Summary

Has met Capt. George Strong Nares of the Challenger expedition at Huxley’s.

Huxley much at a loss to explain red clay at deep sea-bottom.

Summary

Will not be inclined to challenge Pangenesis.

Admits CD’s victory over JDH’s continental hypothesis (but will not give up Greenland).

Relation of variation to circumstances is shown by discovery of endemic St Helena umbellifer having same palm-like habit as an endemic Madeiran species.

Has completed Boott’s Carices [Illustrations of the genus Carex, pt 4 (1867)],

is printing W. H. Harvey’s work [Genera of South African plants, 2d ed. (1868)],

and is revising English edition of Alphonse de Candolle’s Laws of botanical nomenclature [trans. H. A. Weddell (1868)].

Arrangements at Kew. Gardener [John Smith] is very ill; Oliver reigns supreme in the Herbarium.

Summary

Studying moraines.

On Lubbock’s book [see 4860], and Lyell’s apology. Recapitulates whole affair.

W. E. H. Lecky [Rise of rationalism in Europe (1865)] and other reading.

Spencer’s observations are wrong on umbellifers, his reasoning partially right.

Natural History Review is all but defunct.

Summary

JDH suggests Scott go to India; he will write letters of introduction.

Conversation with Herbert Spencer.

George Bentham would like to know how CD’s view of hybridism diverges from Charles Naudin’s.

Summary

Rejoices that CD is beginning "the book of books", Variation.

Suggests that changes in colour of pollen, stigma, and corolla, as Scott reports in his Primula paper, may be related to changes in the insects required for pollination.

Supports Gärtner translation by Ray Society.

Comments on recent addresses by Lyell [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): lx–lxxv], Bentham [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 8 (1864): ix–xxiii], and Murchison [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): 130–6].

Summary

JDH battling with Lyell over treatment of species question in Antiquity of man. Distressed by Lyell’s raising false priority issue between JDH and CD. Falconer involved in a priority squabble.

Summary

JDH on the Lyell–Lubbock plagiarism controversy. His view of the true cause of Lubbock’s behaviour.

Summary

Working on "Insular floras" lecture for BAAS Nottingham meeting [see 5135].

Puzzled at distribution of Madeiran and Canaries plants and insects.

Supports Forbes’s Atlantis hypothesis [see 956], which he has reread and to which he will allude.

Wollaston disappointing on Madeiran insects.

Summary

George Bentham’s list of aberrant plant genera. JDH appended the number of species in each genus according to E. G. Steudel’s catalogue [Nomenclator botanicus (1840–1)] and according to JDH and Bentham.

JDH speculates on effect of splitting Australia longitudinally on distribution; it becomes an argument for new creations.

Summary

Gives directions for growing plants he has sent and corrects CD’s taxonomy.

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.

Summary

CD’s divergent series explains those anomalous plants that hover between what would otherwise be two species in a genus.

Inclined to see conifers as a sub-series of dicotyledons that developed in parallel to monocotyledons, but retained cryptogamic characters.

Mentions H. C. Watson’s view of variations.

Man has destroyed more species than he has created varieties.

Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.

In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".

Summary

JDH pursues the coffee plantation job for Scott.

Wrote 14 letters today. JDH’s work load.

Summary

Describes how the offer of C.B. was made. He declined a knighthood. Murchison and Lyell are trying to get him made Knight Commander of the Star of India, but he does not think there is a chance. The Duke [of Argyll?] might do it, but does not like JDH’s Darwinism.

Next Presidency of Royal Society discussed: all (Brodie, the X Club botanists, et al.) are agreed on Lyell.

Everyone is disappointed with Nature.

What did CD think of "Huxley’s rhapsody on Goethe’s ditto" [Nature 1 (1869): 9–11]?

Summary

Household problems: wife’s health, visitors to Kew.

Will go to sale of J. C. Ross’s effects looking for glacial and Kerguelen Land works not at British Museum.

Summary

JDH’s condolences at Amy Darwin’s death.

Summary

JDH again expresses his condolences.

The Glasgow BAAS meeting was good, except for Tait’s shameful attack on Tyndall.

Immensely impressed on Scottish geological and glacial features. Is CD aware that the earth beneath Glen Roy roads was found to contain freshwater diatoms?

Recounts the itinerary of his honeymoon in Scotland.

Summary

Probably a discussiion of J. D. Hooker’s feelings after death of his wife, Frances Harriet, on 13 November 1874: the letter is badly damaged.

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

Raises some points for revision of CD’s Journal of researches.

Southern island floras. "The more I ponder upon Insular Floras the less inclined I am to admit the mutation of species to any very great amount."