Farewell; forgive me for indulging in this prose, and believe me, with cordial thanks,
Your ever attached disciple, C. DARWIN.
P.S.—When, and if, you reread, I supplicate you to write on the margin the word "expand," when too condensed, or "not clear." or "?." Such marks would cost you little trouble, and I could copy them and reflect on them, and their value would be infinite to me.
My larger book will have to be wholly re-written, and not merely the present volume expanded; so that I want to waste as little time over this volume as possible, if another edition be called for; but I fear the subject will be too perplexing, as I have treated it, for general public.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorkshire, Sunday [October 23rd, 1859].
My dear Hooker,
I congratulate you on your 'Introduction' ("Australian Flora".) being in fact finished. I am sure from what I read of it (and deeply I shall be interested in reading it straight through), that it must have cost you a prodigious amount of labour and thought. I shall like very much to see the sheet, which you wish me to look at. Now I am so completely a gentleman, that I have sometimes a little difficulty to pass the day; but it is astonishing how idle a three weeks I have passed. If it is any comfort to you, pray delude yourself by saying that you intend "sticking to humdrum science." But I believe it just as much as if a plant were to say that, "I have been growing all my life, and, by Jove, I will stop growing." You cannot help yourself; you are not clever enough for that. You could not even remain idle, as I have done, for three weeks! What you say about Lyell pleases me exceedingly; I had not at all inferred from his letters that he had come so much round. I remember thinking, above a year ago, that