Summary

Response to Wallace’s article ["The colours of animals and plants", Macmillan’s Mag. (Sept 1877)] on sexual colours and "voluntary" sexual selection.

Summary

Further discussion of evidence for sexual selection. Prefers "conscious" to "voluntary" action. Distinguishes features that serve as charms and those that serve as challenges.

Summary

Thanks for new edition of Orchids.

The remarkable papers of Mott on Ernst Haeckel ["On Haeckel’s history of creation", Proc. Lit. & Philos. Soc. Liverpool 31 (1876–7): 41–89].

The part played by carbon in geological changes.

Summary

Thanks CD for Forms of flowers.

Further objections to "voluntary" sexual selection. Believes that he can explain all the phenomena of sexual ornaments and colours by laws of development aided by simple natural selection.

Excited by Thomas Belt’s "oceanic glacier river-damming" hypothesis. The last paper, "Glacial period in the Southern Hemisphere" in the Quarterly Journal of Science is particularly fine.

Summary

Sexual selection, he thinks, must be left to others to settle. "Conscious" will be substituted for "voluntary" selection. Sound- and scent-producing organs attributed to "natural", not "conscious", selection.