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Cancelled: Known only from reference in letter to Charles Lyell, 11 October [1859]

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Cancelled: same as 1672.

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Will subscribe £25 towards F. A. Dohrn’s Zoological Station at Naples.

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Has been to Osborne on the Isle of Wight to visit Queen Victoria, who had lots of questions about CD.

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Fears that multiple origin of the domestic dog will be extended to mammals or man. Believes, with Hooker, that whatever occurs in domestication is possible in nature.

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Rejects CD’s comparison of natural selection with the architect of a building. The architect who plans and oversees construction should not be confused in his function with the wisest breeder. That would be to deify natural selection.

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Surprised at Hooker’s introducing "so organic a change as a deviation in the axis of the planet" to explain the cold of the Glacial Period.

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"I could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral reefs, but of the top of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter youself that you will be believed, till you are growing bald, like me, with hard work & vexation at the incredulity in the world."

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Wonders why the coracoid bone in the flightless Apteryx is so large when the clavicles are reduced. The clavicles are even separate in the ostrich. The large coracoid in reptiles is explained by the connection to the forelimbs.

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Comments on pp. 201, 211, and 218 [of Origin].

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Spoke to Henry Warburton, W. H. Fitton, and E. B. Greenough on CD’s idea of a Government grant for publication [not identified].

Will read at next meeting his paper on erect Nova Scotia fossil trees [Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond. 4 (1843–5): 176–8].

E. P. Halstead reports on shores rising off Burma and Bay of Bengal.

Unpacking his U. S. fossils.

Phillips looked at beds below coal in Pennsylvania. Result is the usual different species found but with complete representation of forms.

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Delighted to hear that CD was awarded Copley Medal. Important because award by chartered institution acts on outsiders and helps increase stock of moral courage.

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Questions CD’s view in Origin that domestic dogs are not descended from a single stock. Occasional crossings of domestic stock with wild species could explain cases of reversion towards wild specific forms. CD’s views on hybridity do not then have to be contradicted in constructing an ancestral stock.

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Enumerates fossil mammals known in Secondary strata.

Lack of angiosperm plants in rocks older than Chalk is no reason to anticipate rarity of warm-blooded quadrupeds.

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Has been looking for something about crop rotation in Origin and Variation.

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Regrets not seeing CD before leaving on trip [to the U. S.]. CD’s move from London will be a privation for CL.

Returns charts on coral reefs.

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CD would have carried the public more if he had explained adaptations by multiple causes, some unknown and some well known, i.e., natural selection.

Discusses Hooker’s views of extinction on St Helena.

Work on antiquity of man suspended.

Stopped by 11th edition of Principles of geology [1872].

Summary

Saw Salter’s Spirifer specimens; a very good proof of indefinite modifiability.

Beginning to think gap between Cambrian and Lower Silurian enormous.

Édouard Lartet to give paper before Geological Society ["On coexistence of man with certain extinct quadrupeds", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 16 (1859–60): 471–5].

Summary

It is small comfort to be told you will be succeeded in lineal descent by angels when Lamarck and Darwin have made your ancestors without souls. However, can the progressive system not be seen as most consonant with a higher destiny if all spiritual natures advance? The link of common descent to inferior beings like idiots should be obvious. Infants die before they become responsible. Pope’s An essay on Man [1733] shows how man was "In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast", without speculation on his genealogy.

Summary

Since dogs have same gestation period as the wolf it is likely that the wolf is the ancestral wild species, if it is just one species.

CD’s belief that domestic dogs are descended from several distinct aboriginal species seems to contradict views on sterility of hybrids and variation in Origin. If domestic varieties came from hybrids of wild species it will be impossible to trace ancestry. Opponents will exploit these problems.