From Charles Lyell 28 October 1859
Summary
Since dogs have same gestation period as the wolf it is likely that the wolf is the ancestral wild species, if it is just one species.
CD’s belief that domestic dogs are descended from several distinct aboriginal species seems to contradict views on sterility of hybrids and variation in Origin. If domestic varieties came from hybrids of wild species it will be impossible to trace ancestry. Opponents will exploit these problems.
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 28 Oct 1859 |
| Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/4: 170–3) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2512A |
To Charles Lyell 22 [December 1859]
Summary
Comments on Hooker’s introductory essay [in Flora Tasmaniae].
Cites C. V. Naudin’s article ["Considérations philosophiques sur l’espèce et la variété", Rev. Hortic. 4th ser. 1 (1852): 102–9].
Mentions letter from William Jardine criticising discussion of the Galapagos in the Origin.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 22 [Dec 1859] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.186) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2593 |
To Charles Lyell 25 [November 1859]
Summary
Discusses corrections for second edition [of Origin]. Will leave out the reference to whale and bear. Discusses pheasant crosses. Success of the book.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 25 [Nov 1859] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.179) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2552 |
CD memorandum 24 April 1859
Summary
Questions about stripes on mules.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Unidentified |
| Date: | 24 Apr 1859 |
| Classmark: | DAR 206 (Letters) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2454 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … of stripes on the legs of horse--donkey hybrids (mules) in Origin , p. 165, where he gave …
From Charles Lyell 21 November 1859
Summary
Questions CD’s view in Origin that domestic dogs are not descended from a single stock. Occasional crossings of domestic stock with wild species could explain cases of reversion towards wild specific forms. CD’s views on hybridity do not then have to be contradicted in constructing an ancestral stock.
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 21 Nov 1859 |
| Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/4: 195–7) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2540A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … case of most domestic animals, let the hybrid have always interbred with one of the pure …
To Charles Lyell 30 September [1859]
Summary
Is sending off last proof-sheets of Origin.
Asks CL’s opinion of final chapter. Mentions difficulties of his argument.
Is too unwell to start for Ilkley.
Murray’s printing of 1250 copies seems too large to CD.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Date: | 30 Sept [1859] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.171) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2496 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … problem of sterile first crosses & sterile hybrids, &c &c. — Looking back, I think it was …
| letter | (6) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (4) |
| Lyell, Charles | (2) |
| Lyell, Charles | (3) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (2) |
| Unidentified | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (6) |
| Lyell, Charles | (5) |
| Unidentified | (1) |
Forms of flowers
Summary
Darwin’s book The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, published in 1877, investigated the structural differences in the sexual organs of flowers of the same species. It drew on and expanded five articles Darwin had published on the…
Matches: 6 hits
- … Darwin had contended that the sterility of interspecific hybrids, when contrasted with the fertility …
- … and varieties. He argued that the sterility of interspecific hybrids was not a special endowment but …
- … are not descendants of coloured Polyanthus; so as to be hybrids ’. On receiving seed of the …
- … often dwarfs, so that they offer the closest analogy with Hybrids; the first cross & the product …
- … oxlip. With supplementary remarks on naturally produced hybrids in the genus Verbascum ’, was …
- … an excellent answer to the statement, that sterility of hybrids proves the absolute distinctness of …
Species and varieties
Summary
On the origin of species by means of natural selection …so begins the title of Darwin’s most famous book, and the reader would rightly assume that such a thing as ‘species’ must therefore exist and be subject to description. But the title continues, …or…
Matches: 3 hits
- … 272, Darwin had argued that the sterility of interspecific hybrids was not a special endowment but …
- … 1862] ). In 1866, Darwin compared the sterility of hybrids, or the offspring of hybrids, with the …
- … had sent a concise elaboration of how the sterility of hybrids might be produced by natural …
Darwin’s reading notebooks
Summary
In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to read in Notebook C (Notebooks, pp. 319–28). In 1839, these lists were copied and continued in separate notebooks. The first of these reading notebooks (DAR 119…
Matches: 8 hits
- … & Lasch. Linn in 1829 [Lasch 1829] has given list of spont. Hybrids. where? Sweet Hortus …
- … [I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire 1841]— Some wonderful facts on Hybrids read Journal de Physique [ …
- … Read Henslow in Botanist 36 has written on some Hybrids The Cat. of Sir J. Bank’s …
- … Sageret sur les Cucurbitaceæ [Sageret 1826] (Gerard Hybrids [Gérard 1844]) Bought (read) …
- … New Zealand [Dieffenbach 1843] 1844 Wiegman on Hybrids—German— [Wiegmann 1828] …
- … Ungulates Grey [J. E. Gray 1843–52]. Much on Horses & Hybrids [DAR *128: 157] …
- … & Rabbits [Delamer 1854] Ap. 22. Lecoq sur les Hybrids [?Lecoq 1845]. 25. The …
- … to identify which encyclopaedias CD used for articles on hybrids. 33 The Archiv für …
Darwin in letters, 1864: Failing health
Summary
On receiving a photograph from Charles Darwin, the American botanist Asa Gray wrote on 11 July 1864: ‘the venerable beard gives the look of your having suffered, and … of having grown older’. Because of poor health, Because of poor health, Darwin…
Matches: 4 hits
- … Pulmonaria species, and between Primula species and hybrids, in order to investigate further …
- … different from the result of crosses between two different hybrids, or even between different …
- … a man & a Gorilla Darwin’s interest in species, hybrids, and different forms within a …
- … cross, the intermediate offspring are sterile like ordinary Hybrids, they must be called as good …
Floral Dimorphism
Summary
Sources|Discussion Questions|Experiment Floral studies In 1877 Darwin published a book that included a series of smaller studies on botanical subjects. Titled The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, it consisted primarily of…
Matches: 1 hits
- … believe to be very important as bearing on the sterility of hybrids; although these results have …
Darwin in letters,1866: Survival of the fittest
Summary
The year 1866 began well for Charles Darwin, as his health, after several years of illness, was now considerably improved. In February, Darwin received a request from his publisher, John Murray, for a new edition of Origin. Darwin got the fourth…
Darwin in letters, 1882: Nothing too great or too small
Summary
In 1882, Darwin reached his 74th year Earthworms had been published the previous October, and for the first time in decades he was not working on another book. He remained active in botanical research, however. Building on his recent studies in plant…
Matches: 1 hits
- … cases, and Romanes had made numerous attempts to produce hybrids through grafting root vegetables …
Cross and self fertilisation
Summary
The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom, published on 10 November 1876, was the result of a decade-long project to provide evidence for Darwin’s belief that ‘‘Nature thus tells us, in the most emphatic manner, that she abhors…
Darwin in letters, 1863: Quarrels at home, honours abroad
Summary
At the start of 1863, Charles Darwin was actively working on the manuscript of The variation of animals and plants under domestication, anticipating with excitement the construction of a hothouse to accommodate his increasingly varied botanical experiments…
Darwin in letters, 1868: Studying sex
Summary
The quantity of Darwin’s correspondence increased dramatically in 1868 due largely to his ever-widening research on human evolution and sexual selection.Darwin’s theory of sexual selection as applied to human descent led him to investigate aspects of the…
Matches: 1 hits
- … had led him to consider sterility in the offspring of hybrids to be an outcome of complex factors, …
Darwin in letters, 1851-1855: Death of a daughter
Summary
The letters from these years reveal the main preoccupations of Darwin’s life with a new intensity. The period opens with a family tragedy in the death of Darwin’s oldest and favourite daughter, Anne, and it shows how, weary and mourning his dead child,…
Matches: 1 hits
- … to test Gärtner’s views concerning decreased fertility of hybrids, Darwin began in the spring of …
Darwin in letters, 1875: Pulling strings
Summary
‘I am getting sick of insectivorous plants’, Darwin confessed in January 1875. He had worked on the subject intermittently since 1859, and had been steadily engaged on a book manuscript for nine months; January also saw the conclusion of a bitter dispute…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Further information was gathered about graft hybrids. He revisited the case of Cytisus adami , a …
Darwin in letters, 1837–1843: The London years to 'natural selection'
Summary
The seven-year period following Darwin's return to England from the Beagle voyage was one of extraordinary activity and productivity in which he became recognised as a naturalist of outstanding ability, as an author and editor, and as a professional…
Matches: 1 hits
- … that such an experienced horticulturist maintained that hybrids were not universally infertile, that …
Darwin in letters, 1867: A civilised dispute
Summary
Charles Darwin’s major achievement in 1867 was the completion of his large work, The variation of animals and plants under domestication (Variation). The importance of Darwin’s network of correspondents becomes vividly apparent in his work on expression in…
Matches: 1 hits
- … a more than ten-year monopoly in the production of orchid hybrids (Shephard 2003). Darwin frequently …
Darwin in letters, 1865: Delays and disappointments
Summary
The year was marked by three deaths of personal significance to Darwin: Hugh Falconer, a friend and supporter; Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle; and William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and father of Darwin’s friend…
Matches: 1 hits
- … 1865] ) and promising to explain about his ‘so-called hybrids of Lythrum’ when they met. The last …
Darwin in letters, 1876: In the midst of life
Summary
1876 was the year in which the Darwins became grandparents for the first time. And tragically lost their daughter-in-law, Amy, who died just days after her son's birth. All the letters from 1876 are now published in volume 24 of The Correspondence…
Matches: 1 hits
- … characteristic of species , the infertility of hybrids, has not yet been produced’, he told …
Darwin in letters, 1879: Tracing roots
Summary
Darwin spent a considerable part of 1879 in the eighteenth century. His journey back in time started when he decided to publish a biographical account of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin to accompany a translation of an essay on Erasmus’s evolutionary ideas…
Matches: 1 hits
- … of Down House. Darwin believed that the fertility of these hybrids showed that mutual sterility was …
Essay: Natural selection & natural theology
Summary
—by Asa Gray NATURAL SELECTION NOT INCONSISTENT WITH NATURAL THEOLOGY. Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and October, 1860, reprinted in 1861. I Novelties are enticing to most people; to us they are simply annoying. We cling to a long-accepted…
Matches: 1 hits
- … show if our space permitted. As to the sterility of hybrids, that can no longer be insisted …
