Summary

Congratulates THH on first number of Natural History Review.

THH’s article on brain ["On the zoological relations of man with the lower animals", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1861): 67–84] completely smashes Owen.

Owen’s Leeds address [Rep. BAAS (1858): xlix–cx].

In his historical sketch of opinion on species CD has picked out some sentences [by Owen] with which he will take some revenge. CD is not bold enough to come to an open quarrel.

Summary

Thinks Royal Society’s failure to honour W. J. Hooker may be due to small number of botanists on Council.

Interest in H. J. Carter’s papers in Annals and Magazine of Natural History on lower organisms.

On Wallace; anthropology.

H. H. Travers’ paper on Chatham Islands [J. Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 9 (1865): 135–44].

W. C. Wells’s paper of 1813 ["Essay on dew", Two Essays (1818)] anticipates discovery of natural selection.

Summary

Thanks JL for saving him from "a disgraceful blunder". Following their conversation he has divided the New Zealand flora as JL suggested and finds genera with four or more species are more variable than those with three or less. It will take several weeks to go back over all his material.

Summary

Extracts from MS of vol. 4 of HCW’s Cybele Britannica [1847–59] showing the diversity of views on species among botanists.

Summary

CD will advise W. F. Daniell on collecting.

Summary

Regrets he does not have pedigree of CL’s "pretty pony", but assures him information was very useful, "more especially as it confirms what I heard from Norway & did not know whether fully to believe".

Summary

Congratulations on birth of THH’s daughter [Jessie].

On aboriginal dun colour of horses.

Examples of inaccuracies and perpetuation of errors [on hybrids] by "compilers, of which I am one".

Summary

Hookers and Lyells will visit Lubbocks so he cannot see CD in London.

Will CD sit for Woolner?

Summary

CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".

CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".

Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?

Summary

Requests climbing plants.

Asks that Oliver be told that he now does not care "how many tendrils he makes axial".

Summary

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man and of Owen’s comment on it.

Disappointed Lyell has not spoken out on species and on man.

Pleasure of new hothouse and the plants JDH supplied for it.

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

Asks whether British or north European perennial plants can, under cultivation, withstand the climate of S. Australia.

Summary

Encloses a list of British perennials which seed in New South Wales and explains the source of his information. Lists plants which have become weeds in the country.

Summary

Is preparing new edition of Origin [6th] in which he will introduce new chapter to answer Mivart’s criticisms. Mivart is unfair: suppresses facts in CD’s later editions.

Sends article [by Chauncey Wright, see 7940] reviewing Genesis of species.

Mivart writes to CD full of respect, but reviles him in print.

Summary

Falconer’s death haunts him. Personal annihilation not so horrifying to him as sun cooling some day and human race ending.

His health has been wretched.

Masters has written his agreement with CD’s "Climbing plants".

Summary

Heath is generally cut every six years, often in order to provide young growth for grazing. Also, the heath is in good condition for burning at six years growth.

Summary

CD acknowledges honour of his election to the Academy.

Summary

Review of Origin in Gardeners’ Chronicle [31 Dec 1859].

Criticises views of J. G. Jeffreys on non-migration of shells. Cites case of Galapagos shells.

Mentions Edward Forbes’s theory of submerged continental extensions. Cites Hooker’s [introductory] essay [in Flora Tasmaniae (1860)] for evidence against any recent connection between Australia and New Zealand.

Discusses Huxley’s views of hybrid sterility.

Questions whether Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire believed in species change. Mentions views of Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

The distribution of cave insects.

CD’s study of man.

The problems of locating French and German translators.

Huxley’s criticism of Owen’s views on human classification.

The sale of Origin.

Summary

Thanks for AG’s remarks on disjoined species. CD’s notions are based on belief that disjoined species have suffered much extinction, which is the common cause of small genera and disjoined ranges.

Discusses out-crossing in plants.

Has failed to meet with a detailed account of regular and normal impregnation in the bud. Podostemon, Subularia, and underwater Leguminosae are the strongest cases against him.