Summary

Reports on his work. Relationships of shells found at Steinheim; attempts to elucidate the genesis of different forms.

Summary

Thanks BvC for his letter and will read the references concerning instinct.

"I can see that the discussion of the Philosophy of Evolution is at present very important."

Summary

Thanks CD for statement about children’s speech. Asks permission to quote him in his forthcoming book.

Summary

Describes data relating to variability of Primula elatior.

Summary

Having read CD’s article in Mind ["Biographical sketch of an infant", Collected papers 2: 191–200], AHS questions CD about the child’s first attempts at speech, hoping to throw light on the origin of language.

Summary

Has heard through Asa Gray of CD’s interest in his work on Lithospermum and Oxalis. Thinks dimorphism in Oxalis is but early stage toward complete separation of sexes.

Summary

Thanks for EK’s book [Werden und Vergehen (1876)].

Regrets he cannot write for EK’s journal, but his son, Francis, may do so.

Suggests EK as editor urge on readers [of Kosmos] the investigation of the causes of variability; why, for instance, do wild Pampas cattle change colour when domesticated? Thinks experiments and observations on recently domesticated animals and cultivated plants would throw light on the subject.

Summary

Reprint of Origin will bring number to 19500 – so title-page may safely read "Twentieth Thousand".

Summary

Kind of JP to send notes on horses, but will not write on subject again.

Erasmus Darwin has not left his house for three years.

Summary

Thanks CD for permission to quote his comments; mentions some of his conclusions with regard to the early speech of children.

Thanks for [newspaper] account of American Philological Association meeting.

Summary

Movements in cotyledons; outlines tracing technique. [A tracing of movements of red cabbage cotyledon enclosed.]

Summary

On publishing details for various CD books.

Has no corrections for new issue of Descent [2d ed.].

Questions amount of cheque for profits.

Summary

Such honours as proposal for election to Institut affect CD very little.

GdeS’s idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed until sucking insects evolved is a splendid one. The suggestion that fertilisation of the surviving members of the most ancient dicotyledons should be studied is a good one. CD hopes GdeS will keep it in mind.

Summary

C. E. Bessey’s case [see 10969] came too late, as the sheets had been printed, but CD thinks it should be carefully investigated as a possible case of incipient heterostyly.

Is trying to make out the function of "bloom", the waxy secretion on leaves and fruits.

Summary

Thanks for Forms of flowers.

In his Monographiae phanerogamarum [vol. 1 (1878)] he discusses transitional forms of dioecism in three genera of Smilax.

Criticises CD’s use of the words "purpose" and "end", but acknowledges that in English they can mean both cause and effect.

Summary

Sends CD lithograph plates as examples of a book he hopes to publish.

Summary

Sends a drawing [missing] of alleged fossil man found in Colorado. JM is certain it is a hoax perpetrated by P. T. Barnum. It was designed to conform to CD’s well-known views of man’s ancestor.

Summary

Approves terms used in LAE’s manuscript. Discusses relative advantages of self-fertilisation and cross-fertilisation.

Thanks LAE for pointing out erratum [in Cross and self-fertilisation].

Summary

Asks to be sent Dr Frank’s Die Natur: wagerechte Richtung von Pflanzentheilen.

Summary

Sends the name of a plant: Cotyledon stolonifera.