Summary

Has used borrowing rights at Linnean Society Library arranged for him by JDH.

Summary

Has named 35 species of grasses.

Seed-salting continues.

Summary

CD experiments: sowing seeds in fields; "breaking" seeds’ constitution with coloured light; plant hybridisation. Compiling works on hybridism.

Respect for W. B. Carpenter.

Note on "nectar secreting" to Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 258–9].

Summary

Has read a paper, presumably by JDH, using the Madeiran flora to argue against Forbes’s doctrine.

JDH asked how far CD will go in attributing common descent; he intends to show "the facts & arguments for & against the common descent of species of same genus; & then show how far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more & more widely different".

Summary

Parcels sent to Down by coach may get lost.

Summary

Praise for JDH’s Flora Indica [J. D. Hooker and T. Thomson (1855)] from CD and C. J. F. Bunbury.

CD and J. S. Henslow dining in London. JDH invited.

Summary

Burying charlock seeds.

Summary

Morning with H. C. Watson; discussed problems of inferences from buried seeds.

Summary

Has left a book from Henslow for JDH at Athenaeum.

When Asa Gray wrote, did he send marked sheets [of his Manual of botany]?

Has just made out "new & wonderful" specific character between two of his pigeon breeds.

Summary

When JDH goes to Germany, will he ask seed men if their marvellous true breeding lines are the result of selection.

Summary

Seeds of two tropical island plants have floated for ten days.

Summary

Sick of seed-salting.

Reading Candolle with great interest.

Summary

Naudin’s theory, in J. Decaisne’s review of Flora Indica, of subspecies descended from a single stock only adds to the confusion. John Lindley and M. J. Berkeley cut down species.

Summary

Very impressed by Candolle’s book [Géographie botanique raisonnée (1855)]. Wants to recalculate his results.

CD’s pigeon fancy is getting on.

Summary

Candolle discusses social plants. CD devises criterion for showing sociability not inherent.

Bentham’s buried seed plan rejected.

Summary

CD not sure that he can come to London.

Summary

Latitude overrules everything in distribution. Alpine distributions are like insular. Tabulating proportions.

T. V. Wollaston’s Madeira insects: many flightless, thus not blown to sea. TVW’s insects do not confirm Forbes’s Atlantis.

Summary

CD has begun seed-salting experiments. Wants JDH to write which seeds he expects to be easily killed [in salt water].

CD’s idea that coal-plants lived in salt water like mangroves made JDH savage.

Summary

Pea self-fertilisation: has forty-five varieties growing side by side.

Describes seed-salting experiments: e.g., immersion in tank filled with snow. Reports some successful germinations.

Made list of naturalised plants from Asa Gray’s Manual [of Botany] to calculate the proportions of the great families.

Summary

Rejects JDH’s suggestion that seed-salting experiments be conducted on huge scale. Only wishes to demonstrate possibility of sea transport, not establishment of any particular insular flora. More seed results.