Summary

Is burning to hear CD’s reaction to Wallace’s excellent paper on man ["Origin of human races and the antiquity of man", J. Anthropol. Soc. Lond. 2 (1864): clviii–clxxxvi].

Wallace’s disclaimer of credit for natural selection is high-minded.

Summary

At the suggestion of J. D. Hooker CD offers his opinion on the value of a proposed collection to be made at the Galápagos. The display would not be attractive or appealing to amateurs in natural history, but the scientific value of good collections of every species would be very great if those of each island are rigorously kept separate.

Summary

CD finishing Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31].

Pleased at Bates’s appointment

and Wallace’s paper.

Summary

Will be glad to see her on 4th.

Thinks Hensleigh is getting better, very slowly.

Summary

Reread JDH’s letter "with infinite pleasure".

Plans to visit Kew.

Summary

CD recounts events of the April-fool’s day séance at Hensleigh [Wedgwood]’s. Asks GHD to find out whether Sidgwick’s account of it agrees with what he has heard. "What rubbish the whole does seem to be!"

Summary

CL is aware that she is dying and so says her farewells.

Summary

Thanks MDC for letter on expression [see 8694].

Invites him to Down on 24th. CD warns that his health does not permit him to talk long with anyone.

Summary

Apologises that the house is full this weekend, but next weekend would be good.

Summary

CD has never doubted probability of Bering Strait land connection.

Family illness.

Summary

JDH on John Scott.

Curious about the rationale of pollen prepotence.

Working on variation in New Zealand flora.

Summary

Doubts Decaisne’s report of larkspur self-fertilisation.

Enthusiastically observes climbing plants. Needs to know how novel his observations are. Finds R. J. H. Dutrochet has made similar observations, so he has wasted some time. [See Climbing plants, p. 1 n.]

Summary

"All about household and money matters." The family is now living on about £1000 per annum. Plans a new walk and additions to the house.

Summary

Falconer’s elephant paper.

Owen’s conduct.

Falconer’s view of CD’s theory: independence of natural selection and variation.

JDH on Tocqueville,

the principles of the Origin,

and the evils of American democracy.

Summary

Relates events at Down;

asks WED to make some observations on Lythrum.

His present hobby-horse is tendrils.

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

Grieved by Falconer’s and Prestwich’s treatment of Lyell.

Reproductive anatomy of the common ash reminds CD of JDH’s Welwitschia because of its transitional forms.

Pleased JDH encourages Oliver to do orchids.

Summary

Sir Henry Holland wants to see [Erasmus Darwin] Zoonomia.

Snow [F. J. Wedgwood] has gone, hoping to meet Fanny who is in a state of anxiety.

Summary

Yellow anthers of Heterocentron produce on the same plant thrice as many seeds as the crimson anthers. Crimson anther seeds produce dwarf plants, others rise high up. Monochaetum ensiferum facts are still more strange. Wants to investigate the case, and asks for a plant of the Melastomataceae just before flowering.

Has JDH a Rhododendron boothii from Bhutan with pistil bent the wrong way?

Summary

Indignant over Owen’s conduct as described in Hugh Falconer’s article on elephants ["On the American fossil elephant of the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 43–114].