From J. D. Hooker 26 November 1862
Summary
Returns Asa Gray letter. Gray has made a great blunder in his criticism of Oliver: he mistakes perpetuation of a variety for "propagation of variation". Confusion between "action of physical causes" and "effects of physical causes". Neither crossing nor natural selection has made so many divergent individuals, but simply variation. "If once you hold that natural selection can create a character your whole doctrine tumbles to the ground." CD’s failure to convey this, and the false doctrine that "like produces like" is at bottom of half the scientific infidelity to CD’s doctrine. There is something to the objection that CD has made a deus ex machina of natural selection since he neglects to dwell on the facts of infinite incessant variations.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 26 Nov 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 61–2, 77–8 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3831 |
From Charles Lyell 20 August 1862
Summary
Jamieson has revisited Glen Roy and confirmed his theory of glacier lakes.
A. G. More considers CD the most profound of reasoners.
Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 20 Aug 1862 |
Classmark: | K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 358; The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/B9) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3691 |
From J. D. Hooker [23 March 1862]
Summary
Lighthearted thoughts on "the development of an Aristocracy" after a visit to Walcot Hall, Shropshire.
On CD’s point about the effect of changed conditions on the reproductive organs, JDH does not see why this is not "itself a variation, not necessarily induced by domestication, but accompanying some variety artificially selected".
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [23 Mar 1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 27–9; American Philosophical Society Library (Hooker papers, B/H76.2) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3480 |
To Charles Lyell 22 August [1862]
Summary
Relates personal news about family members.
CD is "glad Glen Roy is settled".
Mentions evolutionary remarks on birds by Owen.
Compares variability among lower and higher organisms. Comments on Hooker’s view of the subject.
Forthcoming publication of Huxley’s book [Evidence as to man’s place in nature (1863)] and Lyell’s [Antiquity of man (1863)].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Date: | 22 Aug [1862] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.281) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3695 |
To H. W. Bates 25 November [1862]
Summary
[Apparently in reply to question in missing portion of 3825.] A written agreement is unnecessary, but a letter stating terms would prevent misundertanding. He will attempt to have a review of HWB’s paper published.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Henry Walter Bates |
Date: | 25 Nov [1862] |
Classmark: | Cleveland Health Sciences Library (Robert M. Stecher collection) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3827 |
From C. V. Naudin 26 June 1862
Summary
Thanks for Orchids.
Plans to publish soon on hybrids.
Author: | Charles Victor Naudin |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 26 June 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 172.1: 6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3621 |
From J. D. Hooker [31 January – 8 February 1862]
Summary
Wrote a "frightful screed" about aristocracy’s being a necessary consequence of natural selection, and then burnt it.
H. W. Bates is the only man "thinking out" natural selection to any purpose. "I think I have driven Bates back to Nat. Sel. as the only way of solving his difficulties."
HWB’s mimetic butterflies.
JDH wishes he had time to do the same thing with plants.
Owen and Huxley involved in a "contemptible" squabble in the Edinburgh newspapers.
Maximovitch reports Stellaria bulbifera is a Siberian form which never ripens its seeds.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [31 Jan – 8 Feb 1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 14; DAR 111: 93 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3430 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Hooker, 30 January [1862] , CD requested information concerning a case of dimorphism in the Caryophyllaceae that Hooker had mentioned; the genus Stellaria belongs to the Caryophyllaceae. CD thanked Hooker for his information on Stellaria in the letter to J. D. Hooker, 9 February [1862] . Stellaria bulbifera is a synoym of Pseudostellaria europaea . Maximowicz 1859, …
From J. D. Hooker 19 [June 1862]
Summary
Household problems: wife’s health, visitors to Kew.
Will go to sale of J. C. Ross’s effects looking for glacial and Kerguelen Land works not at British Museum.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 19 [June 1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 38–9 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3611 |
To J. D. Hooker 9 May [1862]
Summary
Sorry to hear of JDH’s household troubles.
Will try to get a couple of flowers of Leschenaultia to send him.
"What a good case that of the Cameroons"; the 4000ft [elevation] is much to CD’s "private satisfaction".
Sends JDH a copy of Orchids.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 9 May [1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 149 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3541 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Hooker’s home had recently been burgled (see letter from J. D. Hooker, [5 May 1862] ). In his letter of [5 May 1862] , Hooker mentioned that he hoped to invite William Erasmus Darwin to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the near future. See also letter to W. E. Darwin, [8 May 1862] . From January 1857 until January 1859, …
To John Lubbock 5 September [1862]
Summary
Finds JL’s facts on the diving insect that remains four hours under water new and interesting [see "On two aquatic Hymenoptera", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 24 (1864): 135–42].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury |
Date: | 5 Sept [1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 263 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3713 |
From Asa Gray 2–3 July 1862
Summary
Discusses dimorphic plants and the occurrence of "precocious fertilisation" in the bud.
Gives some comments on design in nature in the light of the translator’s commentary in the French edition of the Origin.
Reports the recent events of the Civil War.
[Note on verso of envelope:] Utricularia vulgaris is "about as neatly contrived for cross-fertilisation by insects as almost any orchid".
Author: | Asa Gray |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 2–3 July 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 165: 110a, 112–12a |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3637 |
To J. D. Hooker 11 June [1862]
Summary
Sorry to hear of Mrs Hooker’s health and domestic problems. Wishes natural selection had produced neuters who would not flirt or marry.
Will be eager to hear Cameroon results.
Wishes JDH would discuss the "mundane glacial period". Still believes it will be "the turning point of all recent geographical distribution".
Pollen placed for 65 hours on apparent (CD still thinks real) stigma of Leschenaultia has not protruded a vestige of a tube.
"Oliver the omniscient" has produced an article in Botanische Zeitung with accurate account of all CD saw in Viola.
Asa Gray’s "red-hot" praise of Orchids [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 34 (1862): 138–51].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 11 June [1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 155 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3597 |
From J. D. Hooker 12 November 1862
Summary
Samuel Haughton was the prejudiced reviewer of the Origin. JDH’s opinion of SH.
Has heard from a W. African collector that P. B. Du Chaillu’s accounts [Explorations and adventures in equatorial Africa (1861)] are all false.
R. F. Burton has impudently stolen credit for Gustav Mann’s Cameroon expedition.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 12 Nov 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 75–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3802 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … J. D. Hooker, 3 November [1862] and n. 14. Hooker refers to Samuel Haughton , author of a critical review of Origin that was published in the Natural History Review ([Haughton] 1860b). Haughton had been professor of geology at the University of Dublin since 1851; he entered the university’s medical school in 1859, …
From Berthold Carl Seemann 24 April 1862
Summary
Encloses a passage from his book, The botany of the voyage of H.M.S. "Herald" [1852–7].
Discusses possibility of publishing work on flora of Hawaiian Islands.
Author: | Berthold Carl Seemann |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 24 Apr 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 177: 130, DAR 50: E28 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3518 |
To Asa Gray 22 January [1862]
Summary
Dimorphism: "new cases are tumbling in almost daily".
U. S. politics.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 22 Jan [1862] |
Classmark: | Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (74) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3404 |
From Henry Holland 30 January [1862]
Summary
Is preparing a volume of his articles [Essays on scientific and other subjects (1862)], to one of which he would like to add a postscript referring to CD’s Origin [pp. 100–1]. Sends proposed postscript for CD’s approval.
Author: | Henry Holland, 1st baronet |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 30 Jan [1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 166.2: 240 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3423 |
From H. G. Bronn 21 June 1862
Summary
L. C. Treviranus inclined to translate Orchids, but "unfortunately" HGB has already done it. Book’s discussion of plant sexuality important for zoology as well as botany.
Origin is in press. Attaches a list of "quelques petites difficultées" encountered in his translation.
Author: | Heinrich Georg Bronn |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 June 1862 |
Classmark: | DAR 70: 2, DAR 160.3: 318 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3619 |
letter | (17) |
Darwin, C. R. | (11) |
Hooker, J. D. | (2) |
Bates, H. W. | (1) |
Gray, Asa | (1) |
Lubbock, John | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (17) |
Hooker, J. D. | (7) |
Gray, Asa | (2) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Bates, H. W. | (1) |