Summary

Regrets he cannot accept dinner invitation.

Summary

CD (and Emma) had a good laugh over JDH’s mortified response to a misinterpretation (in print) concerning his position on multiple creation.

Summary

Thanks for the very detailed information sent by EWVH.

Summary

Comments on SPW’s book [Manual of Mollusca (1851–6)].

Mentions questions he has for SPW [see 1890].

Summary

Thanks WDF for specimen of Dorking cock.

Summary

Reports safe arrival of rabbit sent by WBT.

Summary

Queries from CD on the distribution of molluscan genera referring to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [pt 3 (1856)], with SPW’s answers.

Summary

Thanks WBDM for the particulars on the iceberg.

Will look up the barnacle specimen to which he refers at British Museum.

WBDM should remember when he returns to New Zealand that aboriginal rat and frog are "great desiderata in Natural History".

Summary

Comments on TVW’s book [On the variation of species with special reference to the Insecta (1856)].

On TVW’s Unitarianism. Predicts TVW will fall further away from Christianity.

[Letter sent by TVW to Charles Lyell.]

Summary

Admires ELL’s plan to visit Madagascar.

Asks about fertility of hybrid cats, crosses among dogs in Africa, and appearance of feral pigeons at Ascension. Doubts existence of N. African greyhound.

Asks for specimens of pigeons and ducks from the Cape of Good Hope.

Summary

The responses to his queries on domestic variations are coming in from all over; believes he will make an interesting collection. At present concerned with rabbits and ducks.

Has told Lyell of his views on species and CL urges CD to publish a preliminary essay. Has begun to work on it, with fear and trembling at its inadequacies.

Summary

Wishes to borrow fly pincers for his son George.

Discusses T. V. Wollaston’s book on insect variation [On the variation of species (1856)].

Summary

Do the plants that are common to Europe and North America nearly all live north of the Arctic Circle? CD bases his question on HCW’s "capital" comparison between relations of Europe to North America and Europe to E. Asia if the intervening land had been submerged. CD has been led to speculate that in the mid-Pliocene the organisms now living in middle Europe and northern U. S. lived within the Arctic Circle. Subsequent movements of this flora with advance and retreat of glaciers would explain present distribution better than Forbes’s vast submergences.

Summary

Smallpox in the village. Death of Joseph Parslow’s son.

Summary

Would like to compare the length of the wings of non-migratory and migratory swallows.

Wonders if EWVH could show him skins of Columba livia.

Summary

Does not intend to work systematically on cats. Their origin is in doubt and they have been crossed too many ways.

It would be valuable to know whether half-bred ducks are fertile inter se or with a third breed. Is investigating this with pigeons.

Summary

Condemns theory of Edward Forbes and others that many islands were formerly connected to South America by now submerged continents.

Summary

Sends a cultivated specimen of Myosotis (first generation) grown from seed sent by JSH. Asks for a tuft of flower.

Hopes JSH will publish a book on teaching botany, because he has no idea how to begin with his children.

Summary

Comments on Huxley–Falconer dispute [see "On the method of palaeontology", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 18 (1856): 43–54].

Wollaston’s On the variation of species [1856].

Has exploded to Lyell against the extension of continents.

Plants common to Europe and NW. America as result of temperate climate.

Summary

Seeks to verify whether bulldogs have degenerated in India [see Variation 1: 37–8].

CD has "sometimes gone so far as to doubt whether climate has any influence even on colour".