Summary

Crossing experiments and self-sterility [in Eschscholzia].

Pangenesis.

Hermann Müller on insect adaptations for fertilisation of flowers.

CD working on book on man and sexual selection.

Summary

Thanks WO for information on platysma, which he did not know could be brought into voluntary action. Is coming to believe it has nothing to do with expression.

On the relation between white colouring and susceptibility to poisonous plants, CD suggests WO send his paper to J. Wyman and propose he investigate whether white as well as black pigs will eat paint-root.

Summary

Thinks well of Claparède’s criticism; worth publishing as an answer to Wallace. Bates thinks Wallace’s heterodox views have done mischief to the cause of evolution. Wallace thinks Claparède’s article very weak, CD concludes, because Claparède has arrived at an unpleasant judgment very much like Lyell’s about Bentham’s address.

CD would wager Lyell lately has said something about European Proteaceae.

Does not remember anyone before Wallace on Sumatra and Java.

CD does not think he has a chance against Brandt in French Academy election.

Summary

Thanks WWR for information on the Nehro idea of beauty and other facts relating to expression.

Summary

Cannot find the [indelicate] passage he referred to in last letter.

Various publication arrangements.

Summary

Thanks BJS for a journal and an interesting letter.

Summary

Mimicry in Lepidoptera.

Sexual selection.

The Franco-Prussian war.

Summary

Sends specimens of Passiflora and seeds for T. H. Farrer [letter enclosed with 7188].

Summary

Sends two sheets [of Descent] for correction of names of birds. PLS will save him many disgraceful misspellings. Descent now being prepared in five foreign editions.

Summary

Has received [read?] CB’s two works [Chamois hunting in the mountains of Bavaria (2d ed., 1860) and Forest creatures (1871)] and has made use of them in his present book [Descent].

CB’s descriptions of the Tyrol make CD long to be "strong and young again to ramble over the mountains".

Summary

WBT may use any of CD’s material for the new edition of his poultry book. Hopes WBT will keep firmly to his idea of working out pigeon variation.

Summary

Comments on JDH’s report of Liverpool meeting.

Huxley’s address.

Sir Roderick [Murchison]’s "apotheosis".

Tyndall’s lecture is "grand" except for egotistical beginning. Some Frenchmen have pitched into CD for using the "as if" reasoning, which Tyndall shows is justified.

Has just read George Rolleston’s address in Nature.

Anton Dohrn says German public have high opinion of Lyell.

Summary

Brief observations on expression in Africa.

Alexander Agassiz is a good investigator, who differs with his father on evolution.

The behaviour of women and savages is a little easier to understand than that of civilised men.

Summary

On mutations in rabbits.

Cytisus case is not a double graft.

Aggressive behaviour of birds of prey.

Summary

Forwards Alexander Kovalevsky’s letter [7326] with the information on the vertebrate character of ascidian larvae.

Summary

Encloses part of letter from Fritz Müller on Passiflora, with seeds.

Is endeavouring to have included in next census a question as to whether the parents in each household are cousins.

Summary

Would like to see JDH become Sir J. H. Does not think JDH owes his position in science to his father.

Sends questions on Round Island – if JDH should write [to Henry Barkly?].

Has he read Federico Delpino on Marantaceae [Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 1 (1869): 293–206]?

Summary

Does not give much for botanical results of Round Island, but the zoology is wonderful.

Lyell’s new book [The student’s elements of geology (1870)]. Urges Lyell to make it Elementary principles.

Grove is disgusted with CD for being disquieted by William Thomson: "Take another dose of Huxley’s penultimate address to Geol. Soc." [Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 25 (1869): 28–53].

Summary

Thanks for the information sent by WGS in his letter of 4 November 1870.

Summary

Brought forward the "cousin question" in the House; read most of CD’s letter to the House.