Summary

Discusses CD’s and J. D. Hooker’s letters to Lyell concerning Louis Agassiz’s theory of the glaciation of the Amazon basin in Brazil.

Summary

Comments on errors [in Origin] pointed out in C. J. F. Bunbury’s letters.

Mentions CD’s notes on Drimys, Fuchsia, and fossil mammals of Brazilian caves.

Sorrowful that his work must be put aside because Murray wants a new [4th] edition of Origin. Remarks on changes to be made regarding Organ Mountains and Agassiz’s glacial markings.

Summary

Discusses belief in immortality and a personal God.

Describes his holiday in Southampton.

Comments on papers of John Wesley Judd.

Summary

Blyth’s effort to raise money for a Chinese expedition.

Comments on free-will in animals.

Says natural selection is not in the same category with Huxley’s "force" and "matter".

Discusses remarkable variation in period of gestation in dogs and ducks.

Discusses Arctic flora.

Has been working on orchids; they beat woodpeckers in adaptation.

Summary

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

Summary

Troubled by JDH’s connection between Antarctic island flora and Fuegia, which CD sees as part of a general relation to southern circumpolar flora. Encloses list [not found] of plants from Tristan d’Acunha.

Summary

Comments on CL’s reaction to the Origin. Mentions reactions of other scientists.

Discusses fertility of Aspicarpa.

Criticises Herbert Spencer’s views on population.

Summary

Had Busks and Lyells to dinner.

Examines and criticises evidence for CD’s hypothesis that the glacial period was not one of universal cold. Physicists deny its possibility.

Summary

Criticises Duke of Argyll’s address [to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1864)] and demurs on Argyll’s "new birth" theory.

Agrees with CL on beauty.

Enjoyed hearing of Princess Royal’s discussion [on Darwinism].

CD’s illness.

CL’s advice on chapter [of Variation] on dogs was excellent.

Summary

Lyell’s Antiquity of man lacks originality.

Statements in Lyell provoke CD to determine exact publication date of Origin and JDH’s introductory essay [to Flora Tasmaniae].

CD now believes in repeated periods of global cooling and migration.

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

Sends Charles Lyell’s letters. Those from 1862–9 are so heavy that they have to be put in two parcels.

Summary

Comments on CL’s letters.

Discusses foreign animals naturalised in Australia and elsewhere.

Affirms man’s capacity to survive in Eocene climate.

Comments on American types.

Denies necessity for "continued intervention of creative power".

Summary

JDH on the Lyell–Lubbock plagiarism controversy. His view of the true cause of Lubbock’s behaviour.

Summary

Comments on apology by Chambers for using some of CD’s material without acknowledgment in discussing Glen Roy. His opinion of Chambers’ book [Ancient sea-margins (1848)].

Summary

Gives details of enclosed MS on cool period. Mentions Hooker’s opposed "axis of the earth" view. Causes of glacial period are beyond CD; "cannot believe change in land and water being more than a subsidiary agent".

Summary

Auguste Bravard’s discoveries magnificent.

Bravard has sent pamphlets [Observaciones geológicas (1857) and Monografia de los terrenos marinos terciarios (1858)] with strange doctrine that Pampean deposit is subaerial.

Review of Origin by Wollaston [Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3d ser. 5 (1860): 132–43] clever and misinterprets CD only in a few places.

Wallace’s MS ["Zoological geography of the Malay Archipelago", J. Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Zool.) 4 (1860): 172–84] admirably good.

Henslow "will go very little way with us". "He, also, shudders at the eye!"

Baden Powell says CD’s statement about eye is conclusive.

Leonard Jenyns cannot go as far as CD, yet cannot give good reason.

Summary

Everything in Wallace’s sketch also appears in CD’s sketch of 1844. A year ago CD sent a short sketch of his views to Asa Gray. Can CD honourably publish his sketch now that Wallace has sent outline of his views? "I would far rather burn my whole book than that he or any man shd. think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit." Does not believe Wallace originated his views from anything CD wrote to him.

Summary

Distribution of AG’s pamphlet.

Insectivorous plants.

Informs AG of his [CD’s] notice on Pumilio in Gardeners’ Chronicle [5 Jan 1861; Collected papers 2: 36–8].