Summary

"I could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral reefs, but of the top of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter youself that you will be believed, till you are growing bald, like me, with hard work & vexation at the incredulity in the world."

Summary

Advises THF that best plan is to investigate the part certain structures play with all plants or orders, instead of describing means of fertilisation in particular plants. Naturalists value observations far more than reasoning.

Summary

Defends position he takes on species [in Antiquity of man]. CD overestimates CL’s capacity to influence public. Will not dogmatise on descent of man; prepared to accept it, but it "takes away much of the charm from my speculations on the past". Cannot go to Huxley’s length with regard to natural selection. Responds to CD’s comments on Antiquity of man.

Summary

A letter full of news of Cambridge and friends: the BAAS meeting at Cambridge; charges of corruption in the University; the Cambridge petition on behalf of Dissenters.

Summary

His pleasure at Royal Society Copley Medal for CD. Recounts meeting of Royal Society Council.

Summary

Thanks ES in connection with award [of Copley Medal].

Summary

Thanks JSH for his defence [see 2794].

He is not hurt for long by what his attackers say. His conclusions were arrived at after long study. He has certainly erred, but not so much as "Sedgwick and Co." think.

Asks JSH to send names of plants that vary greatly in length of pistil.

Summary

Returns a letter wrongly addressed by CD [4361].

Summary

Congratulates CD on receiving the Copley Medal.

Summary

Bernhard Studer has been at Down. Studer will not be able to join HDelaB’s Ordnance Survey working party.

CD is glad to hear about very old rocks under Silurians. "There is something grand and mysterious at these depths."

Summary

Thanks for Geological survey of North Wales [1866]. Longs to return to the mountains with which he was once familiar, but did not understand.

Summary

Sends characters by which he can divide all primroses and cowslips into what he suspects will be male and female plants. Believes these forms are first step in formation of a dioecious plant.

Summary

Moncure Conway wants to call on CD.

EAD has seen the extract from Mill’s [System of] Logic which Carpenter read when arguing CD should have the Copley. Has CD seen it?

Summary

Testimonial on behalf of J. D. Hooker, addressed to Lord Seymour as Chief Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests, signed by CD and many other scientists.

Summary

Reports to CD on what he has found out about Elodea growing near Cambridge.

Sedgwick is speaking at [Cambridge] Philosophical Society on CD’s "supposed errors" [Camb. Herald & Huntingdonshire Gaz. 19 May 1860, pp. 3–4].

JSH wonders how Owen can be so savage toward CD’s views when his own are "to a certain extent of the same character".

Summary

Saw Salter’s Spirifer specimens; a very good proof of indefinite modifiability.

Beginning to think gap between Cambrian and Lower Silurian enormous.

Édouard Lartet to give paper before Geological Society ["On coexistence of man with certain extinct quadrupeds", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 16 (1859–60): 471–5].

Summary

Discusses the possibility of a land-bridge connecting Biscay with Ireland and the consequent occurrence in southern Ireland of Asturian plants which are absent from England.

Asks if Hooker or anyone has criticised Edward Forbes’ botanical migration of five floras in the British Isles ["On the connexion between the distribution of existing fauna and flora of the British Isles, and the geological changes which have affected their area", Mem. Geol. Surv. G. B. 1 (1846): 336–432].

Summary

Discusses affairs at Down and WED’s coming trip to the Lakes.

Is getting on very slowly with his "confounded proof-sheets" [of Origin].

Summary

Sends some bees CD requested

and discusses the differences among several animal species on islands of the West Indies.