Summary

Reports safe arrival of rabbit sent by WBT.

Summary

SPW and Waterhouse agree on island faunas; gives Australia and Tasmania as examples. The "stream of migration" from Asia to Tasmania.

Looks forward eagerly to the publication of CD’s "specific" researches.

Invites CD to send his memoranda [on Manual of Mollusca].

Summary

Queries from CD on the distribution of molluscan genera referring to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [pt 3 (1856)], with SPW’s answers.

Summary

Answers CD’s questions about plants common to U. S. and Britain and their distribution in Europe.

Variability of agrarian weeds.

Summary

Thanks WBDM for the particulars on the iceberg.

Will look up the barnacle specimen to which he refers at British Museum.

WBDM should remember when he returns to New Zealand that aboriginal rat and frog are "great desiderata in Natural History".

Summary

Comments on TVW’s book [On the variation of species with special reference to the Insecta (1856)].

On TVW’s Unitarianism. Predicts TVW will fall further away from Christianity.

[Letter sent by TVW to Charles Lyell.]

Summary

Admires ELL’s plan to visit Madagascar.

Asks about fertility of hybrid cats, crosses among dogs in Africa, and appearance of feral pigeons at Ascension. Doubts existence of N. African greyhound.

Asks for specimens of pigeons and ducks from the Cape of Good Hope.

Summary

The responses to his queries on domestic variations are coming in from all over; believes he will make an interesting collection. At present concerned with rabbits and ducks.

Has told Lyell of his views on species and CL urges CD to publish a preliminary essay. Has begun to work on it, with fear and trembling at its inadequacies.

Summary

Wishes to borrow fly pincers for his son George.

Discusses T. V. Wollaston’s book on insect variation [On the variation of species (1856)].

Summary

Preference of stallions for hybrid mares.

Summary

Evidence relevant to E. Forbes’s land-bridge theory.

Summary

Do the plants that are common to Europe and North America nearly all live north of the Arctic Circle? CD bases his question on HCW’s "capital" comparison between relations of Europe to North America and Europe to E. Asia if the intervening land had been submerged. CD has been led to speculate that in the mid-Pliocene the organisms now living in middle Europe and northern U. S. lived within the Arctic Circle. Subsequent movements of this flora with advance and retreat of glaciers would explain present distribution better than Forbes’s vast submergences.

Summary

Writes about suitable mourning clothes and sale of house [Petleys, after death of Sarah Elizabeth Wedgwood I].

Summary

Thanks for promise of rabbit carcase and for information about rabbit at Zoological Society’s Garden.

Requests correspondent to ask Mr Vivian for carcase of an old "Creve-coeur" cock. CD has found that the skull in this breed is modified to support its comb.

Summary

Responds to CD’s query on Subularia and Limosella. There are discrepancies among authorities on whether Subularia flowers out of water. Limosella certainly flowers out of water.

Summary

Asks GB for help in clearing up his problems about Leguminosae, in connection with his "wild bit of speculation on the crossing of plants" [see Natural selection, p. 71].

Summary

Letter from school with instructions where to put away his belongings at home.

Summary

Has received some poultry from various parts of the world.

CD is glad that WBT is describing the birds that he acquires.

Summary

Thanks GB for information on Leguminosae, especially about those with apetalous flowers and almost without anthers.

Summary

He is steadily and very hard at work on "Variation" [Natural selection] and finds the whole subject "deeply interesting but horribly perplexed".