Summary

Sends a number of questions (to put to his father), mainly concerned with transmission of diseases, between Europeans and natives, "people packed together", etc.

Is investigating how to get Government support [for Zoology].

Summary

CD wishes he could sympathise with Asa Gray’s politics.

Orchids to appear soon.

Pre-glacial Arctic distribution.

Work on floral dimorphism.

High opinion of Buckle as a writer.

Summary

Reforms at Kew.

X Club Dinner. H. B. Wilson and J. W. Colenso as guests.

Troubled by Lubbock’s going into Parliament – loss to science.

Has written to Busk.

Sending Botanische Zeitung.

Summary

JDH on John Scott.

Curious about the rationale of pollen prepotence.

Working on variation in New Zealand flora.

Summary

Queries for John Smith [Kew curator] on crossing a cucumber variety.

Summary

JDH going to visit W. H. Harvey in Ireland.

New curator at Kew.

Summary

Doubts the fruit will stick on his Chinese double peach and asks TR to send him a couple when ripe.

Would like to grow seeds of the "curious monstrosity" of a wall-flower, to see whether the monstrosity is hereditary.

Summary

Again refuses to help Scott as "unfitted" to make his way in the world. Scott is unwilling to take his part in the "struggle for life", unlike Tyndall, Faraday, Huxley, and Lindley, who established themselves. Scott’s work is not science, but "scientific horticulture".

Summary

Spent preceding day with Henslow; much to be done. A friend, Alexander Charles Wood, has written to Capt. FitzRoy about CD. Peacock offered appointment as Beagle naturalist first to Leonard Jenyns, who almost accepted, as did Henslow himself. CD will talk to Capt. Francis Beaufort [Hydrographer] and FitzRoy. Thanks all his family.

Summary

John Scott preparing to leave soon.

Summary

Kew affairs.

H. J. Carter’s observations are wonderful but want verification.

Skeptical of H. H. Travers’ observations.

Summary

JDH is writing letters for Scott, whose temper will be "no obstacle for Hindoos and Musselmen working under him".

New curator at Kew finds considerable neglect, with hundreds of plants dying.

Summary

CD’s great interest in JS’s work on fertility of Primula crosses.

Thanks for Passiflora trials.

"By no means modify even in slightest degree any result."

CD wishes he had counted rather than weighed Primula seeds.

Summary

JDH busy reforming Kew’s operations.

Falconer may "fall foul" of Huxley’s anger over his attacks on Lyell.

Has heard of a coffee plantation post for Scott.

Summary

Is in a mess with his correspondence and will get no assistance before 1 April.

Has agreed to give an address on the Darwinian theory at Nottingham [meeting of BAAS].

Summary

JDH explains why he cannot take Scott on at Kew.

John Tyndall cannot answer CD’s questions on glaciers. Edward Frankland’s ignorance. In JDH’s opinion, heaviness of winter snowfall is the greatest element in size of glaciers and this is a function of low mean temperature. Discusses descent of glaciers.

Summary

All overworked at Kew.

Burchell collections enormous.

Lyell has sent MS of Principles p. 111 on changes of temperature. JDH thinks Lyell blunders and is out of his depth.

Charmed with E. B. Tylor’s book on man [Early history of mankind (1865)],

disappointed in Lubbock’s [Prehistoric times (1865)].

Summary

Pleased at CD’s opinion of his Arctic plants paper. CD has caught great blunder.

Lack of Arctic–Asiatic species in mountains of tropical Asia does not trouble him. Species seem to indicate some "current of migration" from Europe and W. Asia southeastward to Ceylon – an awful staggerer to bridge migrations.