Summary

FD and CD have been interested in AdeC’s diagram for illustrating inheritance. The difficulty of estimating different qualities in oneself and others is very great. Encloses a diagram illustrating how FD compares himself with his parents. CD has filled in a comparison with his father. It shows he resembles his father more than FD resembles CD. [The qualities compared are: stature, hair, eyes, pulse, musical capacity, ability to draw, tendency toward biological sciences, tendency toward mathematical sciences, perseverence, memory, aptitude for foreign languages.]

Summary

Thanks for Insectivorous plants.

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Thanks for Cross and self-fertilisation.

Discusses geographical implications of inbreeding. Can the length of time an insular flora has been isolated be estimated by its weakness due to inbreeding?

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Introduces his son Casimir, who is visiting England.

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Thanks for Forms of flowers.

In his Monographiae phanerogamarum [vol. 1 (1878)] he discusses transitional forms of dioecism in three genera of Smilax.

Criticises CD’s use of the words "purpose" and "end", but acknowledges that in English they can mean both cause and effect.

Summary

Will be interested in reading AdeC’s paper on Smilax. The transition from hermaphroditic to unisexual condition is a perplexing problem.

CD agrees that there is much justice in AdeC’s criticism of his use of the terms "object", "end", and "purpose" but thinks "those who believe that organs have been gradually modified by natural selection for a special purpose, may I think use the above terms correctly though no conscious being has intervened".

CD and Francis are hard at work on the function of "bloom" but CD doubts that the experiments will tell them much.

Does AdeC have a decided opinion on whether plants with glaucous leaves are more frequent in hot or dry than in cold or wet countries?

Francis has been getting "striking" results from feeding meat to Drosera.

Summary

Thanks for Francis Darwin’s Dipsacus paper.

Dislikes the word "protoplasm", because improved microscopes will uncover more fundamental substances. Also "plasma" merely hides the ignorance of modern chemists.

Expects waxy, glaucous-leaved plants to be most frequent in dry temperate climates.

Summary

Speculates that the function of "bloom" is to prevent evaporation.

Raised CD’s question about the geographical distribution of glaucous plants at recent botanical meeting.

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AdeC’s two letters on bloom will be very useful; his remarks on evaporation and absorption seem very just. CD has made few experiments as yet. The investigation has been tedious and difficult.

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Congratulations on CD’s long-overdue election to the French Academy of Sciences.

Summary

CD cannot say he cares greatly about his election to the Institut but he does care for the sympathy of his friends.

Will look to Smilax when he returns to Down.

Regrets the insecurity of the identification of fossil leaves.

He has heard that De Bary has cultivated Utricularia with and without aquatic animals and that the plants that have been fed flourished "in a stupendous manner".

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Thanks for AdeC’s Phytographie [1880]. CD finds in it a number of "philosophical" remarks new to him. The work would have been invaluable to him in dealing with puzzles when writing his cirripede monographs.

Describes his system of keeping notes on separate pieces of paper filed in several scores of large portfolios.

Has just sent MS of Movement in plants to the printer. Thinks he has suceeded in showing "that all the more important great classes of movements are due to the modification of a kind of movement common to all plants from their earliest youth".

Summary

Finds CD was correct in Variation: hybrid bees tend to sting more often than pure-bred bees.

Preparing a second edition of the chapter on the origin of cultivated plants in his Géographie botanique. The work done since 1855 confirms his opinions.

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Thanks for Movement in plants. Praises the terms CD introduces, but criticises CD’s use of the teleological word "purpose".

Outlines his efforts to study the inheritance of characters in his family. F. Galton overemphasises the inheritance of good qualities.

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Thanks AdeC for interesting letter. CD has been annoyed by the multitude of new terms lately invented in all branches of biology in Germany. What AdeC says about the word "purpose" made CD vow not to use it again, but it is difficult to cure oneself of a vicious habit and difficult to avoid for anyone who tries to make out the use of a structure.

Francis will write about the diagram [see 13642].

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Thanks for a "grand volume" [vol. 3 of Monographiae phanerogamarum (1878–96)].

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AdeC thinks Monographiae phanerogamarum may be of some use to CD for the most nearly correct names to adopt.

Summary

Sends Origin as testimony to great benefit CD derived from AdeC’s works on distribution.

Summary

Has read the Origin several times. His position is like Asa Gray’s: he wishes to believe in descent, but proofs of natural selection are lacking.

Looks forward to CD’s promised large book.

Thanks for Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Did CD sow the seeds of his crosses? One would like to know whether the two forms reappear at random.

Summary

Is pleased that AdeC is interested in the Primula case ["Dimorphic condition of Primula", Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Is pursuing analogous experiments on other plants and on seedlings raised from the unions.

CD’s "large work" progresses slowly owing to ill health and his work on Orchids.

CD is not surprised that AdeC is unwilling to admit natural selection – "the subject hardly admits of direct proof or evidence. It will be believed in only by those who think that it connects & partly explains several large classes of facts".

Hopes AdeC will publish on Quercus

and rejoices that he intends to return to the study of geographical distribution. No one can claim to have read AdeC’s truly great work on that subject [Géographie botanique (1855)] with more care than CD.