Summary

CD is grateful to CL for his help in arranging with Murray for publication [of Origin]. Sorry Murray objects to term "abstract" in title, but will defer to him and CL.

Summary

Comments on the Origin. Outlines difficulties he finds in CD’s theory. Believes CD must define natural selection more accurately and mentions instances in which that principle is an insufficient cause to account for the form of certain structures.

Summary

Sends title and first three chapters [of Origin]. Thinks first chapter will interest the public and is sure views are original. If JM thinks otherwise, he should freely reject the work. Chapter 2 is dull and abstruse, chapter 3 is plain and interesting.

Summary

CD is convinced that the suggestions [for the Origin?] of both Lyell and Whitwell Elwyn are impracticable.

Will send first six chapters of MS next week. Has taken such pains with it that he hopes corrections will not be heavy.

Summary

Responds to Owen’s remarks that his book [Origin] is not likely to be true because it attempts to explain so much. CD describes how, for fear this might be so, he resolved to give up the work if he could not convince two or three competent judges. He is sensitive because of unjust things said by a distinguished friend [A. Sedgwick]. Value of his views now depends on men eminent in science.

Summary

CD hopes Woodward was not the Athenæum reviewer. "The manner in which he drags in immortality, & sets the Priests at me … is base".

JDH has made CD feel he can "face a score of savage reviewers".

H. C. Watson has written to him in tremendous praise of the Origin.

Summary

Hopes Murray will publish after seeing MS [of Origin].

Demurs at JDH’s saying that CD changes climate to account for migration of bugs, flies, etc. "We do nothing of the sort; for we rest on scored rocks, old moraines, arctic shells, and mammifers." Has given up the Lyellian doctrine as insufficient to explain all changes in climate; CD has no theory about the cause of the cold.

Summary

News of his health and the water-cure establishment.

[Origin] "my weariful book on Species" has been sent to WDF, who will not agree with it. Hooker is a convert, and Lyell is "staggered".

Summary

CD’s great satisfaction with JDH’s approval of Origin. The book has been extremely successful. Reactions of Asa Gray, Lyell, Bentham, and J. E. Gray.

Not one friend has noticed his pet bit in Origin: embryology.

Summary

CL’s comments on Origin. Mentions corrections to last chapter suggested by CL.

Comments on lack of peculiar bird species on Madeira and Bermuda. Emphasises importance of American types in Galapagos.

Denies necessity of continued creation of primitive "Monads".

Denies need for new powers and any principle of improvement.

Discusses gradations of intellectual powers.

Adaptive inferiority and extinction of groups of species and genera.

Asserts that climate is less important than the struggle with other organisms.

Suggests an experiment involving primroses and cowslips.

The chapter on hybridisation.

Rudimentary organs.

Gives opinion of Lamarck’s work.