Summary

Thanks HWB for his book [Naturalist on the river Amazons]. Feels sure it will often be alluded to in other works.

Asa Gray is fascinated by the "Butterfly paper" ["Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 495–566].

Summary

The war is nearly finished, "rebeldom is ""gone up"" ".

Summary

Continues to support, in debates at the Société d’Anthropologie, the view that variability of animals and anatomical modifications are produced by environment. Wishes to use CD’s niata cattle example from Journal of researches [2d ed., pp. 145–6].

Summary

Working on monstrous Primula. Is ovule anatropous as Asa Gray says, or amphitropous? Does he know natural path of pollen tubes in Primula. Can the tube enter the ovule by the chalaza?

Summary

Encourages JS to publish on sterility of orchids and to experiment on Passiflora.

Doubted Hooker’s poppy case.

Describes case of primrose with three pistils: when pulled apart allowed pollen to be placed directly on ovules. This supports JS’s explanation of H. Crüger’s case.

Summary

Thanks GGS for calculation [to determine the chances of the same peculiarity recurring in a family, see Variation 2: 5]

Summary

Thanks for CD’s Linum paper [Collected papers 2: 93–105].

Has not published much because he would be ignored as a gardener; hence he is looking for a foreign appointment.

Has prepared orchid sterility paper at CD’s suggestion [Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh 7 (1863): 543–50].

Summary

Is ready to make some arrangement to repay CD’s bond. Has written to F. Ransome to help arrange repayment and wants CD to write his opinion of a fair scheme.

Summary

Hopes CD will finish and bring out his book on variation.

AG will publish extracts of H. W. Bates’s paper on mimetic analogy [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 36 (1863): 279–94].

Summary

Asks WHF to obtain photographs of skull of ox for J. L. A. Quatrefages de Bréau.

Summary

Sends two spikes of Corydalis.

Admits he may have drawn false inference from MTM’s division of peloria into two classes.

Summary

Thanks CD for specimens which show that an abnormality in one genus is normal in another, which bears on CD’s views on descent.

Summary

The ovule of Primula is amphitropous or what J. Georg Agardh calls apotropo-amphitropous [see Theoria systematis plantarum (1858), tab. 24, fig. 5–6].

Summary

Difference in plumage of Ardeola, a species of heron, in summer and winter. [See Descent 2: 190.]

Summary

The niata is a very good case because the race is well established and must originate in South America. There is a description of the head by [Richard] Owen in the Descriptive catalogue of the osteological collection of the College of Surgeons.

Has observed modifications in the skeletons of rabbits, ducks, poultry, and pigeons. There is an extract about modifications in pigeons in the first chapter of Origin. Encloses a woodcut of crested or polish fowls; there is a change in the brain as well as in the exterior bones.

Summary

Thanks for information on Primula ovules. From what DO says the pollen-tubes ought to find their way to the micropyle.

Summary

Asks CD whether he knows of "anything worth looking at" that has appeared abroad on his theory of the origin of species.

Summary

Owen is the author of the Athenæum article [28 Mar 1863, pp. 417–19]. JDH dismisses it as vulgar rubbish. W. B. Carpenter intends to write a reply.

Summary

Discusses the repayment of a loan made by CD to DTA and F. Ransome.

Summary

Sends GB a selection of reviews of the Origin from his collection of about 90, with his opinion of some of them.