From William Henry Harvey 3 February 1863
Summary
Is pleased that CD has [Roland] Trimen to collect specimens of Cape orchids. Suggests directions for securing dry specimens of what he draws.
Identifies Disa barbata and D. Cornuta of the Ophridiae.
Author: | William Henry Harvey |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 3 Feb 1863 |
Classmark: | Royal Entomological Society (Trimen papers, box 21: 78) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3966F |
To Asa Gray 23 February [1863]
Summary
Recommends Lyell’s book [Antiquity of man (1863)].
Quotes praise of AG’s pamphlet [see 2938].
Comments on U. S. politics.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 23 Feb [1863] |
Classmark: | Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (55) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4006 |
From Hugh Algernon Weddell 13 May 1863
Summary
Has searched in vain for the Ophrys apifera CD asked for.
Thanks CD for paper on Linum [Collected papers 2: 93–105].
Calls CD’s attention to his observations on Rubiaceae.
Author: | Hugh Algernon Weddell |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 13 May 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 110: B60–1 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4161 |
To J. D. Hooker 3 January [1863]
Summary
Indignant over Owen’s conduct as described in Hugh Falconer’s article on elephants ["On the American fossil elephant of the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 43–114].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 3 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 178 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3898 |
To Asa Gray 4 August [1863]
Summary
Anticipated AG’s attitude on design in orchids. Does he not think that the variations that gave rise to fancy pigeon varieties were accidental?
Has been working hard at Lythrum
and spontaneous movements of tendrils.
Defends Drosera as a "sagacious animal" but does not know whether he will ever publish on it.
Comments on political situation in U. S.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 4 Aug [1863] |
Classmark: | Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (83) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4262 |
From Emma Darwin to Patrick Matthew 21 November [1863]
Summary
CD is too ill to write.
As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]
Author: | Emma Wedgwood; Emma Darwin |
Addressee: | Patrick Matthew |
Date: | 21 Nov [1863] |
Classmark: | National Library of Scotland (Acc.10963) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4344 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … 1860] ). CD also discussed Matthew’s views in the ‘Historical sketch’ that prefaced the third edition of Origin , pp. xiv–xv. See also Dempster 1996 . Darwin’s metaphor appears in Variation 2: 248–9 and 430. See also letter to Asa Gray, …
- … Asa Gray, 4 August [1863] , and n. 4, below). The letter from Matthew has not been found. CD and Matthew also corresponded in 1862 (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter to Patrick Matthew, 13 June [1862] and letter from Patrick Matthew, 3 December 1862 ). Matthew claimed that he anticipated CD’s concept of natural selection in his work on naval timber and arboriculture ( Matthew 1831 ). CD conceded Matthew’s priority in correspondence (see Correspondence vol. 8, letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle , [13 April 1860], …
From George Bentham 21 May 1863
Summary
Returns CD’s pamphlets.
Wishes CD would work out further what keeps certain species immutable for great periods.
Feels himself a convert, but cannot go all lengths with CD.
Feels some reviewers distort CD’s argument.
Author: | George Bentham |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 May 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 160: 157 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4172 |
From Emma Darwin to J. D. Hooker 26 December [1863]
Summary
CD would be pleased to sit for a bust by Thomas Woolner for JDH, but he is too ill now.
Emma’s views on slavery and the Civil War.
Author: | Emma Wedgwood; Emma Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 26 Dec [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 214 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4359 |
From Asa Gray 7 July 1863
Summary
Has extracted CD’s Linum paper [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 36 (1863): 279–84].
Elaborate co-adaptations of orchids and insects demonstrate against "chance blows", whether few, as Oswald Heer would have, or many and slight as CD proposes.
Author: | Asa Gray |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 7 July 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 165: 127, 137 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4234 |
To Thomas Rivers 15 January [1863]
Summary
Particularly interested in TR’s information about peaches. Accepts offer of double-flowering peach-trees.
Will build a small hothouse for experiments.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Thomas Rivers |
Date: | 15 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 185: 83 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3918 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Asa Gray, 2 January [1863] and n. 24). CD refers to Journal of researches , the third edition of Origin , and Orchids . The references are to Zoology , Geology of the ‘Beagle’ , Fossil Cirripedia ( 1851 and 1854 ), and Living Cirripedia ( 1851 and 1854 ). CD refers to a letter in the Gardeners’ Chronicle , 21 July 1860, …
To Charles Lyell 17 March [1863]
Summary
His better opinion [of work of Boucher de Perthes].
Explains his position on CL’s treatment of species.
Mentions positive response to his ideas on the part of a German professor [Ernst Haeckel], Alphonse de Candolle, and a botanical palaeontologist [Gaston de Saporta].
Notes negative reaction of entomologists.
Mentions Falconer’s objections [to Antiquity].
Mentions work of Hooker.
Comments on paper by Owen ["On the aye-aye", Rep. BAAS 32 (1862) pt 2: 114–16]
and CD’s review of Bates’s paper [Collected papers 2: 87–92].
Thinks Natural History Review is excellent.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Date: | 17 Mar [1863] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.291) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4047 |
To Hugh Falconer [25–6 August 1863]
Summary
Thanks for information about Pliocene mammal. Interested in relating process of formation to duration of the species. Oswald Heer’s view that species suddenly formed surely false.
Bad summer with much sickness. Going to Malvern [for water-cure] for a month.
Muddled over phyllotaxy and made out nothing.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Hugh Falconer |
Date: | [25–6 Aug 1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 144: 32 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4277 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1860 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 363–6). By 1863, Heer’s view of new species formation was being presented in the international literature as a rival to CD’s theory of slow evolution by natural selection (see A. Gray 1863d , p. 438). For other comments on Heer’s theory of species change, see letters to Asa …
From Asa Gray 21 July 1863
Summary
Gives some observations on Drosera.
Comments on Richard Owen’s "transmutation theory" in his aye-aye paper [Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond. 5 (1866): 33–101].
Author: | Asa Gray |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 July 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 165: 128, 138 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4248 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Asa Gray, 26 June [1863] and nn. 11 and 12. Gray had sent CD observations on and seed of the dimorphic species Houstonia caerulea in 1862 (see Correspondence vol. 10). The reference is to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s travels , in which Gulliver was tied down to the ground by six-inch-high Lilliputians ( [Swift] 1726 , 1: 7 et seq. ). Since 1860, …
From J. D. Hooker [13 May 1863]
Summary
Lyell is "half-hearted but whole-headed" for CD’s theory. George Bentham wholly converted.
Bates’s book delightful but has a Darwinistic bias.
Cameroon plants.
JDH defends Bates against J. E. Gray’s slanders.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [13 May 1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 137–40 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4165 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Asa Gray . Hooker was writing a paper on the plants of the Cameroons Mountains that had been collected by the botanist Gustav Mann ( J. D. Hooker 1863b ). See letter from J. D. Hooker, [7 May 1863] and n. 11, and letter to J. D. Hooker, [9 May 1863] . Hooker refers to Clarence Peak, Fernando Po; Mann’s collections from this island mountain off the west coast of Africa were made between 1860 …
From J. D. Hooker [15 January 1863]
Summary
JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.
Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [15 Jan 1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 101–2 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3919 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1860 or 1861, when he returned to Britain ( DNB , and Kew Bulletin (1895): 236). Thomson had asked for some information and Hooker forwarded the request to CD (see letter from J. D. Hooker, [12 January 1863] , and letter to J. D. Hooker, 13 January [1863] ). In his letter to Hooker of 13 January [1863] , CD told Hooker of the imminent construction of a hothouse at Down House, and spoke of his plans for purchasing experimental plants. See also letter to Asa Gray, …
To Charles Lyell 6 March [1863]
Summary
Comments at length on CL’s book [Antiquity of man (1863)]. CD is "greatly disappointed that you have not given judgment and spoken fairly out what you think about the derivation of species".
Lists large number of queries concerning minor points.
Praises especially the chapters on language and glaciers.
Comments on the temperature of Africa during the glacial period, especially with regard to the views of Hooker.
Mentions Owen’s paper on the aye-aye [Rep. BAAS 32 (1862) pt 2: 114–16].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Date: | 6 Mar [1863] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.289) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4028 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Asa Gray, 23 February [1863] , letter to J. D. Hooker, 24[–5] February [1863] , and letter to T. H. Huxley, 26 [February 1863] . Lyell’s letter has not been found, but see the letter to J. D. Hooker, 5 March [1863] and n. 16. The reference is to William Whewell , who consistently opposed theories of organic transmutation, including CD’s theory (see Ruse 1991 , and Correspondence vol. 8, letter from William Whewell, 2 January 1860 ). …
letter | (16) |
Darwin, C. R. | (7) |
Falconer, Hugh | (1) |
Gray, Asa | (2) |
Hooker, J. D. | (2) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Matthew, Patrick | (1) |
Rivers, Thomas | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (14) |
Gray, Asa | (4) |
Hooker, J. D. | (4) |
Darwin, Emma | (2) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Darwin in Conversation exhibition
Summary
Meet Charles Darwin as you have never met him before. Come to our exhibition at Cambridge University Library, running from 9 July to 3 December 2022, and discover a fascinating series of interwoven conversations with Darwin's many hundreds of…
Matches: 1 hits
- … 9 July – 3 December 2022 Milstein Exhibition Centre, Cambridge University …