Summary

Mystified by the origin of coal-plants.

Milne’s Glen Roy theory is absurd but, oddly, it has staggered CD in favour of Agassiz’s ice-lake theory.

Summary

Busy correcting proofs. Thanks for JDH’s remarks; asks him to send any other corrections soon; goes to press with second part of Journal of researches in less than a week.

Urges collections of all kinds on any isolated islands.

Summary

Forwards copies of CD’s geology books.

Summary

Two Nepenthes have devoured two pieces of fibrin [sketch shows size] in three days.

Has CD any objection to JDH’s giving an account of CD’s Drosera observations at Belfast [BAAS meeting] in a résumé of pitcher-plant results ["Address to the department of botany and zoology", Rep. BAAS 44 (1874): 102–16]?

Summary

Answers CD’s questions relating to the flora of the Galapagos. [See 889.]

Summary

C. F. Ledebour [Flora rossica (1842–53)] particularly useful for variety tabulation. Results generally favourable.

Additions to Down House.

Last two chapters of MS took six months to write.

Summary

Regrets he cannot visit JDH.

Has been talking with Lyell about coal, which he finds utterly perplexing.

Is delighted with the generalisations in latest numbers of Flora Antarctica.

Summary

CD preparing new English and German editions of his early geology [of the voyage of the Beagle] books. Asks for Hooker’s copies as he no longer has his own.

Summary

More praise for Himalayan journals.

How remote was glacial action in Himalayas?

Implies Himalayas were birthplace of many plants.

Final volume of Cirripedia to be printed in two or three months.

Summary

Samuel Haughton was the prejudiced reviewer of the Origin. JDH’s opinion of SH.

Has heard from a W. African collector that P. B. Du Chaillu’s accounts [Explorations and adventures in equatorial Africa (1861)] are all false.

R. F. Burton has impudently stolen credit for Gustav Mann’s Cameroon expedition.

Summary

Discusses differences between Asa Gray’s view and his own on crossing. A common effect is the obliteration of incipient varieties. There is heavy evidence against new characters arising from crossing wild forms, "only intermediate races are then produced". Innate vital forces are somehow led to act differently as a result of direct effect of physical conditions. Astonished by JDH’s statement that every difference might have occurred without selection. CD agrees, but JDH’s manner of putting it astonished him. CD says, "think of each of a thousand seeds bringing forth its plant, and then each a thousand … I cannot even grapple with idea". Responds to JDH’s and Lyell’s feeling that he made too much of a deus ex machina out of natural selection. [Letter actually dated 20 Nov but is certainly after 3831.] [wrong field?]

Summary

Thanks for JDH’s interesting details about the Galapagos.

Clarification of CD’s query about the relationship between the range of a genus and the ranges of its constituent species.

Summary

Huxley has shown him the jaws of an Anoplotherium brought from the Gallegos by R. O. Cunningham.

Saw Hallett’s wheat crops at Brighton; results of his selection very striking.

Huxley is assembling his Darwiniana papers for republication.

Has written a crushing reply to Richard Congreve ["The scientific aspects of positivism", Fortn. Rev. n.s. 5 (1869): 653–70] and JDH feels "infantine" beside him.

Comments on Sabine’s being offered and accepting K.C.B.

Summary

Can JDH bring a good book on Corallina or Nullipora of Lamarck?

CD intends writing paper on their propagation.

Summary

Etty [Henrietta Litchfield] is helping with Coral reefs [2d ed.]; will JDH lend her his copy?

Summary

Six children have died of scarlet fever in Down village.

Writing abstract is amusing and improving work. Thanks JDH and Lyell for setting him to it.

Summary

Maintains his view on crossing. Thinks practical breeders would agree with him; doubts that variability and domestication are at all necessarily correlative.

Identical plants in different conditions a heavy argument against "direct action" [of physical conditions].

His 1000-pigeon case is altered if long-beaked are in least degree sterile with short-beaked.

His work on dimorphism inclines him to believe that sterility is at first a selected quality to keep incipient species distinct.

Case of easy modification of Lythrum pollen to favour or prevent crossing.

Monsters.

Has just finished chapter on variations of cultivated plants.

Edinburgh doctors have sent him Diploma of Medical Society.

Summary

Thanks for H. C. Watson’s interesting letter. Disagrees with him on intermediate varieties.

CD has read latest numbers of JDH’s The botany of the Antarctic voyage [pt I, Flora Antarctica (1844–7)]; notes several sentences against "us Transmutationists".

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

Origin of Antarctic brash ice.

Further on case of Lycopodium: does JDH know any genera of plants whose species are variable in one continent but not in another? Discussion on variations between floras as regards species richness, and factors affecting geographical distribution. On species, CD expects "that I shall be able to show even to sound naturalists that there are two sides to the question of the immutability of species; – that facts can be viewed and grouped under the notion of allied species having descended from common stocks". Mentions books and papers for and against species mutability. CD believes past absurd ideas arose from no one’s having approached subject on side of variation under domestication.

Would like to see Clarke’s paper

and would welcome visit from JDH.