Summary

Measles has ben running through the house, but they are now quit of it.

Discusses plans for JSH to visit; eager to discuss Origin.

Summary

Thanks for L. Jenyns’ very sensible letter [missing].

Will be delighted to see JSH whenever he can come.

Summary

Sends directions for JSH’s journey to Bromley and Down.

Summary

Reminds JSH to send "sketch & account of the wasp’s comb in transitional state from horizontal to vertical, & the country whence procured".

Asks for information on spread of Anacharis [Elodea].

Sedgwick [in criticism of Origin] was not very fair, but Murray says it is splendid for selling copies to "the unfortunate students".

Summary

Comments on Richard Owen’s review of the Origin [in Edinburgh Rev. 111 (1860): 487–532]. Considers Owen unfair to CD and most ungenerous toward Hooker.

Expects Sedgwick to be fierce against him. Sedgwick also misrepresented CD in his Spectator review [24 Mar and 7 Apr 1860].

Compares natural selection to the undulatory theory of light as a hypothesis explaining a large number of facts.

Summary

Thanks JSH for his defence [see 2794].

He is not hurt for long by what his attackers say. His conclusions were arrived at after long study. He has certainly erred, but not so much as "Sedgwick and Co." think.

Asks JSH to send names of plants that vary greatly in length of pistil.

Summary

Sends characters by which he can divide all primroses and cowslips into what he suspects will be male and female plants. Believes these forms are first step in formation of a dioecious plant.

Summary

Discusses Charles Daubeny’s views on sexuality of plants [Rep. BAAS 30 (1860) pt 2: 109–10]. "There is no greater mystery in the whole world, as it seems to me, than the existence of sexes, – more especially since the discovery of Parthenogenesis."

Says apropos of the FitzRoy Bible incident [at Oxford BAAS meeting], "I think his mind is often on verge of insanity."

Summary

Has been observing Drosera. Asks JSH whether a curious motion in the red fluid poured out from the viscid hairs is a known or common phenomenon. It surprised him, but he is "so ignorant of vegetable physiology".

Summary

Sends further details on the movement of the red fluid substance in Drosera. Will write a paper on it.

"Dr [C. R.] Bree ""pitches"" into me handsomely."

Summary

CD does not mind C. R. Bree’s dull, unvarying abuse and misrepresentation, but when he doubts CD’s deliberate word, "that is the act of a man who has not the soul of a gentleman in him".

JSH’s letter in Athenæum ["Flints in the drift", 20 Oct. 1860, p. 516] is interesting.

H. Freke’s paper [On the origin of species by means of organic affinity (1861)] is beyond CD’s scope.

Summary

The stone hatchets are a great muddle. Would like a copy of Jacques Boucher [de Crèvecoeur] de Perthes’s book [Antiquités Celtiques et antédiluviennes (1847–64)].

Is studying action of carbonate of ammonia on Drosera. Asks if this has been done.