Summary

Informs CD that Sylvicola aureola may be a distinct species but is a close ally of S. aestiva of N. and S. America and perhaps only a "climatic variety".

Summary

JDH’s page-by-page criticisms on Origin, first edition, as requested by CD for preparation of the third edition.

Summary

CD’s divergent series explains those anomalous plants that hover between what would otherwise be two species in a genus.

Inclined to see conifers as a sub-series of dicotyledons that developed in parallel to monocotyledons, but retained cryptogamic characters.

Mentions H. C. Watson’s view of variations.

Man has destroyed more species than he has created varieties.

Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.

In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".

Summary

Glacial action in the Andes.

Origin of Chilean sheep.

Varieties of S. American horses.

Summary

Believes Origin makes science "young, clear, elevated" but does not have the facts to prove that cumulated slight modifications could ever produce different families from common ancestors. [See 2709.]

Summary

Sends weights of three objects (blotting paper, thread, and hair) to within 1/1000 of a grain.

Summary

Cases of "dioecio-dimorphism" as in primroses are widespread. AG always considered them the first step toward bisexuality.

Summary

On the suggestion of Jeffries Wyman, he writes about the rats that he captured in Mammoth Cave in 1850. They were indeed blind. Reginald Mantell studied them and learned that with long exposure to graduated light, they became somewhat sensitised. Sends copy of an abstract which he wrote as a letter to A. H. Guyot ["On the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky", Am. Journal of Sci. and Arts 2d ser. 11 (1851)]. [See 3007.]

Summary

CL has calculated that elevation and subsidence of certain formations in Sweden and Norway take place at the rate of 2 1/2 feet per century. He now proposes to estimate the age of a bed by including a conjecture that pauses occur in the oscillations in the ratio of 4 periods of stasis to one of movement. Applying this formula to Scotland, the last subsidence and re-elevation would be 590,000 years and the age of the beds with human implements would be 20,000 years.

Summary

Would be glad to have Chauncey Wright’s [Origin] review for the Natural History Review.

Summary

American edition of Origin. AG’s assessment of the book’s weak and strong points. Suggests Jeffries Wyman would be a useful source of facts and hints for CD.

Summary

Sends an account of the destruction of wild rabbits by rats introduced from a wrecked ship.

Summary

Sends a copy of his Ventriculidae [of the Chalk (1848)]. This group, he feels, is well represented by CD’s plate of graduating species [Origin, ch. 4].

Summary

Returns paper by Asa Gray [? "Review of Darwin’s theory", Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 29 (1860): 153–84].

Greatly admires Origin.

Can follow effects of natural selection in Carex, but when CD brings millions of years into play, he is like Church which demands faith. FB cannot believe in divinity of Christ, resurrection, or miracles.

Summary

CD’s observations on preference of Drosera for milk and nitrogenous fluids, and the effect of nitrate of ammonia are interesting. Asks whether CD is satisfied that the effect is not due to density of fluid or to a chemical irritant. His own observations suggest such possibilities.

Summary

Cases of monstrosities becoming transmissible.

Comments on passages in Origin on the blindness of the tucu-tucu (Ctenomys) and Mammoth Cave rats.

Summary

Lists land birds of Galapagos and discusses their distribution on mainland of S. America.

Summary

Returns "excellent" MS in which CD favours hybrid origin of domestic dog, which CL believes strengthens case for common progenitor of wild species.

Doubts CD’s authorities for antiquity of dingo.

Variation will raise many points for investigation.

"Leporine" hare–rabbit hybrid should be investigated.

Has re-read passages in Origin that CD suggested.

Annals of Natural History would probably reprint Gray’s review of Origin at their own expense.

CD’s thought that modern reptiles could not develop into existing Mammalia but only into another high form is a "grand notion" compatible with "the infinite capacity of the creative power".

Comments on New Guinea marsupials.

Still thinks that the Australian genera and species are so well fitted for extraordinary droughts that they would get the better of the dingo.

Suggests that once there were more races of man, though from common stock. Competition and then hybridity checked divergence.

Falconer’s views on elephant classification. CL attaches little value to Falconer’s objection that mastodons and elephants do not come in chronologically, as they should in CD’s view.

Summary

It is strange that Agassiz, who is for the "sanctity of species", should favour Pallas’s view of hybrid origin of domestic dog.

CL has not meant to advocate successive creation of types but to question assumption that all mammals descended from single stock. Why should a Triassic reptile or bird not move towards mammalian form because an ancestral marsupial has appeared? Believes recent appearance of rodents and bats in Australia explains their lack of development.

Can CD supply a reference on plant extinction on St Helena?

Believes marsupials better adapted for surviving drought in Australia than higher mammals.

Will not press argument about lack of development of mammalian forms on islands, but CD should note objection.

Does CD’s belief in multiple origin of dogs affect faith in single primates in different regions?

Does time lapse between putative independently descended mammalian forms mean first form will "keep down" later incipient one? Thus Homo sapiens has prevented improvement of other anthropomorphs; bats and rodents on islands would prevent improvement of lower forms into mammalian.

Summary

Notes by HCW on the Origin dealing especially with divergence and convergence. Believes there is some natural tendency to converge into groups in opposition to divergence generated by natural selection.