Summary

Comments on Huxley–Falconer dispute [see "On the method of palaeontology", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 18 (1856): 43–54].

Wollaston’s On the variation of species [1856].

Has exploded to Lyell against the extension of continents.

Plants common to Europe and NW. America as result of temperate climate.

Summary

Sorry to hear about condition of JDH’s grandfather.

Sends proofs of Galapagos chapter of Journal of researches.

Grieves to hear labels are displaced on his plants.

May he annotate [F. Gérard’s] L’espèce [(1844), extracted from Dictionnaire universel d’histoire naturelle, ed. C. D. d’Orbigny (1839–49)]?

Summary

Agrees with JDH about Forbes’s views.

Discusses A. Saint-Hilaire’s lectures and asks on what grounds botanists judge the relative "highness" of plants.

Summary

Thanks for JDH’s notes on species sketch. Proposes to drive to Kew to discuss them with him.

Summary

Thanks for agreeing to propose Frank as F.R.S.

Would have enjoyed discussing Island life.

Summary

B. J. Sulivan offers fossil leaves from Eocene beds at Bournemouth to CD or JDH. Does JDH want them, or should they go to Oswald Heer?

Has written to Athenæum [see 5308] about publishers cutting pages of their books.

Summary

Antarctic plants most difficult to account for on any theory. Lyell’s iceberg transportal of seeds.

Are there more representative species of American origin in Tristan da Cunha than in Kerguelen land?

Summary

Returns Charles Naudin’s letter with its case in support of CD’s view of impregnation.

Twits JDH for trying to wriggle out of error made in his lecture and admires his "candour in letting the rat out of the bag". [See 5449 and 5451.]

Summary

Acropera anatomy puzzling. Malaxis anatomy deciphered.

Summary

JDH’s letter to Wallace perfect. CD’s feelings about priority. Without Lyell’s and JDH’s intervention CD would have given up all claims to Wallace. Now planning 30-page abstract for a journal.

Observations on floral structure

and slave-making ants.

Summary

CD has written to Asa Gray criticising J. D. Dana’s arguments for a warm period subsequent to glacial period.

Remembers it is Alphonse de Candolle who states that many species are not true species.

Did Huxley write the excellent review in the Times?

Summary

CD hopes Woodward was not the Athenæum reviewer. "The manner in which he drags in immortality, & sets the Priests at me … is base".

JDH has made CD feel he can "face a score of savage reviewers".

H. C. Watson has written to him in tremendous praise of the Origin.

Summary

Returning JDH’s MS and books.

Reading Mrs Gaskell’s Ruth [1853].

Summary

Returns books by Candolle and Robert Brown.

Summary

On Lubbock’s plans.

Visited by Antoine Auguste Laugel.

Guessed right on Bentham’s "Planchon".

Much struck by Thomson’s article on nomenclature [see 4812]; importance of this subject.

Sorry best scientists read so little; few read any long papers.

Summary

Is pleased JDH will attend to polymorphism and also with the botanical relation, as stated by JDH, between Africa and Java.

Would welcome any information on impregnation in the bud.

Summary

A German scholar says JDH first applied natural selection to replacement of races of men, the ruder races of Polynesians yielding to civilised Europeans. CD cannot remember reading this.

Warns JDH to take care Welwitschia does not turn into a case of barnacles and consume years instead of months.

In what months do flowers appear in Acropera loddigesia and A. luteola? CD is alarmed by John Scott’s observations on them, which differ from his own. "I am very uneasy."

Summary

Representative species may complicate tabulation of varieties.

Questions for Mr Anderson about horse colouring in Norway.

Has been writing an "audacious little discussion" to show that "organic beings are not perfect, only perfect enough to struggle with their competitors".

Summary

Thanks JDH for short sketch of botanical geography of Southern Hemisphere. Comments on his own S. American collections and observations; notes other Galapagos collections.

Summary

Is working on new edition of Origin [5th (1869)].

Asks JDH’s assistance on a problem posed by Nägeli on morphological differences that are of no utility to plants and hence could not be selected. CD wants to show that these differences do not support the idea of progressive development as Nägeli suggests.

Owen pitches into CD and Lyell in third volume of Anatomy of vertebrates [1866–8].