Summary

Relates a variety of facts about sexual selection in birds. [See Descent 2: 104–5.]

Summary

About a dog that acquired habits from a cat and her kittens.

Summary

Thinks W. P. Garrison’s book [extracts from Journal of researches for juvenile readers] would serve as an advertisement for the Journal.

Disappointed at sale of Erasmus Darwin.

Summary

Thanks WTT-D for his present of Sachs’s book [Textbook of botany (1875)].

Summary

Thanks CD for his good opinion of his book, What Mr Darwin saw,

and his expressions [concerning W. L. Garrison] "which will be treasured by his children".

Summary

SB has decided to lay the matter [the subject of 12393 and 12396] before the public and has written to the Athenæum stating the facts. [Athenæum 31 Jan 1880.]

Summary

On his father’s crossing experiments with cacti, in which hybrids were found quite fertile.

On his breeding of guinea-pigs.

Sends Miss E. Watts’s message about crested fowls and Brahmas.

Summary

Believes CD’s argument against special creation based on absence of terrestrial mammals on islands isolated before Pliocene era is very strong. However, the absence means Cetacea and bats have not modified towards terrestrial existence. There is similar lack of development of bats and rodents in Australia. Constancy among land shells of Madeira over long period shows that the majority of their species are immutable: a minority of "metamorphic" species maintains the overall number of true species while extinction removes many. Emphasis on the role of extinction discomfits CD’s opponents since the power of generation of new species ought to keep pace. Mentions Ammonite deposits with reference to CD’s comments on their apparent sudden extinction [Origin, pp. 321–2]. Perhaps absence of transmutation on slowly subsiding atolls indicates the slow rate of selective change.

Summary

On the changes in plumage of scarlet ibis at the zoo in breeding season.

Summary

Delighted with mechanisms of Salvia and Viola. How can anyone who compares structure of Viola cornuta and common violet still suppose them to be separate creations?

Summary

Corrects Werner Hoffmeister, cited in Earthworms, p. 63: earthworms do not block their holes to keep out Scolopendras but to prevent evaporation.

Summary

Thinks CD overestimates earthworms’ role in creating mould. Gives some observations on worms and questions about their breeding habits.

Summary

Has a letter from Haast on the spreading of European plants.

Summary

Sends some money on behalf of himself and his father to help with FEA’s problems with the Index.

Summary

A ball and two concerts at Shrewsbury; guests at the Darwins’: Mr and Mrs Mathew, three Mr Clives, Emma Wedgwood.

Summary

Thanks FEA for copy of a review of a book on evolution by "an ignorant lawyer".

Sends £5 for Index subscription.

Summary

Sends a list of the work he feels should be done at Beesby [Lincolnshire] to put the farm in order. Hopes to get purchase deeds completed by 10 October.