RECORD: Darwin, C. R. n.d. Abstract of Cooper, Journal of a naturalist in the United States. CUL-DAR46.1.29-30. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 8.2022. RN1

NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volume CUL-DAR46.1 contains Notes for Natural selection chap. 5 'Struggle for existence'.

Susan Fenimore Cooper. 1855. Journal of a naturalist in the United States. London.


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Journal of a Naturalist in U. States by Miss Cooper 1855

p. 89 speaking of the numerous introduced plants "our own wild flowers are very much less common than they were 40 years since. Some kinds are diminishing rapidly. Some which formerly abounded as the mocassin flower have disappeared. (So it must have been La Plata)— She has evidently carefully enquired & observed — Mocassin Plant is Cypripedium A. Gray

p. 118. "A very large proportion of the most common weeds in our fields & gardens & about our buildings are strangers to the soil" — they "are now choking up all our way-sides" "Some few American plants have also been carried to Europe, but the number is very small"

p. 120 "On our own soil the amount of native weeds when compared with the throngs brought from the Old World." — she mention nine native weeds.

"It is also singular that amongst these tribes (ie genera) which are of a divided nature, some being native & others introduced, the last are generally

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the most numerous; for instance the native chickweed, and plantains & thistles are less common here than the European kinds."

p 140 "The grasses which fill our meadows are very many of them foreign plants

p. 142 of some 150 grasses about 1/5 seem of foreign origin (see A. Gray) but in importance & extent they cause "the native grasses scarcely rank more than as 1 to 4 in our meadows & cultivated land. The Clovers, though thoroughly naturalised are most of them imported plants

p. 231. Poppies not found in corn-crops in her district, though so common in Europe that (p. 233) "the very oldest statues of Ceres represent her with poppies in her garlands"— Good—

(I much think plants have become adapted & modified in constitution for cultivated land. Hence do not change in America.—

But grasses in meadows must be due to prepotent force of Old World forms.—


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