From H. G. Bronn [before 11 March 1862]
Summary
Asks if CD will have corrections for 2d German ed. of Origin.
CD’s theory only natural way to explain creation but contradicts current knowledge about origin of life from inorganic matter.
Has read Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63] with interest.
Author: | Heinrich Georg Bronn |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [before 11 Mar 1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 160.3: 319 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3363 |
From T. H. Huxley 6 August 1860
Summary
Announces great ally for CD: K. E. von Baer "worth all the Owens & Bishops that ever were pupped". Quotes Baer: "J’ai énoncé les mêmes idées que M. Darwin", but based only on zoological geography.
Author: | Thomas Henry Huxley |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 6 Aug 1860 |
Classmark: | DAR 98 (ser. 2): 31–2 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2891 |
From Henrietta Anne Huxley 1 January 1865
Summary
Has just been shown CD’s remarks on Tennyson. Upbraids CD for "Owen-like quotation" out of context, and getting source wrong. "If ""facts"" in Origin are of this sort I agree with Bishop of Oxford."
Author: | Henrietta Anne Heathorn; Henrietta Anne Huxley |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 1 Jan 1865 |
Classmark: | DAR 166: 284 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4733 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … vol. 8, letter to T. H. Huxley, 9 April [1860] ; see also letter to Charles Lyell, 10 …
- … Huxley In the letter to T. H. Huxley, 5 November [1864] ( Correspondence vol. 12), CD had quoted this passage from ‘Sea Dreams’, by Alfred Tennyson . CD had remarked, ‘Such a gem as this is enough to make me young again & like poetry with pristine fervour’. The poem appeared in the volume Enoch Arden, etc ( Tennyson 1864 ), p. 105. CD had protested to Huxley and others about the ‘false & malignant’ review of Origin by Richard Owen ( [Owen] 1860 ): ‘ …
From T. H. Huxley [before 14 December 1860]
Summary
Would be glad to have Chauncey Wright’s [Origin] review for the Natural History Review.
Author: | Thomas Henry Huxley |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [before 14 Dec 1860] |
Classmark: | Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University (39) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3022 |
From G. J. Romanes 16 June [1877]
Summary
Galton agrees with GJR about rudimentary organs.
GJR’s note referred to possibility of selection acting on organic types as distinguished from individuals.
Thinks Grant Allen has not made out his point [in Physiological aesthetics (1877)], but his fundamental principle probably has much truth.
Author: | George John Romanes |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 16 June [1877] |
Classmark: | E. D. Romanes 1896, p. 55 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-11004 |
From Charles Lyell 15 March 1863
Summary
Lyell has received compliments for letting readers draw own inferences [on species question]. Now feels he earlier did Lamarck injustice. [CD’s] substitution of variety-making power for volition [as in Lamarck] in some respects only a change of names.
Thinks Huxley taking on too many responsibilities.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 15 Mar 1863 |
Classmark: | K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 364–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4041 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … Correspondence vol. 8, letter to T. H. Huxley, 20 July [1860] ). Lyell refers to James …
- … H. Huxley 1863a and 1862a. No letter from Thomas Henry Huxley to The Times relating to CD has been found; Lyell may refer to Huxley’s anonymous review of Origin , ‘The Darwinian hypothesis’, which appeared in The Times , 26 November 1859, p. 8. In July 1860, …
From J. D. Hooker [31 December 1862]
Summary
JDH’s impression on meeting [J. A.] Froud[e].
CD’s projected three volume work.
Complains at poor state of some [unspecified] plant collection.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [31 Dec 1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 96–7 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3890 |
From Charles Lyell 19 June 1860
Summary
Sees Huxley’s deification of matter and force as a reaction to the way Paley likened the "Unknown Cause" to the mind of man so that new causes could be introduced. If you wish to retain free will which is inconsistent with constant law, Paley’s position is better. Free will is a recently introduced cause on our planet. It cannot be fully attributed to secondary causes.
What CD says about the variation in gestation of the hound is remarkable.
The astonishing fertile rabbit–hare hybrids encourage belief in Pallas’s theory of the multiple origin of dogs.
Does the regularity of gestation in man indicate a common stock?
Hooker’s observation of absence of forms peculiar to extra-Arctic Greenland indicates that the time since the beginning of the glacial period is brief in geological terms.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 19 June 1860 |
Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/6: 117–23) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2837A |
From W. W. Reade 18 February 1872
Summary
Compares Origin to Newton’s Principia and Adam Smith’s Wealth of nations.
His view of CD’s response to Mivart.
On mammae;
gradualism of evolution;
suicide among savages.
Author: | William Winwood Reade |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 18 Feb 1872 |
Classmark: | DAR 88: 74–5 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8218 |
From Hugh Falconer 9 July [1860]
Summary
Hyaena remains show how recently Sicily was joined to Africa.
Reports on the Oxford meeting of BAAS.
Author: | Hugh Falconer |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 9 July [1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 164.1: 5 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2863 |
From J. D. Hooker [11 May – 3 December 1860]
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".
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [11 May – 3 Dec 1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 205.5: 217 (Letters), DAR 47: 214 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3036 |
From Robert Patterson 18 October 1860
Author: | Robert Patterson |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 18 Oct 1860 |
Classmark: | DAR 46.1: 89–90 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2954 |
From Julius von Haast 21 July [– 7? August] 1863
Summary
In a forthcoming paper JvH will show geological age of the world to be "incalculable" and will confirm CD’s theory that "the old system of chronological sequence of formations all over the world must be abandoned in a great degree".
Predicts the links between species, genera, and classes will be found.
CD elected an Honorary Member [of Philosophical Institute of Canterbury].
Author: | John Francis Julius (Julius) von Haast |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 July [– 7? Aug] 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 166: 4, 6; Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL (G304) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4249 |
From J. S. Henslow 5 May 1860
Summary
Reports to CD on what he has found out about Elodea growing near Cambridge.
Sedgwick is speaking at [Cambridge] Philosophical Society on CD’s "supposed errors" [Camb. Herald & Huntingdonshire Gaz. 19 May 1860, pp. 3–4].
JSH wonders how Owen can be so savage toward CD’s views when his own are "to a certain extent of the same character".
Author: | John Stevens Henslow |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 5 May 1860 |
Classmark: | DAR 186: 47 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2783 |
From Thomas Henry Huxley [before 30 January 1868]
Summary
Congratulations on George’s attaining Second Wrangler.
Variation has just arrived. Wishes he had two heads or a body that needed no rest.
Author: | Thomas Henry Huxley |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [before 30 Jan 1868] |
Classmark: | DAR 166: 313 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5814 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … H. Huxley, 30 January [1868] . George Howard Darwin was second in the final examination for the mathematical tripos at Cambridge ( Cambridge University calendar 1868). George once had an interest in heraldry (see Correspondence vol. 6, letter to W. D. Fox, 3 October [1856] ). Huxley had visited Down House on several occasions in 1860 ( …
From Alfred Russel Wallace 30 November 1861
Author: | Alfred Russel Wallace |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 30 Nov 1861 |
Classmark: | DAR 181: 6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3334 |
From T. H. Huxley 20 January 1862
Summary
The Witness attacks THH’s lecture.
Assures CD he spoke more favourably of his doctrines than the reports show.
Agrees with CD’s arguments on sterility of hybrids and predicts physiological experiments will produce physiological species sterile inter se. Has come even closer to CD’s view especially since Primula paper. Will soon be more Darwinian than CD.
Author: | Thomas Henry Huxley |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 20 Jan 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 166.2: 291 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3396 |
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 Rudolf Oldenbourg 28 October 1866
Summary
Proposes O. F. Peschel as a German translator of Variation, which his firm would like to publish.
Author: | Rudolf Oldenbourg |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 28 Oct 1866 |
Classmark: | DAR 173: 12 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5258 |
From Andrew Crombie Ramsay 21 February 1860
Summary
ACR has for years had a belief in mutability and transmutation of species, prompted by disputes over the nature of species and varieties, and the existence of representative species in space and in the geological record. Could not accept a Creator employing small miracles to make species differ just a little between formations. Has maintained that one would not expect to find fine gradations between forms in the fossil record, but only representatives of very populous forms. [See 2711.]
Author: | Andrew Crombie Ramsay |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 Feb 1860 |
Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/5: 112–16) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2706A |
letter | (32) |
Hooker, J. D. | (6) |
Huxley, T. H. | (5) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Wallace, A. R. | (2) |
Bentham, George | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (32) |
Hooker, J. D. | (6) |
Huxley, T. H. | (5) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Wallace, A. R. | (2) |