Summary

Has been looking at separation of sexes in poplars.

Interested in reversion.

Does not understand all CD said on inheritance.

JDH now remembers that Origin was "published" some time before it was "distributed" and therefore appeared prior to his own essay [see also 2478].

Impossible to say whether some Dipterocarpaceae survived a cold period or have developed since.

Summary

Notes on drops of nectar on sepals of cypripedium.

Summary

Huxley’s lectures [Man’s place in nature (1863)]; he would be a scientific H. T. Buckle, if he were more careful.

Asks CD what the evidence is for inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Summary

Indignant over Owen’s conduct as described in Hugh Falconer’s article on elephants ["On the American fossil elephant of the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 43–114].

Summary

Falconer’s elephant paper.

Owen’s conduct.

Falconer’s view of CD’s theory: independence of natural selection and variation.

JDH on Tocqueville,

the principles of the Origin,

and the evils of American democracy.

Summary

Acquired characteristics.

Huxley’s lectures: good on induction, bad on sterility, obscure on geology.

Asa Gray on slavery.

Falconer’s partial conversion.

Alphonse de Candolle on Origin.

Summary

JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.

Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.

Summary

JDH delivers CD’s letter to C. V. Naudin.

Neither Naudin nor Decaisne appreciates Origin.

Discusses Naudin on physiological causes of species formation;

Decaisne on plant heredity.

JDH on Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation.

Summary

Naudin has not answered CD’s letter.

Reactions of Candolle, Naudin, Decaisne, and Gaston de Saporta to Origin.

CD’s new hothouse.

CD’s Linum paper.

JDH’s work on Welwitschia.

Summary

Asa Gray on democracy of plants.

Requests plants for new hothouse. Transferring plants to Down in winter.

Summary

British attitude towards America: not hate as Asa Gray thinks, but contempt.

Summary

Plants, safely arrived from Kew, fill new greenhouse.

Summary

Owen’s cutting critique of Lyell’s book [Antiquity of man] in Athenæum [21 Feb 1863, pp. 262–3]. JDH despises Owen’s mind too much to hate his individuality.

Summary

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man and of Owen’s comment on it.

Disappointed Lyell has not spoken out on species and on man.

Pleasure of new hothouse and the plants JDH supplied for it.

Summary

Criticism of Antiquity of man; its public reception.

Summary

John Lubbock’s lecture on man a success [Not. Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 4 (1863): 29–40].

JDH on the effect of the Civil War on Asa Gray.

JDH’s opinion of Lyell on glaciers is improving.

Summary

Ill health.

At work on Variation.

Reading JDH on Welwitschia.

Letter from Lyell defends his position on species.

Anger at Owen.

John Lubbock’s lectures.

Summary

Lyell’s position on mutability.

Directions for care of hothouse plants.

Falconer hostile to Lyell’s book.

JDH’s Wedgwood ware collection.

Summary

Lyell’s position on mutability.

Fertilisation of trees by bees.

Summary

JDH battling with Lyell over treatment of species question in Antiquity of man. Distressed by Lyell’s raising false priority issue between JDH and CD. Falconer involved in a priority squabble.