Panagaeus 4-pustulatus. The notice begins with the words, "We three very young collectors having lately taken in the parish of Down," etc., and is signed by three of his boys, but was clearly not written by them. I have a vivid recollection of the pleasure of turning out my bottle of dead beetles for my father to name, and the excitement, in which he fully shared, when any of them proved to be uncommon ones. The following letters to Mr. Fox (November 13, 1858), and to Sir John Lubbock, illustrate this point:]