From Charles Lyell 15 March 1863
Summary
Lyell has received compliments for letting readers draw own inferences [on species question]. Now feels he earlier did Lamarck injustice. [CD’s] substitution of variety-making power for volition [as in Lamarck] in some respects only a change of names.
Thinks Huxley taking on too many responsibilities.
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 15 Mar 1863 |
| Classmark: | K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 364–6 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4041 |
Matches: 3 hits
- … letter to J. D. Hooker, [10–]12 November [1862] and n. 25). A second edition of the book …
- … 10). CD had also warned Huxley that the editorship would consume much time that might otherwise have been spent on ‘ original research’ (see Correspondence vol. 8, letter to T. H. Huxley, 20 July [1860] ). Lyell refers to James Manby Gully’s hydropathic establishment at Great Malvern, Worcestershire (see letter to Charles Lyell, 12– …
- … 12–13 March [1863] . Lyell refers to Principles of geology ( C. Lyell 1830–3 ), which passed through nine editions between 1830 and 1853, and Elements of geology ( C. Lyell 1838 ), which passed through five editions between 1838 and 1855. Lyell refers to the sale of copies of C. Lyell 1863a to book-dealers at John Murray’s sale in November 1862 (see Correspondence vol. 10, …
To Charles Lyell 6 March [1863]
Summary
Comments at length on CL’s book [Antiquity of man (1863)]. CD is "greatly disappointed that you have not given judgment and spoken fairly out what you think about the derivation of species".
Lists large number of queries concerning minor points.
Praises especially the chapters on language and glaciers.
Comments on the temperature of Africa during the glacial period, especially with regard to the views of Hooker.
Mentions Owen’s paper on the aye-aye [Rep. BAAS 32 (1862) pt 2: 114–16].
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 6 Mar [1863] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.289) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4028 |
To Smith, Elder and Company 10 March [1863]
Summary
Receipt for cheque enclosed.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Smith, Elder & Co |
| Date: | 10 Mar [1863] |
| Classmark: | National Library of Scotland (MS.23181, ff.11-15 (S. E. & Co. work slip, ff.11-12, letter ff.13-14, address envelope f.15)) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4034 |
To Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener [17–24 March 1863]
Summary
Reports the observations of Hermann Crüger and John Scott that fruit is set by orchids whose flowers never open and that pollen-tubes are emitted from pollen-masses still in their proper position. These cases convince CD that in Orchids he underestimated the power of tropical orchids to produce seed without insect aid but he is not shaken in his belief that the structure of the flowers is mainly related to insect agency.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Journal of Horticulture |
| Date: | [17–24 Mar 1863] |
| Classmark: | Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener n.s. 4 (1863): 237 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4069 |
To J. D. Hooker 5 March [1863]
Summary
Ill health.
At work on Variation.
Reading JDH on Welwitschia.
Letter from Lyell defends his position on species.
Anger at Owen.
John Lubbock’s lectures.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
| Date: | 5 Mar [1863] |
| Classmark: | DAR 115: 184 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4024 |
From John Scott 3 March 1863
Summary
JS criticises natural selection as based on an innate "continuously watchful selective principle".
Seeks seed of wild Rocky Mountain maize.
What is CD’s view on origin of maize?
Seeks information on self-sterility of Passiflora and Lobelia.
Weeping habit of trees.
Intended to say bisexual plants presented more established varieties than unisexual, not that they are more variable.
Explains his opinion that homomorphically fertilised Primula will produce only their own form. Is trying homomorphic crosses with different coloured Primula varieties.
Asks to read Asa Gray’s 2d review of Orchids.
Has finally successfully fertilised Gongora, but it was done by unnatural means.
| Author: | John Scott |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 3 Mar 1863 |
| Classmark: | DAR 108: 179 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4021 |
Matches: 3 hits
- … 10), CD suggested that he repeat the experiments first conducted by Karl Friedrich von Gärtner on the degree of cross and hybrid sterility exhibited by differently coloured varieties of maize (see Gärtner 1844 and 1849). CD had subsequently sent, with his letter to Scott of 16 February [1863] , seed of a cultivated variety of maize provided by Asa Gray . Barr & Sugden was a firm of London nurserymen with premises at 12 …
- … 10, letter from John Rogers, 22 January 1862 . See letter from John Scott, 18 February [1863] . In a missing letter, Scott had evidently informed CD that he was preparing a paper on the relationship between the form of reproduction and the heritability of variation in plants (see letter to John Scott, 16 February [1863] and n. 12). …
- … 12). For an account of Scott’s views on this subject, see the letter from John Scott, 16 January 1863 , n. 11. By ‘bisexual’ Scott meant ‘hermaphrodite’ (that is, bearing both male and female reproductive parts in the same flower), and by ‘unisexual’ he meant ‘diclinous’ (that is, bearing male and female reproductive parts in different flowers, whether on the same or different plants). Scott first raised this objection to natural selection, based upon blending inheritance, in his letter to CD of 6 December [1862] ( Correspondence vol. 10). …
From J. D. Hooker [6 March 1863]
Summary
Lyell’s position on mutability.
Directions for care of hothouse plants.
Falconer hostile to Lyell’s book.
JDH’s Wedgwood ware collection.
| Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | [6 Mar 1863] |
| Classmark: | DAR 101: 114–16 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4036 |
To J. D. Hooker 13 [March 1863]
Summary
Lyell’s position on mutability.
Fertilisation of trees by bees.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
| Date: | 13 [Mar 1863] |
| Classmark: | DAR 115: 186 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4039 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10, letters to John Scott , 11 December [1862] and 19 December [1862] ). CD refers to James Manby Gully’s hydropathic establishment in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, where Anne Elizabeth Darwin , CD’s eldest daughter and favourite child, died in 1851 (see Correspondence vol. 5). CD stayed at near-by Malvern Wells with his family from 3 September to 12 …
To Daniel Oliver 28 March [1863]
Summary
Nectar secretion in Edwardsia. Could the stamen protect stigma?
Sends monstrous Primula with three pistils.
Had never heard of Robert Caspary, but what DO thinks is the placenta could be a whorl of pistils without stigmas.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Daniel Oliver |
| Date: | 28 Mar [1863] |
| Classmark: | DAR 261.10: 43 (EH 88206026) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4063 |
From Armand de Quatrefages [28 March] – 11 April 1863
Summary
Continues to support, in debates at the Société d’Anthropologie, the view that variability of animals and anatomical modifications are produced by environment. Wishes to use CD’s niata cattle example from Journal of researches [2d ed., pp. 145–6].
| Author: | Jean Louis Armand (Armand de Quatrefages) Quatrefages de Bréau |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | [28 Mar] – 11 Apr 1863 |
| Classmark: | DAR 175: 3 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4082 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10. The reference is to André Sanson , and to a meeting of the Société d’Anthropologie held on 19 March 1863 ( Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 4 (1863): 159). For Quatrefages’s responses to Sanson of 16 April and 16 July, see Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 4 (1863): 213–23, and nn. 5 and 12, …
From Julius von Haast 5 March 1863
Summary
Sends copy of his December letter [see 3851], which he fears is lost.
Has been in the Southern Alps and has discovered a wonderful pass.
| Author: | John Francis Julius (Julius) von Haast |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 5 Mar 1863 |
| Classmark: | DAR 166: 1–2 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4026 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 12 May 1863, and probably dispatched a copy of these newspaper reports in his letter to CD of 13 May 1863 . See H. F. von Haast 1948 , p. 289. Orchids was published in May 1862. Hooker had told Haast about the impact of the book in a letter of 18 September 1862 (Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, MS.37.96). Haast initially wrote this letter on 9 December 1862, evidently enclosing it with a letter to Hooker of 10 …
To Asa Gray 20 March [1863]
Summary
Discusses the meaning of C. K. Sprengel’s term "dichogamy". Dichogamous plants are functionally monoecious; Primula is functionally dioecious.
Reports Hermann Crüger’s observations of Cattleya and of bees pollinating Catasetum. Crüger will observe Melastomataceae.
Has built a hothouse.
Fears Amsinckia cannot be dimorphic.
Ill health slows his work on Variation.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Asa Gray |
| Date: | 20 Mar [1863] |
| Classmark: | Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (58) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4053 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10–20 June [1862] and 26[–7] November [1862] , and letters from Asa Gray , 18–19 August 1862 and 29 December 1862 ). Gray evidently discussed Bates 1861 in a letter to CD written on 9 February 1863 that has not been found; CD quoted Gray’s comments in a letter to Henry Walter Bates of 4 March [1863] . Bates sent a copy of his paper to Gray in January, after CD had persuaded Gray to attempt to have it reviewed in the American Journal of Science and Arts , of which he was one of the contributing editors (see letter to H. W. Bates, 12 …
| letter | (12) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (5) |
| Hooker, J. D. | (2) |
| Gray, Asa | (1) |
| Journal of Horticulture | (1) |
| Lyell, Charles | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (12) |
| Hooker, J. D. | (3) |
| Lyell, Charles | (2) |
| Gray, Asa | (1) |
| Haast, Julius von | (1) |
