part of every being varied, I do not think we should see the same end, or object, gained by such wonderfully diversified means. I hope you are enjoying the country, and are in good health, and are working hard at your Malay Archipelago book, for I will always put this wish in every note I write to you, like some good people always put in a text. My health keeps much the same, or rather improves, and I am able to work some hours daily. With many thanks for your interesting letter. Believe me, my dear Wallace, yours sincerely, CH. DARWIN. CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, August 30 [1866]. My dear Hooker, I was very glad to get your note and the Notts. Newspaper. I have seldom been more pleased in my life than at hearing how successfully your lecture (At the Nottingham meeting of the British Association, August 27, 1866. The subject of the lecture was 'Insular Floras.' See "Gardeners' Chronicle", 1866.) went off. Mrs. H. Wedgwood sent us an account, saying that you read capitally, and were listened to with profound attention and great applause. She says, when your final allegory (Sir Joseph Hooker allegorized the Oxford meeting of the British Association as the gathering of a tribe of savages who believed that the new moon was created afresh each month. The anger of the priests and medicine man at a certain heresy, according to which the new moon is but the offspring of the old one, is excellently given.) began, "for a minute or two we were all mystified, and then came such bursts of applause from the audience. It was thoroughly enjoyed amid roars of laughter and noise, making a most brilliant conclusion." I am rejoiced that you will publish your lecture, and felt sure that sooner or later it would come to this, indeed it would have been a sin if you had not done so. I am especially rejoiced as you give the arguments for occasional transport, with such perfect fairness; these will now receive a fair share of attention, as coming from you a professed botanist. Thanks also for Grove's address; as a whole it strikes me as very good and original, but I was disappointed in the part about Species; it dealt in such generalities that it would apply to any view or no view in particular... And now farewell. I do most heartily rejoice at your success, and for Grove's sake at the brilliant success of the whole meeting. Yours affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN.