Summary

Can JDH come on 16 Jan? CD will ask the "old set" to come and also the Lyells.

Summary

JDH’s books have arrived safely.

Is sending him corrected MS of first part of Journal of researches [2d ed.].

Lyells have just visited.

Summary

Defers visit [to Kew] because of ill health.

Summary

Agrees with JDH on Lyell–Lubbock controversy except that Lubbock’s printed note does not seem to him insulting. Hopes JDH can heal the breach.

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

Lyell and CD would urge JDH to make his essays into a book, but see he has embarked on a huge project with G. Bentham [Genera plantarum, 3 vols. (1862–83)].

Summary

Hopes Murray will publish after seeing MS [of Origin].

Demurs at JDH’s saying that CD changes climate to account for migration of bugs, flies, etc. "We do nothing of the sort; for we rest on scored rocks, old moraines, arctic shells, and mammifers." Has given up the Lyellian doctrine as insufficient to explain all changes in climate; CD has no theory about the cause of the cold.

Summary

Lyell receives Copley Medal; CD to write notes for JDH’s éloge of Lyell.

Summary

To Lyell’s chagrin, CD has come round again to A. C. Ramsay’s glacial theory.

On primrose and cowslip, CD maintains they are good species, notwithstanding Scott’s work.

CD defines species by power of remaining constant for a good long time and showing appreciable amount of difference from close species.

Summary

CD’s great satisfaction with JDH’s approval of Origin. The book has been extremely successful. Reactions of Asa Gray, Lyell, Bentham, and J. E. Gray.

Not one friend has noticed his pet bit in Origin: embryology.

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

Thanks JDH for his report on the reading of the Wallace and Darwin papers at the Linnean Society [read 1 July 1858; Collected papers 2: 3–19]. Considers how to publish his work. Offers to forward a note from JDH to Wallace.

Summary

CD’s predicament with continental extensions: they would remove argument for multiple creations, yet he opposes the doctrine. Lyell will not express an opinion on this.

Lyell fears mutability would lead to more specific names.

Encloses copy of letters to Lyell [1910 and 1917].

Summary

Wide-ranging species more "improved" than relics in small areas because they exist in large numbers and thus are subject to intense competition.

His abstract is 330 folio pages long so far.

Summary

Thanks JDH for dedication of Himalayan journals. CD praises the work and suggests stylistic revisions.

Lyell’s remarks on lava beds in letter from Madeira are not original – they refer exclusively to Élie de Beaumont’s data.

Summary

CD thinks great dam across Yangma valley is a lateral glacial moraine.

Reports on Birmingham BAAS meeting.

Details of water-cure.

Barnacles becoming tedious; careful description shows slight differences constitute varieties, not species.

Lamination of gneiss.

Summary

Was glad to read JDH’s article on glaciers of Yorkshire ["Moraines of the Tees Valley", Reader 6 (1865): 70].

Reader article [6 (1865): 61–2] about English and foreign men of science is unjust.

Lubbock is now lost to science.

B. Verlot’s pamphlet on variations of flowers [Sur la production et la fixation des variétés dans les plantes d’ornement (1865)] is very good.

Summary

Confident of species theory as result of applying it to cirripede sexual systems.

CD’s opinion of E. Blyth. JDH should meet Blyth, inquire about domesticated varieties, study insular flora, solve coal-plant problem.

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

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.