Summary

Congratulations on JL’s marriage. Invitation to dine at Down with the Hookers, Huxleys, and T. V. Wollaston.

Summary

Regrets he cannot accept dinner invitation.

Summary

Thanks WBDM for the particulars on the iceberg.

Will look up the barnacle specimen to which he refers at British Museum.

WBDM should remember when he returns to New Zealand that aboriginal rat and frog are "great desiderata in Natural History".

Summary

Thanks for case of inherited malconformation.

Summary

Grateful for Siebold’s wonderful facts [C. T. E. von Siebold, On a true parthenogenesis in moths and bees (1856), trans. by W. S. Dallas (1857)].

Vitality of spermatozoa.

Hybridisation of bees. Bees are in one respect his greatest theoretical difficulty.

CD still convinced about the relation of cement receptacles and ovarian tubes [in Crustacea].

Birth of C. W. Darwin.

Summary

Arranges an appointment.

Summary

Thanks PHG for information about the bald-pate pigeon.

Will write to Richard Hill.

Can PHG remember any facts relevant to transport of animals and plants to distant islands?

Summary

Requests that JEG secure the assistance of Samuel Birch in regard to information about varieties of domesticated animals and plants in China. Encloses memorandum.

Summary

CD asks whether New Zealand tribes have an idea of beauty in women which is "like ours"; WBDM answers, "Yes".

Summary

[T. Bell Salter’s?] "hybrid" Epilobium a false claim.

Admires Huxley’s response to Falconer [see 1904].

Tristan da Cunha plant list, requested by CD, supports JDH’s position [on continental extension?].

Chilean plants not exceptional.

JDH considers parallels between Australian Alps and European plants strong evidence for multiple creations.

Summary

Is flattered by a proposal that he undertake some reviewing work, but has many years’ work in prospect on his present book on species and varieties.

Summary

Gives references to works on fowls and pigeons.

Observations on Gallinaceae.

Musk ox skull from southern England is additional evidence for Agassiz’s glacial period. Owen is mistaken in calling it a buffalo.

EB describes the buffalo proper.

Will send domestic pigeon specimens.

Believes pigeons were not bred in India before the Mohammedan conquest. Describes Indian breeds.

Believes the ass is an African rather than an Asian production. Discusses various species of ass and their distribution.

Wild horned cattle on borders of Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur.

[Notes received by CD on 6 May 1856.]

Summary

Orders Andrew Knight’s paper ["An account of some experiments on the fecundation of vegetables", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. (1799): 195–204] and J. E. Gray’s book [Gleanings from the menagerie and aviary at Knowsley Hall (1846)].

Summary

The responses to his queries on domestic variations are coming in from all over; believes he will make an interesting collection. At present concerned with rabbits and ducks.

Has told Lyell of his views on species and CL urges CD to publish a preliminary essay. Has begun to work on it, with fear and trembling at its inadequacies.

Summary

Suggests that J. E. Gray and/or G. R. Waterhouse might be willing to set her butterfly collection. Recommends that her children should collect their own butterflies.

Summary

The Kentucky cave insects (Adelops) are evidently identical to European species of the same genus, some of which are cave insects, others found in damp, dark places.

Summary

CD coming to London.

Read JDH’s review [Hooker’s Kew J. Bot. 8 (1856): 54–64 et seq.] of Alphonse de Candolle’s Géographie botanique raisonnée [1855] long ago.

Summary

Reminds WBDM of his promise of information about the quartz boulders and an iceberg with fragment of rock seen in southern ocean.

Sends other questions [on separate sheet (missing)] which WBDM will think ridiculous, but all bear on plants and animals under domestication.

Summary

Thanks for promise of rabbit carcase and for information about rabbit at Zoological Society’s Garden.

Requests correspondent to ask Mr Vivian for carcase of an old "Creve-coeur" cock. CD has found that the skull in this breed is modified to support its comb.

Summary

Do the plants that are common to Europe and North America nearly all live north of the Arctic Circle? CD bases his question on HCW’s "capital" comparison between relations of Europe to North America and Europe to E. Asia if the intervening land had been submerged. CD has been led to speculate that in the mid-Pliocene the organisms now living in middle Europe and northern U. S. lived within the Arctic Circle. Subsequent movements of this flora with advance and retreat of glaciers would explain present distribution better than Forbes’s vast submergences.