From J. P. Thom 14 January 1863
Summary
Thanks for a gift of £20.
Author: | John Pringle Thom |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 14 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 178: 107 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3916 |
To Alphonse de Candolle 14 January [1863]
Summary
Thanks AdeC for his memoir ["Étude sur l’espèce", Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) 4th ser. 18 (1862): 59–110].
CD astonished at the amount of variability in the oaks.
CD differs from most contemporaries in thinking that the vast continental extensions of Forbes, Heer, and others are not only advanced without sufficient evidence but are opposed to much weighty evidence.
AdeC’s comment on CD’s work [Origin] is generous.
CD is satisfied at the length AdeC goes with him and is not surprised at his prudent reservations. He remembers how many years it took him to change his old beliefs. The great point is to give up immutability. So long as species are thought immutable there can be no progress in "epiontology" [see ML 1: 234 n.]. CD is sure to be proved wrong in many points but the subject will have "a grand future".
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Alphonse de Candolle |
Date: | 14 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | Archives de la famille de Candolle (private collection) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3917 |
To Thomas Rivers 15 January [1863]
Summary
Particularly interested in TR’s information about peaches. Accepts offer of double-flowering peach-trees.
Will build a small hothouse for experiments.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Thomas Rivers |
Date: | 15 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 185: 83 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3918 |
From J. D. Hooker [15 January 1863]
Summary
JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.
Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [15 Jan 1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 101–2 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3919 |
From George Bentham 16 January 1863
Author: | George Bentham |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 16 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 160: 154 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3920 |
From John Scott 16 January 1863
Summary
Experiments to cut Laelia stigma from rostellum and then to fertilise rostellum are baffled by "a latent instinctive power". Somehow the pollen-tubes find their way to the style.
Suggests CD study variation in ferns.
Author: | John Scott |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 16 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 177: 82 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3921 |
To Thomas Rivers 17 [January 1863]
Summary
Can TR distinguish generally, always, or never, a nectarine-tree from a peach-tree before it flowers or before it fruits? He wants to quote TR’s answer.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Thomas Rivers |
Date: | 17 [Jan 1863] |
Classmark: | John Wilson (dealer) (Catalogue 61, 21 July 1989, item 50) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3922 |
From Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure 17 January 1863
Summary
His work on Mexico has some geology, which might interest CD.
He is currently at work on the "filiation des genres des espèces et des moeurs des guepes [hornets]".
Author: | Henri Louis Frédéric (Henri) de Saussure |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 17 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 177: 40 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3923 |
From H. W. Bates 17 January [1863]
Summary
Has sent copy of his paper to Asa Gray.
Melastomad flowers are strikingly neglected by pollinators.
Murray has ordered many illustrations for HWB’s Naturalist on the river Amazons.
Author: | Henry Walter Bates |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 17 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 205.8: 67 (Letters) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3925 |
From Hugh Falconer 18 January [1863]
Summary
Jaw with teeth found associated with Archaeopteryx fossil. Waterhouse pronounces it a fish’s jaw.
Author: | Hugh Falconer |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 18 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 164: 13 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3926 |
To Asa Gray 19 January [1863]
Summary
Comments on his own review of Bates’s butterfly paper [Collected papers 2: 87–92].
Thanks AG for information on Platanthera.
Has been wasting more time with Melastomataceae; can find no nectar in Monochaetum; is there any in Rhexia?
Hopes Lincoln’s "fiat against Slavery" will have some effect.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 19 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (57) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3927 |
To Hugh Falconer 20 [January 1863]
Summary
If jaw belongs to Archaeopteryx, it will show great peculiarity. A German author has advanced the case as argument for Origin.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Hugh Falconer |
Date: | 20 [Jan 1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 144: 30 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3928 |
From Thomas Rivers 21 January 1863
Summary
Sends some trees to CD.
Would be pleased to receive the copy of Origin offered by CD as gift.
Will give CD any tree or shrub he may want.
Refers to curious strawberry hybrids noticed in Journal of Horticulture [I. Anderson-Henry, "Crossing strawberries", J. Hortic. n.s. 4 (1863): 45–6].
Author: | Thomas Rivers |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 176: 160 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3933 |
To John Scott 21 January [1863]
Summary
Urges JS to publish on orchid pollen-tubes.
Suggests comparing stigmatic tissue of sterile hybrids and fertile parent; he would expect hybrid plant’s cell contents not to be coagulated after 24 hours in spirits of wine.
Suggests JS coat orchid stigmas with plaster of Paris for his work on rostellar germination.
Asks for list of "bud-variation" cases; CD has devoted a chapter to the subject.
Inquiries about I. Anderson-Henry’s observational competence.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Scott |
Date: | 21 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 93: B56–7, B75–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3934 |
To Julius von Haast 22 January 1863
Summary
Thanks JvH for his address [to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury], his Geological Report [Topographical and geological exploration of the western districts of the Nelson province, New Zealand (1861)],
and for the "honourable" notice of Origin.
CD especially interested in JvH’s facts on the old glacial period.
Asks about fossil remains [of supposed living mammalia] which CD thinks may be like "the Solenhofen bird-creature" [Archaeopteryx].
Urges the recording of rate and manner of spreading of European weeds and plants and observation on which native plants "most fail".
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Francis Julius (Julius) von Haast |
Date: | 22 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand (Haast family papers, MS-Papers-0037-051-3) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3935 |
To John Murray 22 January [1863]
Summary
Asks that a copy of Origin be sent to Thomas Rivers.
Curious about sale of Orchids. It is too stiff for the public. "If praise from Botanists would sell, it would go off well."
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Murray |
Date: | 22 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | National Library of Scotland (John Murray Archive) (Ms.42152 f. 127) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3936 |
From Daniel Oliver 22 January 1863
Summary
The number of "aquatic" flowers is reduced if one considers only those that expand under water.
Lecturing at Norwich.
Author: | Daniel Oliver |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 22 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 173: 19 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3937 |
From Francis Boott 23 January 1863
Summary
His son wants CD’s opinion about a cub supposed by Frank Buckland to be progeny of a lioness and mastiff.
Lyell working at last proofs [of Antiquity of man]; he is scornful of Owen.
Author: | Francis Boott |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 23 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 160: 254 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3938 |
To John Lubbock 23 [February 1863]
Summary
CD’s comments on JL’s paper [first part of "On the development of Chloëon dimidiatum", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 24 (1863): 61–78].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury |
Date: | 23 [Feb 1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 263: 59 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3939 |
From J. D. Hooker 24 January 1863
Summary
JDH delivers CD’s letter to C. V. Naudin.
Neither Naudin nor Decaisne appreciates Origin.
Discusses Naudin on physiological causes of species formation;
Decaisne on plant heredity.
JDH on Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 24 Jan 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 99–100 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3940 |
letter | (497) |
Darwin, C. R. | (233) |
Hooker, J. D. | (32) |
Scott, John | (16) |
Gray, Asa | (11) |
Darwin, W. E. | (10) |
Darwin, C. R. | (264) |
Hooker, J. D. | (37) |
Scott, John | (18) |
Huxley, T. H. | (10) |
Rivers, Thomas | (10) |