Summary

To avoid possible misundertanding of his letter [2654] of that morning, CD wishes to make clear that he did not wish to imply that BP’s essay and the Vestiges of creation were in the same class. The more he thinks of it the more difficult he feels it would be to give a fair account of the authors who have maintained the modification of species. CD finds that he referred to BP’s views in the preface to his larger work [Natural selection], which was replaced by the Origin.

Summary

CD is pleased by BP’s appreciative opinion of Origin. He never intended to claim that he originated the doctrine that species have not been independently created. The only novelty in his work is the attempt to explain how species became modified and how the theory of descent explains large classes of facts. If he has taken anything from BP, he has done so unconsciously. Gives names of those he would have mentioned in any account of authors who maintained that species have not been separately created.

CD greatly admires BP’s Philosophy of creation.

Summary

CD is sending some books by carrier. Requests that he be given the 1st and also the 10th editions of Vestiges of creation [1844, 1853], and also the 2d edition of Baden Powell’s Unity of worlds [1856]. "No other editions will be of any service." [See Origin (1861), "Historical sketch".]

Summary

Ask JR to advise the Queen to issue Her Royal Commission of Inquiry into the best methods of securing the improvement of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Summary

Invites CD to visit on Sunday afternoon, for a quiet discussion with Huxley, the Bishop of Natal [J. W. Colenso], and herself. Will not trouble him with any eating.

Summary

Australian Leguminosae problem: of 900 species not ten are common to southwest and southeast. No migration; hence either creation or variation.

Himalayan thistles: graded intermediates between large and small English species, "shakes species to their foundations". Similarity of CD’s and his views on species.

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

Describes Sedgwick’s attack on CD’s views [at Cambridge Philosophical Society] and his own defence, though he believes CD has pressed his hypothesis too far.

Summary

WBC’s review [of Origin, Natl Rev. 10 (1860): 188–214] will do great good. It "turns the flanks of theological opposers" capitally.

Asks for information about cuckoo eggs and West Indian sheep.

Summary

Sends his paper on "Willow-galls" [Proc. Entomol. Soc. Philadelphia 3 (1864): 543–644].

Lengthy criticism of Agassiz’s views on species as stated in his Essay on classification [1857].

Interested by CD’s trimorphism in Lythrum. Thinks some great mystery may lie in the fact that in some genera, some species are tri-, some di-, and some monomorphic, and in other genera, Apis, Vespa, Bombus, all the known species are dimorphic.