To Asa Gray 11 August [1858]
Summary
Species migration since the Pliocene. Effect of the glacial epoch. Present geographical distribution, especially similarities of mountain floras, explained by such migration; mountain summits as remnants of a once continuous flora and fauna.
Cross-fertilisation in Fumariaceae.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 11 Aug [1858] |
Classmark: | Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University (42 and 9a) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2321 |
To Asa Gray 20 July [1857]
Summary
Believes species have arisen, like domestic varieties, with much extinction, and that there are no such things as independently created species. Explains why he believes species of the same genus generally have a common or continuous area; they are actual lineal descendants.
Discusses fertilisation in the bud and the insect pollination of papilionaceous flowers. His theory explains why, despite the risk of injury, cross-fertilisation is usual in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, even in hermaphrodites.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 20 July [1857] |
Classmark: | Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University (9b) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2125 |
From Frederick Smith 26 February 1858
Summary
Identifies an ant described by CD and discusses the predatory habits of Formica sanguinea.
Describes some wasps’ nests.
Author: | Frederick Smith |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 26 Feb 1858 |
Classmark: | DAR 177: 191 (fragile) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2226 |
To J. D. Hooker 15 and 22 May [1863]
Summary
The Lyell–Falconer squabble.
Discusses island vs continental floras and their degree of modification.
Critical of Wallace.
CD’s observations on phyllotaxy.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 15 and 22 May 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 193 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4167 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1857] and nn. 7–8). It was intended that when the collection was completed the Purbeck fossils would be transferred to Owen for description and publication ( Falconer 1857b , p. 262). Lyell apparently transferred the fossils to Owen earlier than had been arranged. Owen published descriptions of the fossils in 1871 ( Owen 1871 ). See letter from J. D. Hooker, [ …
From Willem Hendrik de Vriese to J. D. Hooker 21 September 1858
Summary
Answers CD’s query about distribution of European perennials in the highlands of Java.
Author: | Willem Hendrik de Vriese |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 21 Sept 1858 |
Classmark: | DAR 180: 27 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2327 |
To Asa Gray 19 April [1865]
Summary
Congratulates AG on the "grand news of Richmond".
Still interested in dimorphism and would welcome new cases.
Working on Variation
and correcting proofs of Climbing plants.
Would like seed of AG’s dimorphic Plantago.
Cannot understand how the wind could fertilise reciprocally dimorphic flowers.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 19 Apr [1865] |
Classmark: | Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (77) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4467 |
To Isaac Anderson-Henry 2 February [1863]
Summary
Suggests collecting seeds at different heights from British Columbia.
Describes experiment on seeds from short anthers.
C. V. Naudin writes he has discovered cause of hybrid sterility.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Isaac Anderson; Isaac Anderson Henry |
Date: | 2 Feb [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 145: 2 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3964 |
Matches: 1 hit
To A. R. Wallace 22 December 1857
Summary
Comments on agreement of their respective views on distribution.
Reference to differences on subsidence.
Reports on progress of his work and praises ARW’s investigations.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Alfred Russel Wallace |
Date: | 22 Dec 1857 |
Classmark: | The British Library (Add MS 46434) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2192 |
From W. W. Reade 18 December [1874]
Summary
Bishop J. W. Colenso supports his old contention that the Kaffirs (including Zulus of South Africa) are Negroes.
[Horace Waller’s] The last journals of David Livingstone [in central Africa (1874)] cites CD’s plant research and has many facts "for Darwin".
Author: | William Winwood Reade |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 18 Dec [1874] |
Classmark: | DAR 176: 72 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9764 |
To Daniel Oliver 24 July [1862]
Summary
Asa Gray has a self-fertilising Platanthera, like the bee orchid. CD believes problem of the latter will some day be explained. Speculates [Ophrys] arachnites may be crossing form and bee orchid self-fertilising form of the same species.
Cytisus adami is a puzzle.
Pleased if DO will review Orchids [Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 2 (1862): 371–6] .
His review of Primula paper was capital. [Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 2 (1862): 235–43].
Requests peloric plants.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Daniel Oliver |
Date: | 24 July [1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 261.10: 34 (EH 88206017) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3664 |
To George Rolleston 5 September [1861]
Summary
GR’s letter is a gold-mine.
Pleased to have Pierre Gratiolet’s comment on the embryology of greatly modified organs
and GR’s valuable cases of analogous variation.
Doubts craniologists, but recounts his father’s opinion that the shape of CD’s head was altered when he returned from the Beagle.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | George Rolleston |
Date: | 5 Sept [1861] |
Classmark: | Royal College of Physicians of London (ALS/D12) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3245 |
From J. D. Hooker [6 August 1866]
Summary
Will do justice to CD’s objections to continental extension theory.
CD misunderstood his question about Isthmus.
Responds to CD’s other points about Madeira and the Azores.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [6 Aug 1866] |
Classmark: | DAR 102: 89–90 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5182 |
To J. D. Hooker 22 July [1863]
Summary
Differences between tendrils derived from leaves and those derived from branches.
CD on Asa Gray’s attitude on the Civil War.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 22 July [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 199 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4250 |
From T. H. Noyes 19 November 1878
Summary
THN, a medium with a gift to cure occult diseases, outlines a course of treatment to remedy CD’s ailments.
Author: | Thomas Herbert Noyes |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 19 Nov 1878 |
Classmark: | DAR 201: 28 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-11749 |
From J. D. Hooker 17 March 1862
Summary
JDH has probably influenced Bates by pointing out applicability of CD’s views to his cases.
Is greatly puzzled by difference in effect of external conditions on individual animals and plants. Cannot conceive that climate could affect even such a single character as a hooked seed.
Does not think Huxley is right about "saltus".
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 17 Mar 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 23–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3474 |
From J. D. Hooker [24 July 1866]
Summary
Working on "Insular floras" lecture for BAAS Nottingham meeting [see 5135].
Puzzled at distribution of Madeiran and Canaries plants and insects.
Supports Forbes’s Atlantis hypothesis [see 956], which he has reread and to which he will allude.
Wollaston disappointing on Madeiran insects.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [24 July 1866] |
Classmark: | DAR 205.2 (letters): 239 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5165 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … J. D. Hooker, 13 May 1866 . In his studies of beetles in Madeira, Wollaston had distinguished between endemic species, which he thought had been created in the places where they were found, and those that had migrated from another area; the former he termed ‘ultra-indigenous’ ( T. V. Wollaston 1857 , …
To J. D. Hooker [27 January 1864]
Summary
CD continues very ill.
His only work is a little on tendrils and climbers. Asks whether all tendrils are modified leaves or whether some are modified stems.
Last number [Jan 1864?] of Natural History Review is best that has appeared.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | [27 Jan 1864] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 218 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4398 |
To Fritz Müller 11 January 1866
Summary
Has read FM’s paper on sponges ["Über Darwinella aurea", Arch. Miskrosk. Anat. 1 (1865): 344–53] with interest.
Has also read FM’s work on the metamorphoses of Peneus [Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3d ser. 14 (1864): 104–15], an interesting and important embryological discovery.
CD regards Louis Agassiz’s opinions as valueless.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Johann Friedrich Theodor (Fritz) Müller |
Date: | 11 Jan 1866 |
Classmark: | The British Library (Loan MS 10 no 5) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4972 |
To William Bernhard Tegetmeier 6 January [1867]
Summary
Returns some of WBT’s skulls.
His MS is with printer, but book [Variation] will probably not be out until November.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | William Bernhard Tegetmeier |
Date: | 6 Jan [1867] |
Classmark: | Archives of the New York Botanical Garden (Charles Finney Cox Collection) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5347 |
To J. D. Hooker 3 and 4 August [1866]
Summary
Answers JDH’s questions on connection of SE. England and continent,
on the effect of breaking the Isthmus of Panama,
and on Madeira flora as remnant of Tertiary flora.
Cautionary remarks for JDH on his "Insular floras" speech, designed to strengthen case of "occasional migration" theory.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 3 and 4 Aug 1866 |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 295, 295b |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5174 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … J. D. Hooker, 31 July 1866 and n. 19. CD’s enquiry about sea currents to the Atlantic islands, and the response, have not been found. The only ship wrecked in the Canary Islands between 1836 and 1866 was the British steamship Niger . The Niger was wrecked at Santa Cruz, Tenerife, on 12 June 1857, …
Darwin, C. R. | (166) |
Hooker, J. D. | (31) |
Gray, Asa | (4) |
Lyell, Charles | (3) |
Wallace, A. R. | (3) |
Hooker, J. D. | (83) |
Darwin, C. R. | (55) |
Gray, Asa | (13) |
Lyell, Charles | (7) |
Oliver, Daniel | (7) |
Darwin, C. R. | (221) |
Hooker, J. D. | (114) |
Gray, Asa | (17) |
Lyell, Charles | (10) |
Oliver, Daniel | (8) |