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

Sorry to hear of Mrs Hooker’s health and domestic problems. Wishes natural selection had produced neuters who would not flirt or marry.

Will be eager to hear Cameroon results.

Wishes JDH would discuss the "mundane glacial period". Still believes it will be "the turning point of all recent geographical distribution".

Pollen placed for 65 hours on apparent (CD still thinks real) stigma of Leschenaultia has not protruded a vestige of a tube.

"Oliver the omniscient" has produced an article in Botanische Zeitung with accurate account of all CD saw in Viola.

Asa Gray’s "red-hot" praise of Orchids [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 34 (1862): 138–51].

Summary

His bad health continues.

Thirty-two plants have come up from the earth attached to partridge’s foot.

Origin to be published in Italian.

Owen was wrong: Origin will not be forgotten in ten years.

Summary

Lythrum. Wants to examine fresh flowers of Lythraceae. Lythrum salicaria has interested him very much.

Microscopes.

Asks whether JDH can think of plants that have different coloured anthers or pollen in same flowers (as in Melastoma) or on same and in different plants as in Lythrum. Would be a safe guide to dimorphism.

Observation of action of pollen in Linum grandiflorum.

Summary

Sends Asa Gray letter: "nearly as mad as ever in our English eyes".

Bates’s paper is admirable. The act of segregation of varieties into species was never so plainly brought forth.

CD is a little sorry that his present work is leading him to believe rather more in the direct action of physical conditions. Regrets it because it lessens the glory of natural selection and is so confoundedly doubtful.

JDH laid too much stress on importance of crossing with respect to origin of species; but certainly it is important in keeping forms stable.

If only Owen could be excluded from Council of Royal Society Falconer would be good to put in. CD must come down to London to see what he can do.

Falconer’s article in Journal of the Geological Society [18 (1862): 348–69] shows him coming round on permanence of species, but he does not like natural selection.

Sends Lythrum salicaria diagram.

Summary

Leschenaultia seems very odd. Will try with pollen left on for 48 hours. Illustrates diversity of structures for same purpose.

Bentham’s and Oliver’s good opinion of Orchids is reassuring.

Anxious to experiment on Melastomataceae; thinks it will give important results.

Wants Leschenaultia formosa to try whether viscid outside surface can be fertilised.

Summary

Will get in touch with young gardener about terms of employment. It is good of Hooker to remember about heliotropism of insectivorous plants.

Summary

Has signed the memorial by men of science with real pleasure. Fears it may be too severe. He told Lady Derby about JDH’s troubles. She said she would tell Lord Derby what he had said.

Summary

Searching for the right gardener.

Summary

Thanks for information about Hedychium. Hopes wings of Sphinx will be found covered with pollen for that will be a fine bit of prophecy from the structure of a flower to special and new means of fertilisation.

Has been at Descent so hard he has done nothing, not even H. Spencer’s answer.

Has not yet read Croll ["Ocean currents", London Edinburgh & Dublin Philos. Mag. 47 (1874): 94–122, 168–90].

Has heard nothing about Carter and Eozoon. Eozoon, he infers, is done for.

Has read Belt [The naturalist in Nicaragua (1874)]: best of all natural history travel books.

Has written to Fritz Müller about leaf-carrying ants.

Hopes to resume work on Drosera.

Summary

Illness of his son [Leonard]. Has done no work for weeks.

JDH’s hybrid orchids are interesting; CD is surprised many hybrids are not produced.

George [Darwin] caught a moth sucking Gymnadenia conopsea with a pollen-mass of Habenaria bifolia sticking to it.

Summary

Orchid anatomy. Wind as agent of self-fertilisation in orchids.

Summary

Sorry to hear of JDH’s household troubles.

Will try to get a couple of flowers of Leschenaultia to send him.

"What a good case that of the Cameroons"; the 4000ft [elevation] is much to CD’s "private satisfaction".

Sends JDH a copy of Orchids.

Summary

Has found Verlot.

His sister [Emily Catherine Langton] is dying [d. 2 Feb 1866].

His stomach still very bad. Writes one or two hours and reads a little.

JDH is a wretch to remind CD of his coal-plant prophecy.

Glad JDH will give Nottingham lecture.

Summary

Requests water-lily pods to count, weigh, and to germinate some of the seeds of the crossed and uncrossed pods.

Hopes Haeckel did not bore him.

Summary

General success of survey makes CD very concerned about sources of error. Wants to meet JDH for an important talk about big genera. Arranges meeting.

Summary

His indignation at the malignant, odious, hypocrite Owen’s attack on JDH. History of Secretaryship [of Royal Society in Nature 9 (1873): 129–30] was best answer to Owen.

Is hard at work on new edition of Descent – a truly awful job.

No use going on with experiments on effects of water on bloom-divested leaves. May have erred. Or it may be that water is only injurious when there is a good supply of actinic rays. Will wait until spring.

Summary

CD relieved by JDH’s positive response to his MS.

CD continues observations on means of transport.

JDH’s Raoul Island paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 22 (1857): 133–41], showing continuity of vegetation with New Zealand, best evidence yet of continental extension.

Summary

Admires JDH’s paper on Arctic plants ["Distribution of Arctic plants", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 251–348]. Such papers compel people to reflect on modification of species;

JDH will be driven to a cooled globe.

Serious erratum in paper.

New and original evidence in case of Greenland. Its flora requires accidental means of transport by ice and currents.

Summary

Book finished some two weeks.

Feeling much better at Ilkley.

Lyell thinks favourably of book but "staggered" at lengths to which CD goes.

Which continental botanists should receive presentation copies?