News of Cambridge: the recent examinations; memorial tablet for Marmaduke Ramsay.
News of family and friends: W. D. Fox will marry in the spring; private theatricals at Eaton house-party.
Beagle is again in Brazil because of need to check on "singular disagreements in the Longitudes".
Pleased by Sedgwick’s praise.
Robert Brown has mistreated Capt. P. P. King by holding back for nine years the plants collected on King’s voyage of the Adventure and Beagle.
Provides another case of apparently pure bred pointers producing litter with one setter puppy. Correspondent was told that this occurred in several litters; gives names of owners and others who can corroborate the information.
On papilionaceous flowers and CD’s theory that there are no eternal hermaphrodites. Connects this theory to absence of small-flowered legumes in New Zealand and the absence of small bees as pollinators.
Has finished with and is disposing of his pigeons.
Invites WBT to Down; would like to see his bees’ cells.
Wants examples of insects (especially Diptera) in which embryo resembles adult, to show that the metamorphic stages may be lost.
Thanks CD for the Origin; AS has read the book "with more pain than pleasure". CD has deserted "the true method of induction" and many of his wide conclusions are "based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved". His "grand principle – natural selection" is "but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts".
On the Origin. Before expressing his disagreements, CJFB praises CD’s labour, patience, fairness, and other qualities which make the work "one of the most important that has ever appeared in Natural History". [See 2690.]
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