Summary

Has not answered CD’s former letters. Has been ill. Will look up fish business as soon as he is square again.

Summary

Will be obliged if Flower examines specimens. States questions he wants answered.

Summary

Has caught a frog and examined its possibly rudimentary toe. Asks THH if he will dissect it.

Has heard THH is abused in Edinburgh Review and in Anthropological Review [reviews of Man’s place in nature, Edinburgh Rev. 117 (1863): 541–69 and Anthrop. Rev. 1 (1863): 107–17].

Owen on heterogeny and the aye-aye.

Has been very ill.

Summary

Too busy to examine specimen. Will ask W. H. Flower to do it. Long catalogue of what keeps him busy and concerned.

C. Carter Blake, "a jackal of Owen’s", is the reviewer in Edinburgh Review and Anthropological Review [see 4223]. Has sent back his diploma of Hon. Fellowship to Anthropological Society.

Summary

A note reminding THH to examine the rudiment of the 6th toe on the hind foot of a Batrachian.

Summary

Discusses rudimentary sixth toe of frogs.

Summary

Thanks for "monkey book" [Evidence as to man’s place in nature (1863)].

Must wait till he has finished Lyell [Antiquity of man (1863)].

Summary

Pleads guilty to both criticisms of "Miss Henrietta Minor Rhadamanthus Darwin" [see 3896] of points in his Lectures [to working men].

Summary

Huxley’s lectures [Man’s place in nature (1863)]; he would be a scientific H. T. Buckle, if he were more careful.

Asks CD what the evidence is for inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Summary

Praise of Man’s place.

Owen’s muddling letter in Athenæum [21 Feb 1863, pp. 262–3].

Is disappointed in Lyell’s excessive caution on species and origin of man [in Antiquity of man].

Summary

It is not carpal or tarsal bones that are increased [in six-fingered men] but generally only the digits and metacarpals.

Pectoral fins of fish and sharks.

Asks THH to check P. M. Roget’s statement that there is a rudiment of a sixth digit in frogs.

[P.S. missing from original.]

Summary

On six-fingered men: suspects increase confined to metacarpals and digits. Has asked James Paget to look it up.

Summary

Sends Catalogue [of the collection of fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology (1865)], most of which was written in pre-Darwinian epoch [i.e., 1857].

Hears magnum opus [Variation] completely developed, though not yet born.

Summary

Acquired characteristics.

Huxley’s lectures: good on induction, bad on sterility, obscure on geology.

Asa Gray on slavery.

Falconer’s partial conversion.

Alphonse de Candolle on Origin.

Summary

Sends his screed about the brain [for Descent], which he thinks pounds the enemy into a jelly.

Is in good health.

Summary

JL’s review of Huxley ["Lectures to working men", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864)].

Summary

Apologises for saying more than was necessary in his previous letter. Although he feels gratitude and esteem for CD, he execrates those who use natural selection to oppose man’s higher interests and impede his advance. Has seen Huxley’s Man’s place in nature for sale among a crowd of obscenities at most Italian railway stations.

Summary

Lyell has received compliments for letting readers draw own inferences [on species question]. Now feels he earlier did Lamarck injustice. [CD’s] substitution of variety-making power for volition [as in Lamarck] in some respects only a change of names.

Thinks Huxley taking on too many responsibilities.

Summary

Thanks RLT for his letter. CD took much trouble over his two cases [regrowth of amputated supernumerary digits, in Variation] but the evidence was shaky.

Summary

JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.

Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.