Summary

Reception of Scott’s paper.

Difficulty of writing Boott’s obituary.

Critical of Edward Frankland’s glacial theory.

Falconer’s and Ramsay’s views on Himalayan lakes lack support of basic evidence.

Taxonomic distribution of climbing plants.

Huxley picks quarrels with minor figures and thus magnifies them.

Summary

Comments at length on Ramsay’s glacial paper ["On the erosion of valleys and lakes", Philos. Mag. 4th ser. 28 (1864): 293–311]. Prefers it to Tyndall, but unconvinced about sea action and unwilling to grant that ice power sculptures the totality of landscape.

Unwilling to support Wallace for Royal Medal.

Herbert Spencer’s noisy vacuity.

Garden varieties that are constant and infertile with parent deserve to be called species.

Scott ineligible to be Linnean Society associate because he is not in England.

George Busk’s incoherent talk on Gibraltar cave fossils.

Summary

Morphological differences only partly define species; physiological differences, e.g., incompatibility results in Primula, are far more interesting.

T. Thomson’s review of Agardh’s muddled book ["Agardh’s classification of plants", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1864): 536–51].

Summary

Sends a Corydalis.

Hermann Crüger’s paper [see 4394] splendid, but he has made a mess of propagating Cinchona in Trinidad.

JDH’s opinion of Germans.

Summary

Replies to CD’s queries on climbing plants.

Summary

Men of Scott’s Celtic temperament are very troublesome. Tries to dissuade CD from hiring him as a scientific gardener.

George Rolleston, not Spencer, wrote review of Schleiden [Nat. Hist. Rev. (1864): 187–99].

Summary

JDH suggests Scott go to India; he will write letters of introduction.

Conversation with Herbert Spencer.

George Bentham would like to know how CD’s view of hybridism diverges from Charles Naudin’s.

Summary

JDH’s "shock" that CD was awarded the Copley Medal.

Oliver, Thomson and JDH independently concur mature tendrils of Dicentra are foliar, though JDH remembers they were axial in the spring. Expects he and CD were fooled, but will have to look again next spring.

Praises CD’s Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31].

JDH completing F. Boott’s work on Carex [Illustrations of the genus Carex].

JDH now does suspect Mrs Boott is illegitimate daughter of Dr Erasmus Darwin [see 4389].

Summary

JDH’s opinion of Herbert Spencer.

Rejects CD’s view of inheritance of induced modifications.

Huxley grows fat.

Summary

Rejoices that CD is beginning "the book of books", Variation.

Suggests that changes in colour of pollen, stigma, and corolla, as Scott reports in his Primula paper, may be related to changes in the insects required for pollination.

Supports Gärtner translation by Ray Society.

Comments on recent addresses by Lyell [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): lx–lxxv], Bentham [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 8 (1864): ix–xxiii], and Murchison [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): 130–6].

Summary

CD’s climbing plant experiments make it impossible to deny nerve force in plants.

Has discussed Frankland’s new glacial theory with Lyell.

Bishop Colenso’s trial.

Possibility of Scott’s coming to Kew as a curator.

Summary

Forwards a letter from H. W. Bates to JDH announcing HWB’s appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.

Summary

JDH on John Scott.

Curious about the rationale of pollen prepotence.

Working on variation in New Zealand flora.

Summary

JDH busy reforming Kew’s operations.

Falconer may "fall foul" of Huxley’s anger over his attacks on Lyell.

Has heard of a coffee plantation post for Scott.

Summary

John Scott’s career.

Huxley’s vicious attack on anthropologists.

Critique of Joseph Prestwich’s theory of rivers.

Bitter feelings between the Hookers and the Veitch family of nurserymen.

Summary

R. I. Murchison’s address [see 4595] smashes Ramsay’s glacial theory.

JDH defends his view that CD should not answer Kölliker.

Summary

JDH is making inquiries for CD on temperate climbing plants.

Discusses politics of Royal Society Council in awarding CD the Copley Medal.

Summary

Sends Nepenthes laevis.

Wallace for the Royal Medal is a good thought.

W. H. Harvey is at Kew and JDH has asked him about desert climbers.

Summary

JDH is writing letters for Scott, whose temper will be "no obstacle for Hindoos and Musselmen working under him".

New curator at Kew finds considerable neglect, with hundreds of plants dying.

Summary

John Scott’s paper [see 4332] read at Linnean Society; praised by George Bentham.

Himalayan pine in Macedonia.

JDH is in a quarrel with H. C. Watson.