Summary

Claims to have proved the great antiquity of several plant races. But this does not contradict the tendency to vary. Insists that heredity can make permanent varieties of sufficient duration to occur as fossils.

Summary

He has heard CD is about to be elected to the Académie des Sciences.

Cross and self-fertilisation, with its emphasis on insect pollination, helps explain the problem he has worked on for so long: i.e., the rapid diversification of angiosperms in the fossil record occurs in conjunction with the diversification of insects.

Summary

Discusses the difficulty of reconstructing angiosperm phylogeny.

Discovery of polar fossil plants helps explain migrations.

Hooker has identification of GdeS’s Permian fossil.

Summary

Congratulations on election to the French Academy of Sciences, Botany Section.

Summary

Sends his photograph; asks for CD’s.

Summary

Sends GdeS and A. F. Marion, L’évolution du règne végétal. Les cryptogames [1881].

Summary

Strong support for theory of descent.

Observations on palaeobotany of S. France. Most woody angiosperm genera date far back. Magnolia type unchanged. Intermediate fossil species. Ancient species of Quercus persists as variety of modern species. Fossil evidence of ice age.

CD’s works have been an inspiration in France.

Summary

CD insists too strongly, in Descent, on man’s origin from a simian ancestor, rather than some other primate.