Gardner: London, 1846.) are not considered by him as
usually temperate forms, I am, of course, silenced; but Hooker looked
over the MS. chapter some ten years ago and did not score out my remarks
on them, and he is generally ready enough to pitch into my ignorance
and snub me, as I often deserve. My wonder was how any, ever so few,
temperate forms reached the mountains of Brazil; and I supposed they
travelled by the rather high land and ranges (name forgotten) which
stretch from the Cordillera towards Brazil. Cordillera genera of plants
have also, somehow, reached the Silla of Caracas. When I think of
the vegetation of New Zealand and west coast of South America, where
glaciers now descend to or very near to the sea, I feel it rash to
conclude that all tropical forms would be destroyed by a considerably
cooler period under the Equator.

LETTER 364. TO C. LYELL. Down, Thursday, February 15th [1866].

Many thanks for Hooker's letter; it is a real pleasure to me to read his
letters; they are always written with such spirit. I quite agree that
Agassiz could never mistake weathered blocks and glacial action; though
the mistake has, I know, been made in two or three quarters of the
world. I have often fought with Hooker about the physicists putting
their veto on the world having been cooler; it seems to me as irrational
as if, when geologists first brought forward some evidence of elevation
and subsidence, a former Hooker had declared that this could not
possibly be admitted until geologists could explain what made the earth
rise and fall. It seems that I erred greatly about some of the plants on
the Organ Mountains. (364/1. "On the Organ Mountains of Brazil some few
temperate European, some Antarctic, and some Andean genera were found
by Gardner, which did not exist in the low intervening hot countries"
("Origin," Edition VI., page 336).) But I am very glad to hear about
Fuchsia, etc. I cannot make out what Hooker does believe; he seems to
admit the former cooler climate, and almost in the same breath to spurn
the idea. To retort Hooker's words, "it is inexplicable to me" how he
can compare the transport of seeds from the Andes to the Organ Mountains
with that from a continent to an island. Not to mention the much greater
distance, there are no currents of water from one to the other; and
what on earth should make a bird fly that distance without resting
many times? I do not at all suppose that nearly all tropical forms w