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

CD continues very ill.

His only work is a little on tendrils and climbers. Asks whether all tendrils are modified leaves or whether some are modified stems.

Last number [Jan 1864?] of Natural History Review is best that has appeared.

Summary

W. H. Harvey’s dandelion case worth publishing.

Suspects the uniform Primula elatior JDH referred to is a distinct species.

Scott’s paper on Passiflora shows variability of reproductive systems.

Summary

On JDH’s suggestions for new edition of Origin.

Gray’s Atlantic Monthly articles to be published [in England] as a pamphlet.

Summary

Proposes to support John Scott in research on relative fertility and self-incompatibility of plants. CD would pay him for a year or two but wants JDH to give him research facilities at Kew.

Summary

CD’s pleasure at JDH’s willingness to help Scott find a position in India.

Naudin underrates contamination of his experiments by insects. Thus CD doubts Naudin’s results on rapidity and universality of reversion in hybrids.

Wallace’s paper on man [see 4494] reflects his genius, although CD does not fully agree with it.

Summary

JDH’s opinion of Herbert Spencer.

Rejects CD’s view of inheritance of induced modifications.

Huxley grows fat.

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

Replies to queries on climbing plants.

JDH meets Scott and finds him an intelligent and superior-looking man. Scott wishes to come to Down before leaving England.

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

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

JDH defends his view that CD should not answer Kölliker.

Summary

JDH pursues the coffee plantation job for Scott.

Wrote 14 letters today. JDH’s work load.

Summary

Asks to borrow Botanische Zeitung (1860) with Friedrich Alefeld on Pisum [pp. 204–5].

JDH should ask George Busk whether he knows a better doctor than William Jenner "for giving life to a worn out poor devil".

Summary

John Scott has left Edinburgh Botanic Garden.

Asks JDH to ask Tyndall whether Frankland exaggerates the effect of snowfall on advance of European glaciers.

Huxley and Falconer squabble too much in public.

Summary

Responds to JDH on history of plant geography.

Opinion of Humboldt.

Origin of higher phanerogams.

Importance of the occurrence of south temperate forms in the Northern Hemisphere.

Summary

Lyell is "half-hearted but whole-headed" for CD’s theory. George Bentham wholly converted.

Bates’s book delightful but has a Darwinistic bias.

Cameroon plants.

JDH defends Bates against J. E. Gray’s slanders.

Summary

Sees difficulty of placing Scott at Kew. Suspects Balfour is prejudiced because Scott is a Darwinian.

CD’s former letter on Clematis [4403] blundered; work now being revised.

Summary

CD’s encouragement of John Scott, who has found a case of self-incompatibility in orchids, like William Herbert’s in Crinum.

Nägeli on phyllotaxy.

CD’s observations on broom fertilisation.

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

Falconer’s death haunts him. Personal annihilation not so horrifying to him as sun cooling some day and human race ending.

His health has been wretched.

Masters has written his agreement with CD’s "Climbing plants".