ER 357. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. [November 1862].

...I have speculated on the probability of there having been a
post-Glacial Arctic-Norwego-Greenland in connection, which would account
for the strong fact, that temperate Greenland is as Arctic as Arctic
Greenland is--a fact, to me, of astounding force. I do confess, that a
northern migration would thus fill Greenland as it is filled, in so far
as the whole flora (temperate and Arctic) would be Arctic,--but then the
same plants should have gone to the other Polar islands, and above all,
so many Scandinavian Arctic plants should not be absent in Greenland,
still less should whole Natural Orders be absent, and above all the
Arctic Leguminosae. It is difficult (as I have told Dawson) to conceive
of the force with which arguments drawn from the absence of certain
familiar ubiquitous plants strike the botanists. I would not throw over
altogether ice-transport and water-transport, but I cannot realise
their giving rise to such anomalies, in the distribution, as Greenland
presents. So, too, I have always felt the force of your objection, that
Greenland should have been depopulated in the Glacial period, but then
reflected that vegetation now ascends I forget how high (about 1,000
feet) in Disco, in 70 deg, and that even in a Glacial ocean there may
always have been lurking-places for the few hundred plants Greenland
now possesses. Supposing Greenland were repeopled from Scandinavia over
ocean way, why should Carices be the chief things brought? Why should
there have been no Leguminosae brought, no plants but high Arctic?--why
no Caltha palustris, which gilds the marshes of Norway and paints the
housetops of Iceland? In short, to my eyes, the trans-oceanic migration
would no more make such an assemblage than special creations would
account for representative species--and no "ingenious wriggling" ever
satisfied me that it would. There, then!

I dined with Henry Christy last night, who was just returned from celt
hunting with Lartet, amongst the Basques,--they are Pyreneans. Lubbock
was there, and told me that my precious speculation was one of Von
Baer's, and that the Finns are supposed to have made the Kjokken
moddings. I read Max Muller a year ago--and quite agree, first part
is excellent; last, on origin of language, fatuous and feeble as a
scientific argument.

LETTER 358. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 12th [1862].

I return by this post Dawson's lecture, which