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.

Summary

Response to CD’s comments on "Creation by law" [see 5637].

The limits of variation discussed.

Summary

His better opinion [of work of Boucher de Perthes].

Explains his position on CL’s treatment of species.

Mentions positive response to his ideas on the part of a German professor [Ernst Haeckel], Alphonse de Candolle, and a botanical palaeontologist [Gaston de Saporta].

Notes negative reaction of entomologists.

Mentions Falconer’s objections [to Antiquity].

Mentions work of Hooker.

Comments on paper by Owen ["On the aye-aye", Rep. BAAS 32 (1862) pt 2: 114–16]

and CD’s review of Bates’s paper [Collected papers 2: 87–92].

Thinks Natural History Review is excellent.

Summary

Lyell’s position on mutability.

Fertilisation of trees by bees.

Summary

On triumph of "Darwinianism".

Discussion of their differences on subject of protection.

Summary

Admits, at last, that New Zealand must have been connected to some continent, but not Australia.

Climbing plants: asks for more plants.

Summary

CD has been experimenting on the fertility of peloric flowers, with the forlorn hope of illustrating sterility of hybrids; seeks further plants or seeds.

Summary

B. J. Sulivan has just arrived with fossil bones from Patagonia. Wants to arrange meeting.

Summary

The problem of dimorphic plants and their fertility.

Summary

Has found Pinguicula excited by bits of leaves; appears to digest leaves and seeds. Plant not only insectivorous but graminivorous. Asks WTT-D to identify seeds.

Summary

Both sexes of Crossoptilon auritum (eared pheasant) obtained the red cheeks the first year.

Coloration of the linnet.

Summary

Sends CD a paper ["Ant-agency in plant structure", published in Spruce Notes of a botanist on the Amazon and Andes, ed. A. R. Wallace (1908)] on plant structures he believes are the work of insects; asks him to forward it to the Linnean Society [read 15 Apr 1869].

Writes of his support for the Origin, before which he had been much concerned by the delimitation of so-called species.

Summary

Because of work on the first number of the new Royal Geographical Society magazine, a manual of geography, and other things, HWB finds he must decline CD’s invitation.

Summary

Sends information about Pliocene fauna of the "Forest Bed" of the Norfolk coast.

A genus described as extinct by Owen is found by E. A. I. H. Lartet to exist in Russia.

Edouard Suess attributes to Oswald Heer and HF the generalisation "That the time during which a new species is formed, is (as a rule) very short in comparison with the time during which it persistently presents the same peculiar specific characters". [Edouard Suess, "Über die Verschiedenheit und die Aufeinanderfolge der tertiären Landfaunen in der Niederung von Wien", Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien (Math-naturw. Klasse) 47 (1863): 306–31.] [See 4277.]

Summary

Mentions Miss Buckley’s information on roosting in trees [see Variation 1: 181 n.].

Refers to Duke [of Argyll] and his Lamarckian view of change.

Roosting habits and behaviour of pigeons in Egypt.

Criticises Herbert Spencer’s works.

Has finished Elements; comments on Laurentian stages.

Remarks on his health

and forthcoming work [Variation].

Summary

Fritz Müller’s paper ["Notes on climbing plants"] is about to appear [in J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 9 (1867): 344–9]. Would CD approve of figures being reduced in size?

Summary

Thanks CD for the offer of one of his books, which he gratefully accepts.

Summary

Would like the letters from grandfather [Erasmus Darwin] to J. A. H. Reimarus to be published.

Summary

JDH working on the New Zealand flora.

Jules Planchon excited about CD’s Linum experiments.

T. F. Jamieson’s paper on glaciers gives great pleasure.

Summary

Replies to CD’s letter;

inquires about CD’s intended terms for Italian translator of Descent; hopes to offer best terms herself.