Summary

Arrangements for JDH to visit Down for weekend.

Summary

Reports that N. J. Andersson finds every European willow bar one is also American.

Has heard from David Livingstone and reports on his progress.

Summary

CD’s receipt of diploma from Caesarea Leopoldino-Carolina Academy [Dresden].

Summary

Pleased with JDH’s reaction to MS on large and small genera.

Confident of soundness of principle of divergence.

CD experimenting on pollination mechanism of Leguminosae. Asks JDH to investigate Fumariaceae.

Summary

Etty [Henrietta Darwin] very ill with diphtheria.

Summary

Death of Charles Waring Darwin [1856–8] from scarlet fever.

JDH’s and Lyell’s kindness [presumably about A. R. Wallace’s letter]. CD can provide a copy of his letter to Asa Gray [about CD’s species theory].

Summary

JDH wants papers at once. CD sends Wallace’s paper and CD’s abstract of his letter to Asa Gray. Sends [species] sketch of 1844 with JDH’s notes to assure JDH he had read it.

Summary

Thanks JDH for his report on the reading of the Wallace and Darwin papers at the Linnean Society [read 1 July 1858; Collected papers 2: 3–19]. Considers how to publish his work. Offers to forward a note from JDH to Wallace.

Summary

JDH’s letter to Wallace perfect. CD’s feelings about priority. Without Lyell’s and JDH’s intervention CD would have given up all claims to Wallace. Now planning 30-page abstract for a journal.

Observations on floral structure

and slave-making ants.

Summary

Sends proofs [of "On the tendency of species to form varieties … ", read 1 July 1858, Collected papers 2: 3–19]. CD could publish his abstract [later the Origin] as a separate supplemental number of [Journal of the Linnean Society].

JDH has studied in detail CD’s manuscript on variable species in large and small genera and concurs with its consequences. Discusses methodological idiosyncrasies of systematists, e.g., Bentham, Robert Brown, and C. C. Babington, which complicate CD’s tabulations.

Summary

Regards from Isle of Wight.

Summary

Correcting proof for CD–Wallace paper. Has begun abstract.

Large and small genera.

Summary

Working on abstract, which now is to consist of a number of sections each to be read at Linnean Society and to be published as a unit. Has finished section on variation under domestication.

Summary

Six children have died of scarlet fever in Down village.

Writing abstract is amusing and improving work. Thanks JDH and Lyell for setting him to it.

Summary

The CD–Wallace paper has gone to press.

JDH’s tabulation of variable species from Bentham was done in haste.

Summary

Thanks JDH for stylistic corrections on MS of large and small genera.

Observations, while walking along headlands, on thistle-down blown out to sea and then blown inland.

Summary

Asks whether there are dogs in Spain like English pointers.

Summary

Abstract growing to inordinate length.

Writing in support of S. Passell as assistant at Linnean Society.

Summary

Abstract will run into a small volume.

Urges JDH not to reject natural selection until he has read abstract.

[Enclosed are CD’s comments on a ?JDH manuscript that perhaps belong elsewhere.]

Summary

Fertilisation of papilionaceous flowers [Collected papers 2: 19–25].

JDH’s reactions to CD’s theory.

Discussed human fossil evidence with Hugh Falconer.