From Charles Lyell 30 November 1860
Summary
Satisfied that CD finds his conjectured rate of elevation and long periods of stasis reasonable, even if these periods cannot be estimated. Explaining upheaval by subterranean lava flow makes these pauses plausible. Suspects that mountainous areas move more than lowland and coastal areas. General upheavals or subsidence in Europe in glacial period are unlikely. Believes with Jamieson that there was glacial action in Scotland before its submergence and that it was equally mountainous then. Subterranean upheaval visits different countries by turn. Horizontal Silurian strata must have been submerged and upheaved. Rest has always been the general surface character. Believes, however, that the quantity of late Tertiary movement is against CD’s belief in the constancy of continents and oceans: perhaps since the Miocene period, but not since the Cretaceous.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 30 Nov 1860 |
Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/7: 49–57) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3001A |
From J. D. Hooker [26 November – 4 December 1860]
Summary
Encourages CD’s work in vegetable physiology.
Ascending the Lebanon JDH noted limits of plant distribution as CD requested: lower limits of a genus sharper than upper. Sharpness of boundaries related to a plant’s moisture requirement.
Impressed by "sporadic" distribution at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [26 Nov – 4 Dec 1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 100: 158–60 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3000 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … ages. 4.17] ‘Limitation of Form on Mountain | Arctic Plants | Sporadic Distrib’ brown …
From J. D. Hooker [6–11 December 1860]
Summary
JDH’s page-by-page criticisms on Origin, first edition, as requested by CD for preparation of the third edition.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [6–11 Dec 1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 104: 218 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3013 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … a few southern vegetable forms on the mountains of Borneo and Abyssinia. ’ He did not add …
From Charles Lyell 24 November 1860
Summary
CL has calculated that elevation and subsidence of certain formations in Sweden and Norway take place at the rate of 2 1/2 feet per century. He now proposes to estimate the age of a bed by including a conjecture that pauses occur in the oscillations in the ratio of 4 periods of stasis to one of movement. Applying this formula to Scotland, the last subsidence and re-elevation would be 590,000 years and the age of the beds with human implements would be 20,000 years.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 24 Nov 1860 |
Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/7: 40–8) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2996A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … inland oscillations, especially in mountain chains, may be greater than the sea-coast …
From James Lamont [23 February 1860]
Summary
Believes the British and Norwegian species of red grouse are merely strongly marked varieties of the same species.
Writes of the effect of importing a few brace of a wilder breed of grouse into Argyleshire and of their change in territory since 1846.
His explanation of game becoming "wilder": he thinks it is due to a difference in their enemies – man replacing hawks leads to flight replacing cowering.
Author: | James Lamont, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [23 Feb 1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 47: 150–1 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2710 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … ripa” frequents the high, grey, rocky mountains as does the Scottish Ptarmigan; and the …
From Asa Gray 23 January 1860
Summary
American edition of Origin. AG’s assessment of the book’s weak and strong points. Suggests Jeffries Wyman would be a useful source of facts and hints for CD.
Author: | Asa Gray |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 23 Jan 1860 |
Classmark: | DAR 98 (ser. 2): 22–5 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2663 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … cold period, would have remained on mountain tops in temperate regions ( E. Forbes …
From William Henry Harvey 24 August 1860
Summary
Continues earlier discussion, admitting his opinions have been modified. Still regards natural selection as one agent of several. States areas of disagreement.
Author: | William Henry Harvey |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 24 Aug 1860 |
Classmark: | DAR 98 (ser. 2): 33–40 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2898 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … proportions. Under artic climate, on mountains & barren heath where the higher cryptogams …
letter | (7) |
Hooker, J. D. | (2) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Gray, Asa | (1) |
Harvey, W. H. | (1) |
Lamont, James | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (7) |
Hooker, J. D. | (2) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Gray, Asa | (1) |
Harvey, W. H. | (1) |
Benjamin Renshaw
Summary
How much like a monkey is a person? Did our ancestors really swing from trees? Are we descended from apes? By the 1870s, questions like these were on the tip of everyone’s tongue, even though Darwin himself never posed the problem of human evolution in…
Matches: 1 hits
- … he wrote to Darwin about a local girl living in a mountain town on the island of Tenerife. …
Darwin & coral reefs
Summary
The central idea of Darwin's theory of coral reef formation, as it was later formulated, was that the islands were formed by the upward growth of coral as the Pacific Ocean floor gradually subsided. It overturned previous ideas and would in itself…
Matches: 3 hits
John Lubbock
Summary
John Lubbock was eight years old when the Darwins moved into the neighbouring property of Down House, Down, Kent; the total of one hundred and seventy surviving letters he went on to exchange with Darwin is a large number considering that the two men lived…
4.40 'Phrenological Magazine'
Summary
< Back to Introduction Among the stranger uses of Rejlander’s photograph of Darwin (the very popular profile view) was as an illustration in Lorenzo Niles Fowler’s Phrenological Magazine of 1880; it accompanied an article titled ‘Charles Darwin – A…
Matches: 1 hits
- … and off-hand, and acts on the spur of the moment.’ The ‘mountain of Firmness’ over his ears makes …
Monte Sarmiento
Summary
Peaks in Tierra del Fuego
Matches: 1 hits
- … Fitzroy sends mountain heights in Tierra del Fuego. …
Frances Power Cobbe
Summary
Cobbe was born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated at home, at Newbridge House, county Dublin, except for two years at a school in Brighton: she hated the school. After she left, she kept house for her mother and father, and after her mother's death for…
Matches: 1 hits
- … referred to her in a letter to Darwin as a 'disenchanting mountain of flesh'. Cobbe, …
Books on the Beagle
Summary
The Beagle was a sort of floating library. Find out what Darwin and his shipmates read here.
Bibliography of Darwin’s geological publications
Summary
This list includes papers read by Darwin to the Geological Society of London, his books on the geology of the Beagle voyage, and other publications on geological topics. Author-date citations refer to entries in the Darwin Correspondence Project’s…
Matches: 1 hits
- … volcanic phenomena in South America; and on the formation of mountain chains and volcanos, as the …
Darwin and barnacles
Summary
In a letter to Henslow in March 1835 Darwin remarked that he had done ‘very little’ in zoology; the ‘only two novelties’ he added, almost as an afterthought, were a new mollusc and a ‘genus in the family Balanidæ’ – a barnacle – but it was an oddity. Who,…
Matches: 1 hits
- … at the same low tide, resembles a miniature volcanic mountain range extruded by the rock itself, and …
Women’s scientific participation
Summary
Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants Darwin’s correspondence helps bring to light a community of women who participated, often actively and routinely, in the nineteenth-century scientific community. Here is a…
4.22 Gegeef et al., 'Our National Church', 2
Summary
< Back to Introduction The second version of Our National Church. The Aegis of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was commissioned by the freethinker, radical and secularist George Jacob Holyoake. It was published by John Heywood of Manchester and London…
Matches: 1 hits
- … version of the print was published, and is now raised to the mountain top, the highest point in the …
Darwin on childhood
Summary
On his engagement to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, in 1838, Darwin wrote down his recollections of his early childhood. Life. Written August–– 1838 My earliest recollection, the date of which I can approximately tell, and which must have been before…
Matches: 1 hits
- … admirer was old Peter Hailes the bricklayer, & the tree the Mountain Ash on the lawn. All …
Darwin in letters, 1844–1846: Building a scientific network
Summary
The scientific results of the Beagle voyage still dominated Darwin's working life, but he broadened his continuing investigations into the nature and origin of species. Far from being a recluse, Darwin was at the heart of British scientific society,…
Matches: 1 hits
- … research into contemporary theories of volcanic activity, mountain formation, and the elevation of …
Darwin in letters, 1869: Forward on all fronts
Summary
At the start of 1869, Darwin was hard at work making changes and additions for a fifth edition of Origin. He may have resented the interruption to his work on sexual selection and human evolution, but he spent forty-six days on the task. Much of the…
Interview with Emily Ballou
Summary
Emily Ballou is a writer of novels and screenplays, and a prize-winning poet. Her book The Darwin Poems, which explores aspects of Darwin’s life and thoughts through the medium of poetry, was recently published by the University of Western Australia Press.…
Matches: 1 hits
- … just the beginning of light. William dove off the mountain cascading into blue vapour, …
Review: The Origin of Species
Summary
- by Asa Gray THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION (American Journal of Science and Arts, March, 1860) This book is already exciting much attention. Two American editions are announced, through which it will become familiar to many…
Rewriting Origin - the later editions
Summary
For such an iconic work, the text of Origin was far from static. It was a living thing that Darwin continued to shape for the rest of his life, refining his ‘one long argument’ through a further five English editions. Many of his changes were made in…
Matches: 1 hits
- … migrated through the tropical regions near the equator along mountain ranges – these would have …
Satire of FitzRoy's Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, by John Clunies Ross. Transcription by Katharine Anderson
Summary
[f.146r Title page] Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle Supplement / to the 2nd 3rd and Appendix Volumes of the First / Edition Written / for and in the name of the Author of those / Volumes By J.C. Ross. / Sometime Master of a…