Summary

Thanks GW for his report about the rabbits at Sandon [Staffs.]. Fears case has broken down, except that it is now known that such a breed has run wild for some years. No need to send bodies since breed is so obscure.

Summary

Is flattered by a proposal that he undertake some reviewing work, but has many years’ work in prospect on his present book on species and varieties.

Summary

Recommends he read passages on bees by C. T. E. von Siebold [in On the true parthenogenesis in moths and bees (1857)].

Summary

Request for Floras of Pacific Islands and Greenland.

Individual variation.

Summary

Thinking about HF’s paper on Plagiaulax [Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 13 (1857): 261–82]. Owen might answer that all Purbeck mammals are marsupials.

Summary

Species with marked varieties.

Dana’s pamphlet also too metaphysical for CD.

Natural selection chapter on hybridism completed.

Doubts JDH will resist theory in his introduction to Flora Tasmaniae.

Summary

Rule that species vary most in larger genera seems universal.

Response to Gardeners’ Chronicle note on "Bees and kidney beans" [Collected papers 1: 275–7].

Summary

George Henslow’s curtness to JDH: "an attack of religion".

Embryonic leaves. Adaptive functions and taxonomic significance of cotyledons.

Asa Gray. Separation of sexes in U. S. trees.

Summary

Discusses WED’s future education, the work on the extension, and other domestic affairs.

Summary

Sending more Candolle volumes for survey of species with well-marked varieties.

Has begun his introduction [to Flora Tasmaniae]; will not make generalisations.

J. D. Dana’s pamphlet too metaphysical for JDH.

Summary

Thanks him for information concerning Crustacea.

Comments on natural history study in the U. S.

Mentions work done by Huxley on Crustacea ["Description of a new crustacean", J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 13 (1857): 363–9];

John Lubbock on larvae of Diptera.

Summary

Asks THH question on flow of glaciers after ice has been fractured and fragmented.

CD had to leave Royal Society lecture [joint paper by THH and J. Tyndall, "On the structure and motions of glaciers", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 147 (1857): 327–46] before the end because of headache.

Summary

Invites JL to dine and meet J. S. Henslow.

Summary

News of Mrs Henslow’s death.

Studying Impatiens, which bears on CD’s problems. Though genus is endemic to India, with over 100 species, CD will be glad to know they do not run into one another.

Summary

Has come to think his brains were not made for thinking – he immediately feels better when at Moor Park.

News of his family.

Summary

Finds CD’s results [of his survey of well-marked varieties from A. P. and Alphonse de Candolle’s Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis (1824–73)] "very curious and suggestive". Thinks the Labiatae will present an obstacle to him as it is a very large and distinct order with well-defined species and genera. Would like to see him tackle more volumes of Candolle’s Prodromus, as his case can only be established by evidence from mundane plants. CD should beware of generalising from local species variability. A comparison of C. C. Babington’s and G. Bentham’s [British] Floras [Babington Manual of British botany (1843, 4th ed., 1856); Bentham Handbook of British flora (1858)] would be invaluable. Suggests CD write to Ferdinand Müller and Charles Moore in Australia. Moisture favouring extension of species is important for CD’s view.

Summary

JDH cites W. H. Harvey’s observations on Fucus and David Don’s on Juncus as examples of variations that are independent of climate. There are many such cases. Gives his working scheme for categorising variation.

Summary

Urges AG to generalise from his observations on the flora of the northern U. S.

Expected to find separation of sexes in trees because he believes all living beings require an occasional cross, and none is perpetually self-fertilising. The multitude of flowers of a tree would be an obstacle to cross-fertilisation unless the sexes tended to be separate.

The Leguminosae are CD’s greatest opposers; he cannot find that garden varieties ever cross. Could AG inquire of intelligent nurserymen on the subject?

Thanks AG for information on protean genera; much wants to know whether their great variability is due to their conditions of existence or is innate in them at all times and places.

Summary

Inquiries on effect of dry heat on temperate plants for glacial chapter.

Summary

He was unaware that varieties occurred proportionately more in large genera.

Recommends a work [Leonard Gyllenhaal, Insecta Suecica, 4 vols. (1808–27)] for tabulating varieties.

Lists "close geographical representatives of Europaean species" based on the species numbers [in T. V. Wollaston, Catalogue of the coleopterous insects of Madeira (1857)].