Summary

Lyell’s Antiquity of man lacks originality.

Statements in Lyell provoke CD to determine exact publication date of Origin and JDH’s introductory essay [to Flora Tasmaniae].

CD now believes in repeated periods of global cooling and migration.

Summary

Lyell’s position on mutability.

Fertilisation of trees by bees.

Summary

The Lyell–Falconer squabble.

Discusses island vs continental floras and their degree of modification.

Critical of Wallace.

CD’s observations on phyllotaxy.

Summary

Ill health.

At work on Variation.

Reading JDH on Welwitschia.

Letter from Lyell defends his position on species.

Anger at Owen.

John Lubbock’s lectures.

Summary

Lists the six honest believers in his species theory in England.

Asa Gray complains that Lyell acts like a judge on species, whereas CD complains of Lyell’s indecision.

CD working on divergence of leaves.

Distribution of Cameroon plants and the glacial theory.

Survival of island relics.

Summary

CD’s pleasure at JDH’s willingness to help Scott find a position in India.

Naudin underrates contamination of his experiments by insects. Thus CD doubts Naudin’s results on rapidity and universality of reversion in hybrids.

Wallace’s paper on man [see 4494] reflects his genius, although CD does not fully agree with it.

Summary

Pleased with news of BAAS meeting

and Scott’s possible position as Thomas Anderson’s curator.

Suggests Wallace is due for a Royal Medal.

Agrees with JDH’s criticism of Lyell’s address [see 4614].

Bentham’s Linnean Society address treats continuity of life in a vague non-natural sense.

Rereading his old MS [Natural selection] CD is impressed with work he had already done.

Writing Variation much harder than Climbing plants.

Encloses request to JDH to propose, or suggest on his behalf, that the Ray Society publish a translation of C. F. von Gärtner’s Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (1849).

Summary

Sends Haast’s report; JDH may use any and all of the details in the letter.

Asks identity of a reviewer of Lyell’s Antiquity of man [Edinburgh Rev. 118 (1863): 254–302].

Summary

Tendril-bearing plants seem to CD "higher" organised with respect to adaptive sensibility than lower animals.

Wishes to encourage John Scott.

Death of JDH’s daughter makes CD cry over his own dead daughter Annie.

Sedgwick’s scientific merit.

Summary

Does not know Scott’s qualifications to be curator at Kew.

Frankland’s theory of glaciers is absurd.

Has JDH heard claim that plants in Northern and Southern Hemispheres turn in opposite directions?

Are there plant families with no twining and climbing plants?

Summary

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man and of Owen’s comment on it.

Disappointed Lyell has not spoken out on species and on man.

Pleasure of new hothouse and the plants JDH supplied for it.

Summary

Grieved by Falconer’s and Prestwich’s treatment of Lyell.

Reproductive anatomy of the common ash reminds CD of JDH’s Welwitschia because of its transitional forms.

Pleased JDH encourages Oliver to do orchids.

Summary

Tendril plants received.

Has just completed large crossing experiment with Lythrum.

Summary

CD’s illness: he is vomiting "vegetable" cells.

Dutrochet has published the best of CD’s observations on tendrils [see Climbing plants, p. 1 n.].

Lyell has found Joshua Trimmer’s Arctic shells on Moel Tryfan.

Summary

Likes JDH’s review of Alphonse de Candolle [Mémoires et souvenirs de A. P. de Candolle (1862)].

Falconer’s article on Lyell ["Primitive man. What led to the question?", Athenæum 4 Apr 1863, pp. 459–60] too severe.

CD has written a letter to the Athenæum "to say, under the cloak of attacking Heterogeny, a word in my own defence" [Collected papers 2: 78–80].

Bates’s Travels [Naturalist on the river Amazons (1863)] are excellent.

Summary

So JDH did write the Gardeners’ Chronicle review [of Orchids]! CD guessed it from the little slap at R. Brown.

Dawson’s lecture has nothing new. Absurd to assume Greenland under water during whole of glacial period. Suggests absence of certain plants in Greenland due to seeds not surviving in sea-water. Suggests an experiment on vitality in sea-water of plants that might be in Greenland. Is more willing to admit a Norway–Greenland land connection than most other cases.

Urges JDH to warn Tyndall on his glacial theory of valleys in Switzerland.

Is working on cultivated plants.

Summary

Discusses differences between Asa Gray’s view and his own on crossing. A common effect is the obliteration of incipient varieties. There is heavy evidence against new characters arising from crossing wild forms, "only intermediate races are then produced". Innate vital forces are somehow led to act differently as a result of direct effect of physical conditions. Astonished by JDH’s statement that every difference might have occurred without selection. CD agrees, but JDH’s manner of putting it astonished him. CD says, "think of each of a thousand seeds bringing forth its plant, and then each a thousand … I cannot even grapple with idea". Responds to JDH’s and Lyell’s feeling that he made too much of a deus ex machina out of natural selection. [Letter actually dated 20 Nov but is certainly after 3831.] [wrong field?]

Summary

Admits, at last, that New Zealand must have been connected to some continent, but not Australia.

Climbing plants: asks for more plants.

Summary

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man.

Geographical distribution during and between glacial periods.

Latent characters and reversion.

Summary

Sorry to hear of baby’s illness.

Comments on statement that belief in natural selection is passing away. Common descent of species is almost universally accepted now, and this is more important. In large part acceptance is due to Origin. Discusses reception of and interest in Origin in various countries.