Summary

Asks whether he ought to write to CD while he is ill.

Wonders if he might use Haast’s notes on introduced animals for a notice he is preparing ["Note on the replacement of species in the colonies and elsewhere", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864): 123–7].

Summary

JDH battling with Lyell over treatment of species question in Antiquity of man. Distressed by Lyell’s raising false priority issue between JDH and CD. Falconer involved in a priority squabble.

Summary

Suggests CD consult George Busk about his stomach.

Summary

Flora of Cameroons shakes JDH’s faith in ability to explain past or present migrations. Sees need for a major novel explanation such as natural selection, glacial cold, or continental connections.

Lyell in a bad way about feud with Falconer.

JDH’s opinion of Wallace, Bates, J. E. Gray, Owen, Asa Gray, Lubbock, and Bentham.

Bentham’s Linnean Society address [see 4118].

Summary

Encourages CD to continue observations on tendrils.

Summary

Has been looking at separation of sexes in poplars.

Interested in reversion.

Does not understand all CD said on inheritance.

JDH now remembers that Origin was "published" some time before it was "distributed" and therefore appeared prior to his own essay [see also 2478].

Impossible to say whether some Dipterocarpaceae survived a cold period or have developed since.

Summary

JDH lays hard treatment of John Scott to J. H. Balfour’s anti-Darwinism.

Summary

British attitude towards America: not hate as Asa Gray thinks, but contempt.

Summary

Evidence of tropical floras continuous since Tertiary cannot fit CD’s position on intermittent cold periods.

Agrees with CD on reversion and latency.

Summary

Lyell’s position on mutability.

Directions for care of hothouse plants.

Falconer hostile to Lyell’s book.

JDH’s Wedgwood ware collection.

Summary

JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.

Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.

Summary

JDH has lost a letter from Julius von Haast intended for CD.

Summary

Huxley’s lectures [Man’s place in nature (1863)]; he would be a scientific H. T. Buckle, if he were more careful.

Asks CD what the evidence is for inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Summary

Sends Haast’s report; JDH may use any and all of the details in the letter.

Asks identity of a reviewer of Lyell’s Antiquity of man [Edinburgh Rev. 118 (1863): 254–302].

Summary

Criticism of Antiquity of man; its public reception.

Summary

Attacks by Falconer [Athenæum 4 Apr 1863, pp. 459–60] and Joseph Prestwich on Lyell.

W. B. Carpenter fails to attack Owen.

Welwitschia male cones with useless ovules marvellous example of lost function and retained structure.

JDH evaluates his sons.

Summary

JDH working on the New Zealand flora.

Jules Planchon excited about CD’s Linum experiments.

T. F. Jamieson’s paper on glaciers gives great pleasure.

Summary

Ill health.

At work on Variation.

Reading JDH on Welwitschia.

Letter from Lyell defends his position on species.

Anger at Owen.

John Lubbock’s lectures.

Summary

Admits, at last, that New Zealand must have been connected to some continent, but not Australia.

Climbing plants: asks for more plants.

Summary

JDH delivers CD’s letter to C. V. Naudin.

Neither Naudin nor Decaisne appreciates Origin.

Discusses Naudin on physiological causes of species formation;

Decaisne on plant heredity.

JDH on Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation.