d at that pitch of bigotry that I
look at it as proved!

LETTER 375. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, December 25th, 1866.

I was about to write to-day, when your jolly letter came this morning,
to tell you that after carefully going over the N.Z. Flora, I find that
there are only about thirty reputed indigenous Dicot. annuals, of
which almost half, not being found by Banks and Solander, are probably
non-indigenous. This is just 1/20th of the Dicots., or, excluding the
doubtful, about 1/40th, whereas the British proportion of annuals is
1/4.6 amongst Dicots.!!! Of the naturalised New Zealand plants one-half
are annual! I suppose there can be no doubt but that a deciduous-leaved
vegetation affords more conditions for vegetable life than an evergreen
one, and that it is hence that we find countries characterised by
uniform climates to be poor in species, and those to be evergreens. I
can now work this point out for New Zealand and Britain. Japan may be
an exception: it is an extraordinary evergreen country, and has many
species apparently, but it has so much novelty that it may not be so
rich in species really as it hence looks, and I do believe it is very
poor. It has very few annuals. Then, again, I think that the number of
plants with irregular flowers, and especially such as require insect
agency, diminishes much with evergreenity. Hence in all humid temperate
regions we have, as a rule, few species, many evergreens, few annuals,
few Leguminosae and orchids, few lepidoptera and other flying
insects, many Coniferae, Amentaceae, Gramineae, Cyperaceae, and other
wind-fertilised trees and plants, etc. Orchids and Leguminosae are
scarce in islets, because the necessary fertilising insects have not
migrated with the plants. Perhaps you have published this.

LETTER 376. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 9th [1867].

I like the first part of your paper in the "Gard. Chronicle" (376/1.
The lecture on Insular Floras ("Gard. Chron." January 1867).) to an
extraordinary degree: you never, in my opinion, wrote anything better.
You ask for all, even minute criticisms. In the first column you speak
of no alpine plants and no replacement by zones, which will strike
every one with astonishment who has read Humboldt and Webb on Zones on
Teneriffe. Do you not mean boreal or arctic plants? (376/2. The passage
which seems to be referred to does mention the absence of BOREAL
plants.) In the third column you speak as if savages (376/3.