Summary

Thanks WJH for information on J. D. Hooker’s progress.

J. D. Hooker promised a copy of his Galapagos paper. Can WJH forward one to the Athenaeum?

Summary

Thanks JSH for information and suggestions on benefit clubs,

and for a shipment of fossil cirripedes.

Summary

On Himalayan stratigraphy. Believes JDH’s observations of glacial action are the first ever done east of Urals.

Barnacles and the species theory; impressed with variation.

Effect of CD’s species sketch on JDH’s view of willow systematics.

Summary

Does not recommend that JDH publish extracts of his letters from India in the Athenæum.

CD criticises JDH’s observations on glacial deposits in Himalayas as insufficiently clear and detailed.

CD will live to finish barnacles and make a fool of himself over species.

Summary

J. B. Innes is greatly obliged for JSH’s letter. JSH’s observation of chalk flints strikes CD as "very curious".

Summary

Expresses sympathy to MSH on W. J. Hooker’s illness.

Will send his comments on Hodgson’s physico-geographical memoir ["On the physical geography of the Himalayas", J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 18 (1849): 761–88] directly to him.

Summary

CD makes progress with barnacles. Describes "supplemental" males in detail. In working out metamorphosis, their crustacean homologies followed automatically.

CD opposes appending first describer’s name to specific name.

Summary

Encloses a letter from J. D. Hooker [see 1257], thinking that WJH would like to see it.

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

Thanks for Dawson’s letter. Doubts his evidence that climate of land was not glacial when upheaved after submergence.

Encloses memorandum of questions for C. V. Naudin.

Expression of the emotions.

Is building a hothouse for plant experimenting.

JDH’s ideas on America are more atrocious than his. What a new idea that struggle for existence is necessary to try to purge a government! Probably true. Slavery draws him one way one day, another the next. Yankees are "detestable toward us". Tocqueville.

Summary

Yellow anthers of Heterocentron produce on the same plant thrice as many seeds as the crimson anthers. Crimson anther seeds produce dwarf plants, others rise high up. Monochaetum ensiferum facts are still more strange. Wants to investigate the case, and asks for a plant of the Melastomataceae just before flowering.

Has JDH a Rhododendron boothii from Bhutan with pistil bent the wrong way?

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

Acquired characteristics.

Huxley’s lectures: good on induction, bad on sterility, obscure on geology.

Asa Gray on slavery.

Falconer’s partial conversion.

Alphonse de Candolle on Origin.

Summary

Independence of variation from climate shown by several plant genera; CD asks for confirmation.

Progressing with book [Natural selection].

Summary

Bates agrees with CD on neuter ants.

Orchids.

Repeating experiment of C. F. v. Gärtner to study Huxley’s idea of physiological species.

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

"Read a letter from Mr Darwin expressing his regret that the state of his health would not permit of his writing an Introductory Chapter to the Translation of Gaertner’s work [Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (1849)]."

Summary

Wishes to propose John Lubbock as a member of the Entomological Society.

Asks for B. H. Hodgson’s pamphlet on sheep ["Tame sheep and goats", J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 16 (1847): 1003–26]. Asks for odd numbers of GRW’s work [A natural history of the Mammalia (1846–8)]. Regrets that this work has stopped.

Summary

Agrees with JDH on difference in grief over loss of father and of child. His love of his father.

The Reader.

Politics and science.

Health improved by Bence Jones’s diet.

[Dated "Thursday 27th" by CD.]

Summary

High, detailed praise for introductory essay to Flora Tasmaniae [reprinted as On the flora of Australia (1859)]. CD expects it to convert botanists from doctrine of immutable creation.