I am above the forest region, amongst grand rocks & such a torrent as you see in Salvator Rosa's paintings vegetation all a scrub of rhodos. with Pines below me as thick & bad to get through as our Fuegian Fagi on the hill tops, & except the towering peaks of P. S. [perpetual snow] that, here shoot up on all hands there is little difference in the mt scenery—here however the blaze of Rhod. flowers and various colored jungle proclaims a differently constituted region in a naturalist's eye & twenty species here, to one there, always are asking me the vexed question, where do we come from?[Letter to Charles Darwin 24 Jun 1849]
Joseph Dalton Hooker, Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M., G.C.S.I.
biology, charles-darwin, darwin, naturalism, nature, origin-of-life, origin-of-species, plants, rosa, salvator-rosa, scenery, science