Summary

Thanks CD for his endowment of new Steudel’s Nomenclator [later to become Index Kewensis].

K. White’s gruesome ballad "Gondoline" frightened JDH as a child.

Summary

Thinks CD’s letter ["The doctrine of heterogeny", Collected papers 2: 78–80] will appear "with a clearer field and to better effect" if delayed a week, since next issue [of Athenæum] has Lyell’s reply to Hugh Falconer, and W. B. Carpenter’s report on the Abbéville jaw.

Summary

Gives some information on Darwin family history.

Summary

Sends paper [on ancient Swiss lake-habitations, Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 2 (1862): 26–51] for CD’s opinion.

Summary

AM did not borrow a Samuel Scudder pamphlet from CD; in fact he was not aware of its existence.

Summary

Wife’s health better.

Visited Duke of Argyll.

Thanks CD for Cruciferae diagram; will ponder it.

Staggered by complexity of Welwitschia.

Summary

Congratulations on the Copley Medal.

Summary

Thanks CD for German translation of Origin.

Droughts over the summers have brought about changes in the numbers of plants and animals in the area. The small quantity of Orchestia darwinii that has survived the changes no longer includes two previously common male forms. Great changes also take place without such unusual physical conditions. The disappearance of a briefly abundant bryozoan in local caves has made way not for the return of original bryozoan inhabitants but for a completely new fauna.

Summary

Applies sexual selection to origin of dog race [deerhound]. Proposes descent from a large extinct dog.

Summary

Sends a list of mammalian remains found in the Buenos Aires district and purchased by the British Museum.

Summary

Examples of animals that dwell in dark places, some of which are blind, some not. Asks: where causes are the same, why is not the effect? Does not think disuse is the answer, but arrested development.

Comments also on the absence of a ligament in four mammals and asks how natural selection accounts for this.

Summary

Is glad CD has found interest in "the old book" [Dr Erasmus Darwin’s commonplace book].

Discusses Erasmus Darwin and his belongings, which RD has inherited.

Owns a portrait of Erasmus Darwin by Joseph Wright of Derby.

Summary

Variation in recent leonine skeletons.

Miocene fauna of Europe.

Summary

Council of the Royal Society have awarded CD the Copley Medal.

Summary

Comments on various points in Descent: proportion of sexes, moral sentiments in animals, etc. Encloses "packet of data" [missing].

Summary

JDH admits he wrote Gardeners’ Chronicle and Natural History Review articles on orchids [Gard. Chron. (1862): 789–90, 863, 910; Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 2 (1862): 371–6].

JDH’s objections to CD’s idea of how Greenland was repopulated. Temperate Greenland has as Arctic a flora as Arctic Greenland – a fact of astounding force. Why should certain Scandinavian species be absent? Migration by sea-currents can no more account for the present distribution in Greenland than can special creation.

Summary

Her memorial has passed and her civil list pension has been increased to £100 per annum for life.

Dr Johnson of Shrewsbury has R. W. Darwin letters.

Summary

Prepared to think world infinitely old, but not that life originated with a single cell. Questions whether geological evidence supports gradual progress in organisation. HW thought scientific opinion during Vestiges debate was against this hypothesis. Argues that presence of same senses in lower animals and vertebrates does not imply descent; assumes resemblance is due to living in same world and thus having organs for the same purposes. Wants CD to know how others may see these questions.

Summary

Discusses Origin, suggesting confirmation might come from studying reproduction in microscopic organisms.

Gives anecdotal observations of blind rats and white cats.

Summary

Sends details of his discoveries of relics and bones of the "mound-builders", and Jeffries Wyman’s comments on them.