I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I adopted them, and I have done so solely and entirely from an independent study of plants themselves.

From my earliest childhood I nourished and cherished the desire to make a creditable journey in a new country, and write such a respectable account of its natural history as should give me a niche amongst the scientific explorers of the globe I inhabit, and hand my name down as a useful contributor of original matter.

Plants, in a state of nature, are always warring with one another, contending for the monopoly of the soil,-the stronger ejecting the weaker,-the more vigorous overgrowing and killing the more delicate. Every modification of climate, every disturbance of the soil, every interference with the existing vegetation of an area, favours some species at the expense of others.

All I ever aim to do is to put the Development hypothesis in the same coach as the creation one. It will only be a question of who is to ride outside & who in after all.

In [David] Douglas's success in life ... his great activity, undaunted courage, singular abstemiousness, and energetic zeal, at once pointed him out as an individual eminently calculated to do himself credit as a scientific traveler.

I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I adopted them, and I have done so solely and entirely from an independent study of plants themselves.

I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.