Summary

Referring to conversation with Lyell, CD is certain that there was a Miocene glacial period.

Compliments HWB on the mimetic display at the British Museum. Those at the Museum readily accepted HWB’s "doctrine".

Was shown genital organs of closely allied Chrysomelidae.

Albert Günther is candidate for position at Museum.

Summary

CD is mistaken in considering Acropera unisexual, with only male flowers [Orchids, pp. 203–10]. JS has successfully fertilised two A. loddigesii flowers. One is ripening. Dissection of the other shows the pollen accomplishes fertilisation without contacting any stigmatic surface. Abortive ovules found in flowers that did not become fertilised when pollinated. JS suggests Acropera has both unisexual male and hermaphrodite flowers.

Summary

Observations on Welwitschia.

Summary

Has broken up school a few days early to avoid danger. Hopes CD’s son is nearly recovered.

Summary

Hopes to have Lythrum hyssopifolium seeds to send soon.

BAAS is meeting in Cambridge and all eminent Cambridge men are wanted present. If his health were reliable, CD would be in chair of Botany and Zoology Section.

Summary

He has only an uncertain memory of the placement of stamens in the [monstrous?] primrose CD asked about.

Summary

Belated thanks for CD’s photograph.

When in London at Rucker’s wonderful gardens she learned he had sent CD a Mormodes.

Summary

Returns Asa Gray’s letter. Disappointed with Gray. Comments on America. British–American relations.

Summary

G. B. Wollaston [in "British Orchideae", Phytologist n.s. 1 (1855–6): 225–7] says Ophrys arachnites is a hybrid, which contradicts CD, who says it is a new species.

Summary

Leonard Darwin’s illness.

William Darwin and the bank.

Beginning to make out a marvellous case of trimorphism.

Summary

Has several specimens illustrating dimorphism in insects that he would be happy to leave where CD could examine them.

Discusses the ant genera Formica and Atta, and the origin of the two forms of workers commonly found in the species of these genera.

Summary

Has looked for [Ophrys] arachnites for CD, but it is too early in the season.

Summary

In his paper for Geological Society ["Glacial origin of certain lakes", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 18 (1862): 185–204] he will prove that all the lake-basins of the Alps were scooped out by glaciers.

Summary

Thanks for Orchids.

Has captured a bee with pollinia adhering to its head. Will send it to CD if he likes.

Summary

Discusses his new microscope.

Summary

Describes floral anatomy of a Catasetum sent by DO.

Has gone on from orchids to studying insect agency in Pelargonium.

His doubts on the worth of publishing Orchids.

Summary

JS not ready to publish on Primula.

Some of his objections to natural selection are based on belief that plants with separate sexes are less variable than those in which sexes are confluent (as in ferns).

Sends his paper on fern varieties [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 16 (1862): 209–27].

Will soon read paper on Drosera irritability [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 17 (1863): 317–18].

How does CD explain capricious distribution of irritability among plants?

P. scotica’s non-dimorphism is native.

Beginning Laelia experiments shortly.

Summary

JDH’s trip to Switzerland with his wife.

Has seen Oswald Heer’s fossils, including a leaf, apparently dicotyledonous, from the Lower Lias in Jura.

Value of insect and crustacean fossils for systematic determination.

JDH "impressed with identity of physical features and what wonderful analogy of biological [features] between Alps and Himalayas".

Summary

Returns Asa Gray letter. Gray has made a great blunder in his criticism of Oliver: he mistakes perpetuation of a variety for "propagation of variation". Confusion between "action of physical causes" and "effects of physical causes". Neither crossing nor natural selection has made so many divergent individuals, but simply variation. "If once you hold that natural selection can create a character your whole doctrine tumbles to the ground." CD’s failure to convey this, and the false doctrine that "like produces like" is at bottom of half the scientific infidelity to CD’s doctrine. There is something to the objection that CD has made a deus ex machina of natural selection since he neglects to dwell on the facts of infinite incessant variations.

Summary

Samuel Haughton was the prejudiced reviewer of the Origin. JDH’s opinion of SH.

Has heard from a W. African collector that P. B. Du Chaillu’s accounts [Explorations and adventures in equatorial Africa (1861)] are all false.

R. F. Burton has impudently stolen credit for Gustav Mann’s Cameroon expedition.