Summary

A sheep-breeder friend has found that he can produce twins and triplets in his flock by "a sudden supply of improved feeding stuff" at time of conception. This would appear to remove the objection CD refers to in Descent that animals supplied with an excess of food become sterile.

Summary

Reprint of Origin will bring number to 19500 – so title-page may safely read "Twentieth Thousand".

Summary

Comments on GJR’s lecture on evolution.

Regrets failure of graft experiments.

Hopes GJR will not give up on Pangenesis. Mentions article by Gustav Jäger on Pangenesis.

Summary

Working hard on physiology of plants.

His son George sees no reason to change his view on marriage of cousins.

George’s astronomical work is too deep for CD.

Summary

Is obliged to JAWM for the honour done in sending CD his Der Kreislauf des Lebens (1877).

Summary

Describes her and W. E. Darwin’s honeymoon.

Summary

Thanks RAV for valuable letter [11232]. CD too ignorant of anatomy to form a decided opinion, but is inclined to attribute spiral folds to reversion and the valves to partial abortion of the fold. Asks RAV to verify by examining lower intestine of an opossum for the structure. If missing he would hesitate to allude to reversion. If RAV can prove the nature of these remnants it would be a conclusion of much interest.

Summary

Discusses planting onions for experiment.

Summary

Offers to send green insects that give off a powerful odour of napthalene.

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Sends a drawing [missing] of alleged fossil man found in Colorado. JM is certain it is a hoax perpetrated by P. T. Barnum. It was designed to conform to CD’s well-known views of man’s ancestor.

Summary

Sends his paper ["Die selbst-sterilität des Roggens", Landwirtsch. Jahrb. 6 (1877): 1073–6] on self-sterility in Secale cereale. AWR was wrong in claiming Beta vulgaris was perfectly self-sterile.

Reports results of crossing wheat varieties. In the first generation offspring are always uniform; some are intermediate, some resemble one parent. In the second generation, on the contrary, he got a diversity of parental and intermediate forms.

Summary

"Many thanks for the specimens which will be very useful whenever a new Edition is required."

Summary

Would like the letters from grandfather [Erasmus Darwin] to J. A. H. Reimarus to be published.

Summary

Sends corrected sheets of Cross and self-fertilisation. How many copies will be printed? Asks whether he is correct in thinking that he has not been paid for the July printing.

Plans to correct Forms of flowers when new edition is needed.

Summary

Thanks him for sending his Birds of Connecticut.

Summary

Writes for CD, thanking TFC for his pamphlet on Selliera. CD was so interested that he ventured to forward it to Nature for publication.

Summary

Messrs Clowes will make CD’s corrections and adjust index of Cross and self-fertilisation. Of this work only 1500 copies have been printed. Edition is sold out and account is enclosed.

Of 500 copies of Climbing plants [2d ed.] printed in June 1876, 450 were still unsold as of June 1877.

Summary

Sends the name of a plant: Cotyledon stolonifera.

Summary

Offers to sell CD a portrait of Dr Erasmus Darwin by Joseph Wright of Derby.

Summary

He has heard CD is about to be elected to the Académie des Sciences.

Cross and self-fertilisation, with its emphasis on insect pollination, helps explain the problem he has worked on for so long: i.e., the rapid diversification of angiosperms in the fossil record occurs in conjunction with the diversification of insects.