Summary

Thanks GdeS for his Recherches sur les végétaux fossiles [1876].

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

Hopes GdeS will publish on subjects discussed in his letter [10587]. CD had noted similar persistence of variation in fossil shells.

Calls his attention to Nägeli’s work on Hieracium.

Expresses skepticism about O. Heer’s view that dicotyledonous plants developed suddenly. Believes they must have developed slowly in some part of the globe completely isolated from other regions.

Summary

Thanks GdeS for communicating his discovery. It is especially important at a time when several naturalists have declared that development occurs quite suddenly at intervals. Joseph Le Conte in N. America urges that even new families and orders are developed within an extremely short period.

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

Such honours as proposal for election to Institut affect CD very little.

GdeS’s idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed until sucking insects evolved is a splendid one. The suggestion that fertilisation of the surviving members of the most ancient dicotyledons should be studied is a good one. CD hopes GdeS will keep it in mind.

Summary

Has sent GdeS’s drawing to Hooker. He, Oliver, and Thiselton-Dyer have been perplexed by it.

L. Lesquereux’s discoveries in the Cincinnati Lower Silurian beds.

Summary

The Permian fossil sent by GdeS has stirred up the Kew botanists. Hooker suggests it was a Ceratopteris.

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

It would be false to pretend he cares very much about his election to the Institut.

Glad to hear GdeS plans to publish a work on the more ancient fossil plants. Hopes he will report also on the more recent Tertiary forms because the close gradation of such forms is "a fact of paramount importance for the principle of evolution".

Summary

Thanks for GdeS’s Le monde des plantes [1879].

CD has just read "Végétation polaire" [C. R. Congr. Int. Sci. Geogr. 1 (1878): 197–242] with interest. Hooker gave it conspicuous place in his Royal Society Address (1878).

Summary

Sends his photograph; asks for CD’s.

Summary

Thanks GdeS for his photograph; sends his own. Glad to hear GdeS’s work [Le monde des plantes (1879)] is popular in France.

Summary

Thanks for work sent by GdeS and A. F. Marion [L’évolution du règne végétal 1 (1881)]. CD greatly pleased at boldness with which GdeS expresses his belief in evolution. Some of GdeS’s countrymen have been "a little timid" on this head.

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

Discusses GdeS’s studies on fossil plants;

response to Origin in France.

Summary

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

Summary

Responds to GdeS’s comments on Descent [see 8246]. Cannot give up belief in close relationship of man to higher Simiae.