Summary

CD’s pleasure at JDH’s willingness to help Scott find a position in India.

Naudin underrates contamination of his experiments by insects. Thus CD doubts Naudin’s results on rapidity and universality of reversion in hybrids.

Wallace’s paper on man [see 4494] reflects his genius, although CD does not fully agree with it.

Summary

Forwards H. T. Stainton letter for reply.

Finds many Cucurbita have tendrils with sticking ends.

The "potentiality of so many organs in plants to play so many parts is one of the most wonderful of your discoveries . . . one day it will itself play a prodigious part in the interpretation of both morphological and physiological facts".

Is disgusted with Sabine’s address [see 4708] because of its mutilation of what JDH wrote.

THH’s slashing leader in Reader ["Science and ""Church policy"" ", 4 (1864): 821] – as usual he destroys all in his path.

Encloses letter from G. H. K. Thwaites with a message for CD [see encl].

Summary

John Scott preparing to leave soon.

Summary

Discusses Agassiz’s misrepresentations of his views and J. D. Dana’s "wild notions".

The reception is friendlier from younger scientists in France, and many of the best men in Germany.

Summary

Thanks GB for proposing him for Copley Medal; suspects he is responsible for the praise in Sabine’s "splendid eulogy" on his work. Has, however, written to Sabine to say he would have liked a little more said about the Origin.

Summary

Comments on CD’s Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31]

and on H. Crüger’s orchid paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 127–35].

May take position at Calcutta Botanic Garden.

Regrets he cannot be elected to Linnean Society.

Pleased Asa Gray has commented on JS’s paper.

Summary

CD finishing Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31].

Pleased at Bates’s appointment

and Wallace’s paper.

Summary

Corrects his former account of cowslips.

The delay in the publication of JS’s Primula paper.

Delights in JS’s experimentation on Verbascum which confirms [C. F.] Gärtner’s statements.

Should be pleased if JS would accept offer of help.

Summary

CD’s photograph looks like J. R. Herbert’s Moses in the fresco in the House of Lords.

JDH is delighted about oxlip, but hybridity does not explain some large patches that are uniform and do not vary towards either cowslip or primrose.

Encloses letter from W. H. Harvey discussing Myosotis sylvatica and the common dandelion.

Summary

CD thinks JDH takes a hard view of Scott’s character, but will not argue further.

Leersia.

Working on homomorphic and heteromorphic crosses in Primula.

Summary

Another plea to take Scott on at Kew. Emma begs CD not to employ him at Down.

Has just received a long article on the Origin from D. J. Brown, an Edinburgh baker [see 4464].

Summary

Glad CD is sending his Primula paper to Linnean Society.

Sends promised Linum seeds.

Summary

Regrets sending his MS missing two pages.

Has proofs of his paper on the monoecious spikes of maize [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 19 (1864): 213–20].

J. H. Balfour objected to notion of maize descent from a hermaphrodite.

Reading of JS’s paper on Selaginella hybrid [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 19 (1864): 192–9] deferred until March. Believes it is first example of experimentally produced hybridity in higher cryptogams.

Summary

Has finished Climbing plants;

resuming work on Variation.

Sends abstract of John Scott’s paper [see 4332].

Has received review of Herbert Spencer but cannot believe AG wrote it unless he has muddled his brains with metaphysics.

Summary

Men of Scott’s Celtic temperament are very troublesome. Tries to dissuade CD from hiring him as a scientific gardener.

George Rolleston, not Spencer, wrote review of Schleiden [Nat. Hist. Rev. (1864): 187–99].

Summary

Ernst Haeckel writes that young German scientists are enthusiastic for natural selection.

Did JDH write the article in Natural History Review on trees not producing flowers ["Botanical lesson books", (1864): 355–69]?

Encourages Harvey to publish on his "disagreeable" monster plants.

Summary

Pleased with news of BAAS meeting

and Scott’s possible position as Thomas Anderson’s curator.

Suggests Wallace is due for a Royal Medal.

Agrees with JDH’s criticism of Lyell’s address [see 4614].

Bentham’s Linnean Society address treats continuity of life in a vague non-natural sense.

Rereading his old MS [Natural selection] CD is impressed with work he had already done.

Writing Variation much harder than Climbing plants.

Encloses request to JDH to propose, or suggest on his behalf, that the Ray Society publish a translation of C. F. von Gärtner’s Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (1849).

Summary

Proposes to support John Scott in research on relative fertility and self-incompatibility of plants. CD would pay him for a year or two but wants JDH to give him research facilities at Kew.

Summary

On fertilisation of Gongora.

His work on peloric Antirrhinum, Passiflora, and Verbascum, done at CD’s suggestion, is at CD’s disposal.

Summary

Rejoices that CD is beginning "the book of books", Variation.

Suggests that changes in colour of pollen, stigma, and corolla, as Scott reports in his Primula paper, may be related to changes in the insects required for pollination.

Supports Gärtner translation by Ray Society.

Comments on recent addresses by Lyell [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): lx–lxxv], Bentham [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 8 (1864): ix–xxiii], and Murchison [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): 130–6].