Summary

Cancelled: Known only from reference in letter to Charles Lyell, 11 October [1859]

Summary

Lyell has received compliments for letting readers draw own inferences [on species question]. Now feels he earlier did Lamarck injustice. [CD’s] substitution of variety-making power for volition [as in Lamarck] in some respects only a change of names.

Thinks Huxley taking on too many responsibilities.

Summary

Comments on cool-period MS. Still believes geographical changes principal cause of former changes of climate.

Summary

Response to Origin. Praise for summary of chapter 10 and chapter 11.

The dissimilarity of African and American species is ‘necessary result of “Creation” adapting new species to the pre-existing ones. Granting this unknown & if you please miraculous power acting’.

C. T. Gaudin writes of Oswald Heer’s finding many species common between Miocene floras of Iceland and Switzerland. Interesting for CD’s migration theory.

Summary

It is strange that Agassiz, who is for the "sanctity of species", should favour Pallas’s view of hybrid origin of domestic dog.

CL has not meant to advocate successive creation of types but to question assumption that all mammals descended from single stock. Why should a Triassic reptile or bird not move towards mammalian form because an ancestral marsupial has appeared? Believes recent appearance of rodents and bats in Australia explains their lack of development.

Can CD supply a reference on plant extinction on St Helena?

Believes marsupials better adapted for surviving drought in Australia than higher mammals.

Will not press argument about lack of development of mammalian forms on islands, but CD should note objection.

Does CD’s belief in multiple origin of dogs affect faith in single primates in different regions?

Does time lapse between putative independently descended mammalian forms mean first form will "keep down" later incipient one? Thus Homo sapiens has prevented improvement of other anthropomorphs; bats and rodents on islands would prevent improvement of lower forms into mammalian.

Summary

Questions CD’s view in Origin that domestic dogs are not descended from a single stock. Occasional crossings of domestic stock with wild species could explain cases of reversion towards wild specific forms. CD’s views on hybridity do not then have to be contradicted in constructing an ancestral stock.

Summary

Wonders why the coracoid bone in the flightless Apteryx is so large when the clavicles are reduced. The clavicles are even separate in the ostrich. The large coracoid in reptiles is explained by the connection to the forelimbs.

Summary

CD would have carried the public more if he had explained adaptations by multiple causes, some unknown and some well known, i.e., natural selection.

Discusses Hooker’s views of extinction on St Helena.

Work on antiquity of man suspended.

Stopped by 11th edition of Principles of geology [1872].

Summary

Jamieson has revisited Glen Roy and confirmed his theory of glacier lakes.

A. G. More considers CD the most profound of reasoners.

Summary

Comments on pp. 201, 211, and 218 [of Origin].

Summary

Defends position he takes on species [in Antiquity of man]. CD overestimates CL’s capacity to influence public. Will not dogmatise on descent of man; prepared to accept it, but it "takes away much of the charm from my speculations on the past". Cannot go to Huxley’s length with regard to natural selection. Responds to CD’s comments on Antiquity of man.

Summary

Praises the Origin: a "splendid case of close reasoning".

Objects to CD’s having ignored Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

Thinks CD should omit mentioning problem of explaining the eye at the beginning of chapter 14. Suggests rewording several passages.

Thinks want of peculiar birds in Madeira a difficulty, considering presence of them in Galapagos.

Has always felt that the case of man and his races is one and the same with animals and plants.

Summary

Sees Huxley’s deification of matter and force as a reaction to the way Paley likened the "Unknown Cause" to the mind of man so that new causes could be introduced. If you wish to retain free will which is inconsistent with constant law, Paley’s position is better. Free will is a recently introduced cause on our planet. It cannot be fully attributed to secondary causes.

What CD says about the variation in gestation of the hound is remarkable.

The astonishing fertile rabbit–hare hybrids encourage belief in Pallas’s theory of the multiple origin of dogs.

Does the regularity of gestation in man indicate a common stock?

Hooker’s observation of absence of forms peculiar to extra-Arctic Greenland indicates that the time since the beginning of the glacial period is brief in geological terms.

Summary

Returns "excellent" MS in which CD favours hybrid origin of domestic dog, which CL believes strengthens case for common progenitor of wild species.

Doubts CD’s authorities for antiquity of dingo.

Variation will raise many points for investigation.

"Leporine" hare–rabbit hybrid should be investigated.

Has re-read passages in Origin that CD suggested.

Annals of Natural History would probably reprint Gray’s review of Origin at their own expense.

CD’s thought that modern reptiles could not develop into existing Mammalia but only into another high form is a "grand notion" compatible with "the infinite capacity of the creative power".

Comments on New Guinea marsupials.

Still thinks that the Australian genera and species are so well fitted for extraordinary droughts that they would get the better of the dingo.

Suggests that once there were more races of man, though from common stock. Competition and then hybridity checked divergence.

Falconer’s views on elephant classification. CL attaches little value to Falconer’s objection that mastodons and elephants do not come in chronologically, as they should in CD’s view.

Summary

Would like to talk over Salisbury Craigs with CD.

CL’s father enthusiastic over Journal of researches.

Comments on Élie de Beaumont’s theory of mountain elevation.

Asks about parallel lines of upheaval and depression in the Pacific.

Glad CD likes Athenaeum Club.

Comments on methods of work.

Invites CD to visit Kinnordy.

Defends BAAS: "in this country no importance is attached to any body of men who do not make occasional demonstrations of their strength in public meetings".

With respect to Glen Roy, notes existence of deposits destitute of shells.

Summary

Regrets not seeing CD before leaving on trip [to the U. S.]. CD’s move from London will be a privation for CL.

Returns charts on coral reefs.

Summary

Wishes CD would enlarge on the doctrines of [Pyotr Simon] Pallas about the various races of dogs having come from several distinct wild species or sub-species.

Suggests organisms have a latent principle of improvement which is brought out by selection or breeding.

Summary

Suggests that the height of the water which formed the shelves in Glen Roy was determined not by the height of the blocking glacier but by the height of a col. Notes problems in the idea.

Summary

His view of Origin.

Belief of Duke of Argyll that substituting "variation" and "selection" for creation deifies them.

Thinks Argyll would accept evolution except for man.

A’s view of humming-birds.

Describes discussion with [Victoria,] Princess Royal of Prussia, about evolution.

New edition of Elements consistent with Origin.

Summary

Believes CD’s argument against special creation based on absence of terrestrial mammals on islands isolated before Pliocene era is very strong. However, the absence means Cetacea and bats have not modified towards terrestrial existence. There is similar lack of development of bats and rodents in Australia. Constancy among land shells of Madeira over long period shows that the majority of their species are immutable: a minority of "metamorphic" species maintains the overall number of true species while extinction removes many. Emphasis on the role of extinction discomfits CD’s opponents since the power of generation of new species ought to keep pace. Mentions Ammonite deposits with reference to CD’s comments on their apparent sudden extinction [Origin, pp. 321–2]. Perhaps absence of transmutation on slowly subsiding atolls indicates the slow rate of selective change.