seeds. To-day I replant the same seeds as above after fourteen days' immersion. As many sea-currents go a mile an hour, even in a week they might be transported 168 miles; the Gulf Stream is said to go fifty and sixty miles a day. So much and too much on this head; but my geese are always swans...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April 14th, 1855.]
...You are a good man to confess that you expected the cress would be killed in a week, for this gives me a nice little triumph. The children at first were tremendously eager, and asked me often, "whether I should beat Dr. Hooker!" The cress and lettuce have just vegetated well after twenty-one days' immersion. But I will write no more, which is a great virtue in me; for it is to me a very great pleasure telling you everything I do.
...If you knew some of the experiments (if they may be so-called) which I am trying, you would have a good right to sneer, for they are so ABSURD even in MY opinion that I dare not tell you.
Have not some men a nice notion of experimentising? I have had a letter telling me that seeds MUST have GREAT power of resisting salt water, for otherwise how could they get to islands? This is the true way to solve a problem!
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1855].
My dear Hooker,
You have been a very good man to exhale some of your satisfaction in writing two notes to me; you could not have taken a better line in my opinion; but as for showing your satisfaction in confounding my experiments, I assure you I am quite enough confounded—those horrid seeds, which, as you truly observe, if they sink they won't float.