Summary

CD hopes to have an hour’s talk with CJFB before CD leaves London.

Summary

CD has suggested an explanation of how pike were introduced to a remote lake in Ireland by cormorants [carrying pike spawn on their feet or in their gullets].

Summary

Gives instances of sexual differences in the number of tarsi within species of Coleoptera and also variation in the number of tarsi between related species.

Summary

CD’s tabulation of colonists curious but explicable.

Working on Tasmanian flora; contemplating general essay on Australian distribution: Tasmania and Australia same alpine species; Swan River flora very peculiar and quite distinct from New South Wales.

Trying to establish new journal at Linnean.

Summary

Hybrid insects.

Description of the Salvages.

Variability of "transition groups" of insects; relation of variability to ranges of insects. The variability of wings, even within species. Reduction of flying ability on isolated islands.

Forbes’s "Atlantis" theory and insect fauna of the Atlantic islands, considered with regard to insect migrations.

Summary

A page of [unspecified] text is missing from a parcel of material received from GRW.

CD "hopes and expects to live to see Carboniferous, & perhaps even Silurian, mammifers!"

Has several questions to ask whenever they meet.

Summary

Comparison of skulls of Ichthyosaurus and Cetacea.

Summary

Latitude overrules everything in distribution. Alpine distributions are like insular. Tabulating proportions.

T. V. Wollaston’s Madeira insects: many flightless, thus not blown to sea. TVW’s insects do not confirm Forbes’s Atlantis.

Summary

JDH criticises C. J. F. Bunbury’s paper on Madeira [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 1 (1857): 1–35].

Absence of Ophrys on Madeira suggests to JDH a sequence in creation of groups.

Why are flightless insects common in desert?

Australian endemism.

Summary

Thanks THH for corroborating his observations. Discusses metamorphosis of ovaria to cement organs. Ovaries, germinal vesicles, and anatomy of cirripedes. Difficulties of classification, and observation.

THH’s article on Mollusca [Charles Knight, ed., English cyclopædia: a new dictionary of universal knowledge (1854–70) 3: 855–74].

Summary

Acknowledges a list [of plants?].

Looks forward to new edition [of British plants growing wild in the parish of Hitcham, Suffolk, 2d ed. (1855)].

JSH should not trouble about Anacharis until he is less busy. Will send cirripedes.

Summary

Can AH give information about D. A. Godron, "De l’espèce et des races" [Mem. Soc. Sci. Lett. & Arts Nancy (1847): 182, 239–88]? CD unable to locate reference.

Summary

CD has been a referee for LH’s Nile geology paper [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 145 (1855): 105–38]. Praises the work but offers criticism not in his report: Joseph Russegger’s statement about the baked Upper Sandstone deposit cannot be believed; LH’s paper is too long.

Summary

Recommends publication of Leonard Horner’s account of researches in alluvial deposits of Egypt [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 145 (1855): 105–38]. It contains valuable observations which will probably become of still higher value in future.

Summary

Asks WDF to observe at what age pigeons have tail-feathers sufficiently developed to be counted.

CD is hard at work on his notes for a book with all the facts "for & versus" the immutability of species.

Asks for a young chicken and a nestling common pigeon.

Summary

On the ova of the salmon in relation to the distribution of species.

Summary

Will forward JD’s paper to the Royal Society ["On the ova of salmon", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 146 (1856): 21–9].

Summary

Discusses JD’s paper ["On ova of salmon"]. His experiments are of particular value regarding power of dispersal and geographical distribution and would make of them a very different subject. Hopes JD can test again the tenacity of life of non-developed ova being less than that of those fully developed – a result which surprised CD.

Summary

Thanks JSH for Anacharis which is flourishing.

P. H. Gosse told him he had several sea animals and algae living in artificial sea-water for over 13 months.

Summary

Thanks WDF for his offer of assistance in collecting varieties of poultry. Describes his needs. He will raise his own pigeons.

Often doubts whether, despite all help, the problem of species will not overpower him.