To Charles Lyell [1 August 1861]
Summary
Mentions Dutch translation [of Origin].
Discusses evolutionary origin of sexuality.
Asa Gray’s suggestion that variation was directed by a higher power and Herschel’s view of providential arrangement in nature.
Compares variation in domestic and wild species.
Asks CL for introductions for his son William in Southampton, where he has joined a bank.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | [1 Aug 1861] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.259) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3223 |
To Charles Lyell 6 August [1861]
Summary
Bentham has sent a damaged spurless Orchis pyramidalis; asks CL to send another. Fears they are irregular monsters. [See Orchids, pp. 47–8.]
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 6 Aug [1861] |
| Classmark: | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Bentham Correspondence, Vol. 3, Daintree–Dyer, 1830–1884, GEB/1/3: f. 698) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3227 |
To Charles Lyell 13 [August 1861]
Summary
Thanks CL for orchids acquired from a collector.
Discusses role of Providence in variation. Does CL honestly think it applies to variations in domestication? If not ordained there, sees no reason for it in nature either.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 13 [Aug 1861] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.260) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3230 |
To Charles Lyell 21 August [1861]
Summary
Suggests change in a passage [in MS] of CL’s [Antiquity of man (1863)] dealing with adaptations for travel.
Comments on review of Origin by F. W. Hutton [Geologist (1861): 132–6, 183–8].
Emphasises importance of variability for natural selection.
Discusses possiblity of intelligent causes in variation.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 21 Aug [1861] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.261) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3235 |
