Summary

CD’s reaction to review of the Origin [by Samuel Wilberforce] in Quarterly Review [see 2881].

Summary

CD, ill and despondent about hostile reviews, is cheered by JDH’s account of Oxford battle, particularly by willingness of JDH and Huxley to fight for CD’s theory in public.

Summary

Will take Natural History Review, but cannot write for it.

Has mass of notes on irritability in orchids,

but he ought to work on Variation.

Drosera was an interlude while away from home. Expectations for effect of carbonate of ammonia on Dionaea. The important phenomenon in Drosera is the segregation of the red fluid within the leaf, not action of carbonate of ammonia on the red fluid.

Summary

Lyell and CD would urge JDH to make his essays into a book, but see he has embarked on a huge project with G. Bentham [Genera plantarum, 3 vols. (1862–83)].

Summary

Thanks JM for Quarterly Review [July 1860] in which he is "quizzed splendidly". The Bishop [Wilberforce] misrepresents him often, but clever men think they can write a review with very slight knowledge of the book.

Summary

Measles has ben running through the house, but they are now quit of it.

Discusses plans for JSH to visit; eager to discuss Origin.

Summary

Discusses relationship between natural selection and more general laws. Law of gravity is not seen as requiring design. Mentions mathematicians’ judgment of probability.

Notes gestation periods for hounds.

Etty is somewhat better.

Mentions his paper on fertilisation of orchids by insects [Collected papers 2: 32–5].

Summary

Requests a copy of Unger 1852 (Versuch einer Geschichte der Pflanzenwelt; an attempt at a history of the vegetable kingdom).

Requests a copy of the issue of British and Foreign Medical Review which contains a review of Origin, if it is a different publication from British and Foreign Medical and Chirurgical Review

Summary

Convinced selection is the efficient cause. Less convinced of physical causes than JDH because he sees adaptation everywhere and that must be due to selection.

Summary

Confirms CGBD’s impression given in a letter to J. S. Henslow that CD in the Origin did not touch directly upon the final causes of sexuality, which CD considers one of the "profoundest mysteries in nature". CD is inclined to stress sexuality as the means of keeping forms constant and checking variation although he grants its role in the origination of varieties. [See 2869.]

Summary

Thanks for L. Jenyns’ very sensible letter [missing].

Will be delighted to see JSH whenever he can come.

Summary

Has not received any replies from the parties.

Either he or his son will value the property after JH’s return to Alford.

Summary

Is enclosing Alfred Swaine Taylor’s book On poisons (1848). Reports on his own experiment with the starch test in dissolving iodine in different measures of water.

Summary

Future orders will be highly esteemed.

Summary

Obliged for note of 16th.

Failed to enclose letter from Hofmann.

Will be glad to read A. S. Taylor’s work [On poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence and medicine, 2d ed. (1859)].

Daughter Henrietta still weak.

Summary

Elaborates on his article ["A popular exposition of Mr Darwin on the origin of species", Macmillan’s Mag. 3 (1860): 81–92]. Was anxious to point out that CD’s method of investigation is philosophically correct. Asks permission to call.

Summary

Going to sea-side for Etty’s health.

Asks JBI further questions about a striped donkey he had reported to CD.

Summary

The plant CD’s father called "flycatcher" was not Asclepias.

Summary

Orders copy of book by Louis Agassiz [Nomenclatoris Zoologici Index Universalis (1846)].

Mentions book sent by Quatrefages de Bréau.

Summary

News of Etty’s health and of neighbours.

Pleased that JBI likes Origin.

CD never expected to convert people in less than 20 years, though now convinced he is "in the main right". Bishop of Oxford’s review made "splendid fun" of him.