Footnotes

HOOKER HELPS DARWIN FIND A NEW GARDENER AND PROMPTS DARWIN TO BEGIN RESEARCH INTO HELIOTROPISM: Our letter is one of a series from October 1879 in which Joseph Dalton Hooker is charged with suggesting the name of a prospective gardener to help Darwin at Down House, where Hooker was a frequent visitor. It is published in the Darwin Correspondence Project online (ref.12249F) and they suggest that the candidate mentioned here is likely to be William Duguid (c.1849-1923), a Scot, who, according to the Down House accounts, was employed as Darwin's head gardener in 1879 but left the following year after a scandal (involving 'mysterious dealings in cows' according to the DCP). In the letter, Darwin also thanks Hooker for reminding him about heliotropism (ie. the movement of plants in relation to light) of insectivorous plants. The Project has not identified further correspondence between Darwin and Hooker on the subject, but in 1880, the year after our letter, Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants, the result of experiments undertaken with his son Francis, in which he concluded that he had not found insectivorous plants to be heliotropic as their priority was to orientate themselves to catch insects rather than receive sunlight.

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was not only Charles Darwin's closest friend, he was his most prolific correspondent, and their letters '...provide a structure within which all the other letters can be explored...', (Darwin Correspondence Project). Their correspondence spans forty years of friendship and illuminates both Darwin's scientific and, as shown here, personal life. The post of Head Gardener needed to be considered carefully. The gardens at Down were a 'living laboratory' where Darwin created experimental beds in order to conduct trials on adaptation, seed dispersal, genetic inheritance, cross-breeding and natural selection (Emily Parker article, Down House website).