Summary

Requests a copy of Unger 1852 (Versuch einer Geschichte der Pflanzenwelt; an attempt at a history of the vegetable kingdom).

Requests a copy of the issue of British and Foreign Medical Review which contains a review of Origin, if it is a different publication from British and Foreign Medical and Chirurgical Review

Summary

Blyth’s effort to raise money for a Chinese expedition.

Comments on free-will in animals.

Says natural selection is not in the same category with Huxley’s "force" and "matter".

Discusses remarkable variation in period of gestation in dogs and ducks.

Discusses Arctic flora.

Has been working on orchids; they beat woodpeckers in adaptation.

Summary

Birth of JL’s child.

Summary

Response to [3020]. CD has been misled by errors made in the Times notice [5 Dec 1860, p. 5]. GCW does not doubt that Foraminiferous matter as well as other deep sea deposits vary greatly in thickness, but positive results are difficult to establish. Some areas of the sea bed are bare but their extent has not been established. He now thinks that he was too hasty in the conclusion that deep currents produce abrasion and rounding of gravel.

Summary

Reports to CD on what he has found out about Elodea growing near Cambridge.

Sedgwick is speaking at [Cambridge] Philosophical Society on CD’s "supposed errors" [Camb. Herald & Huntingdonshire Gaz. 19 May 1860, pp. 3–4].

JSH wonders how Owen can be so savage toward CD’s views when his own are "to a certain extent of the same character".

Summary

On the Origin. Before expressing his disagreements, CJFB praises CD’s labour, patience, fairness, and other qualities which make the work "one of the most important that has ever appeared in Natural History". [See 2690.]

Summary

Asks AW about archaeological evidence concerning the first appearance of dray horses.

Summary

Sketch and description of a [wasp’s] nest from Cuba. [Notes by CD on wasps’ nests and comb-building habits of hive-bees.]

Summary

Saw Salter’s Spirifer specimens; a very good proof of indefinite modifiability.

Beginning to think gap between Cambrian and Lower Silurian enormous.

Édouard Lartet to give paper before Geological Society ["On coexistence of man with certain extinct quadrupeds", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 16 (1859–60): 471–5].

Summary

Thanks JSH for his defence [see 2794].

He is not hurt for long by what his attackers say. His conclusions were arrived at after long study. He has certainly erred, but not so much as "Sedgwick and Co." think.

Asks JSH to send names of plants that vary greatly in length of pistil.

Summary

Answers CD’s questions about his experiments with primroses, cowslips, and oxlips. HD is aware experiments must often be repeated many times. Has never met with the oxlip except where primrose and cowslip grow together.

Summary

Discusses possible purchase of land.

Summary

Discusses relationship between natural selection and more general laws. Law of gravity is not seen as requiring design. Mentions mathematicians’ judgment of probability.

Notes gestation periods for hounds.

Etty is somewhat better.

Mentions his paper on fertilisation of orchids by insects [Collected papers 2: 32–5].

Summary

Glad CL plans trip to Amiens to investigate flints and post-glacial period.

Mentions support by Huxley, Hooker, and Lubbock at Oxford BAAS meeting. Asa Gray also goes on fighting.

Likes article by William Hopkins ["Physical theories and the phenomena of life", Fraser’s Mag. 61 (1860): 739–52; 62 (1860): 74–90].

Comments on hybrids of hare and rabbit.

Summary

Hyaena remains show how recently Sicily was joined to Africa.

Reports on the Oxford meeting of BAAS.

Summary

Thanks CH for correction of blunder in Origin about hive-bees sucking clover: "a greater kindness than a new fact".

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

Quotes note by Julius Milde on Drosera rotundifolia from Botanische Zeitung (1852): 540.

Summary

The stone hatchets are a great muddle. Would like a copy of Jacques Boucher [de Crèvecoeur] de Perthes’s book [Antiquités Celtiques et antédiluviennes (1847–64)].

Is studying action of carbonate of ammonia on Drosera. Asks if this has been done.

Summary

Drawing up paper on Drosera but will not publish till results are tested.