Summary

Relates a variety of facts about sexual selection in birds. [See Descent 2: 104–5.]

Summary

Thanks WTT-D for his present of Sachs’s book [Textbook of botany (1875)].

Summary

About a dog that acquired habits from a cat and her kittens.

Summary

Has a letter from Haast on the spreading of European plants.

Summary

Corrects Werner Hoffmeister, cited in Earthworms, p. 63: earthworms do not block their holes to keep out Scolopendras but to prevent evaporation.

Summary

Thanks FEA for copy of a review of a book on evolution by "an ignorant lawyer".

Sends £5 for Index subscription.

Summary

Thanks CD for his good opinion of his book, What Mr Darwin saw,

and his expressions [concerning W. L. Garrison] "which will be treasured by his children".

Summary

SB has decided to lay the matter [the subject of 12393 and 12396] before the public and has written to the Athenæum stating the facts. [Athenæum 31 Jan 1880.]

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.

Summary

Asks JM to forward letter [1525] to Francis Galton "the author of the very interesting volume" Murray recently published.

Summary

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

Summary

Case of cat transmitting a habit to her offspring.

Summary

On his father’s crossing experiments with cacti, in which hybrids were found quite fertile.

On his breeding of guinea-pigs.

Sends Miss E. Watts’s message about crested fowls and Brahmas.

Summary

Delighted with mechanisms of Salvia and Viola. How can anyone who compares structure of Viola cornuta and common violet still suppose them to be separate creations?

Summary

On the changes in plumage of scarlet ibis at the zoo in breeding season.

Summary

Explains more clearly what he is looking for in his work on poultry: relative variation at different ages, the effect of disuse on different parts, breeding between wild and domestic, and degree of fertility of "mongrels of very diverse races".

Summary

Comments on Spencer’s terms.

Summary

Sends a preliminary reply to CD’s query [5890]. Ten males to one female among captured micro-Lepidoptera. Six females to four or five males in those he has bred. HTS is aware this is diametrically opposed to information from [Alexander] Wallace and Bates, but the true proportion of sexes can only be ascertained by breeding.

Summary

Thinks CD overestimates earthworms’ role in creating mould. Gives some observations on worms and questions about their breeding habits.

Summary

Sends a list of the work he feels should be done at Beesby [Lincolnshire] to put the farm in order. Hopes to get purchase deeds completed by 10 October.