Now then, I think that is enough about my “Ich.”  You shall have a photographic image of him and my wife and child as soon as I can find time to have them done...

1 Eldon Place, Broadstairs, September 5, 1858.

My dear Hooker,

I am glad Mrs. Hooker has found rest for the sole of her foot.  I returned her Tyndall’s letter yesterday.

Wallace’s impetus seems to have set Darwin going in earnest, and I am rejoiced to hear we shall learn his views in full, at last.  I look forward to a great revolution being effected.  Depend upon it, in natural history, as in everything else, when the English mind fully determines to work a thing out, it will do it better than any other.

I firmly believe in the advent of an English epoch in science and art, which will lick the Augustan (which, by the bye, had neither science nor art in our sense, but you know what I mean) into fits.  So hooray, in the first place, for the Genera plantarum.  I can quite understand the need of a new one, and I am right glad you have undertaken it.  It seems to me to be in all respects the sort of work for you, and exactly adapted to your environment at Kew.  I remember you mentioned to me some time ago that you were thinking of it.

I wish I could even hope that such a thing would be even attempted in the course of this generation for animals.

But with animal morphology in the state in which it is now, we have no terminology that will stand, and consequently concise and comparable definitions are in many cases impossible.

If old Dom.  Gray [John Edward Gray (1800-1875) appointed Keeper of the Zoological Collections in the British Museum in 1840.) were but an intelligent activity instead of being a sort of zoological whirlwind, what a deal he might do.  And I am hopeless of Owen’s comprehending what classification means since the publication of the wonderful scheme which adorns the last edition of his lectures.

As you say, I have found this a great place for “work of price.”  I have finished the “Oceanic Hydrozoa” all but the bookwork, for which I must have access to the B. M. Library—­but another week will do him.  My notes are from eight to twelve years old, and really I often have felt like the editor of somebody else’s posthumous work.

Just now I am busy over the “Croonian,” which must be done before I return.  I have been pulling at all the arguments as a spider does at his threads, and I think they are all strong.  If so the thing will do some good.

I am perplexed about the N. H. Collections.  The best thing, I firmly believe, would be for the Economic Zoology and a set of well selected types to go to Kensington, but I should be sorry to see the scientific collection placed under any such auspices as those which govern the “Bilers.”  I don’t believe the clay soil of the Regent’s Park would matter a fraction—­and to have a grand scientific zoological and paleontological collection for working purposes close to the Gardens where the living beasts are, would be a grand thing.  I should not wonder if the affair is greatly discussed at the B. A. at Leeds, and then, perhaps, light will arise.