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.

Summary

Would like to see the Kosmos article.

Is considering producing a translation of August Weismann’s essays.

Comments on Wallace’s paper on the colours of animals and plants [Macmillan’s Magazine 36 (1877): 384–408, 464–71].

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

Thinks Weismann would welcome a translation.

Was dissatisfied with Wallace’s article.

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 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

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 GA for his article ["The daisy’s pedigree", Cornhill Mag. 44 (1881): 168–81].

The evolutionary argument that petals are transformed stamens is "striking and apparently valid". Doubts petals are naturally yellow.

Wallace’s "generalization about much modified parts being splendidly coloured" is also dubious except as both are caused by sexual selection.

Summary

Has just read GA’s article in Fortnightly Review ["A problem of human evolution", 31 (1879): 778–86]. GA’s views very probable. Something wonderful to hear anyone defending sexual selection.

Summary

Thanks for the reviews, particularly the one in the Times.

CD will be pleased to receive Mr Wallace.

Summary

Read GA’s book [The colour-sense] with "great interest". Makes criticisms and suggestions.

Cannot believe in GA’s theory of the origin of pleasure and pain.

Is glad he defends sexual selection;

CD finds A. R. Wallace’s explanations "mere empty words" and for many years he has "quite doubted [ARW’s] scientific judgment".

Considers the possible effect of environmental colour on the colour tastes of animals.

Summary

Encloses Fritz Müller’s letter.

Is exhibiting butterflies in which variations in the female show a finely graded series. Believes dimorphism can be explained by the selection of the extremes of such a series and the consequent extinction of the intermediates.

Summary

JM will be pleased to publish the new work [Forms of flowers] on the usual terms. MS has been sent to the printer.

Summary

Asks whether sexual selection could produce the changing plumules or "battledore" scales on the wings of certain butterflies.

Summary

Discusses effects of natural selection. Discusses absence of blending between geographical races as a problem. Discusses effect of natural selection on productivity of an organism.

Comments on GJR’s review of Grant Allen’s book [Physiological aesthetics (1877)].

Summary

Sends MS notes on intercrossing.

Describes different reactions of rabbits and guinea-pigs to stinging nettles.

Has made a number of grafts at Kew.

Encloses notes on natural selection; discussion of factors mitigating the swamping influence of intercrossing on incipient variations.

Summary

Thanks him for book by Grant Allen [Physiological aesthetics (1877)].

Comments on dispute over spontaneous generation.

The Council [of the Royal Society] will not print Frank Darwin’s paper on Dipsacus [in Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond.].

Mentions GJR’s grafting experiments

and his investigation of spiritualism.