Summary

Thinks well of Claparède’s criticism; worth publishing as an answer to Wallace. Bates thinks Wallace’s heterodox views have done mischief to the cause of evolution. Wallace thinks Claparède’s article very weak, CD concludes, because Claparède has arrived at an unpleasant judgment very much like Lyell’s about Bentham’s address.

CD would wager Lyell lately has said something about European Proteaceae.

Does not remember anyone before Wallace on Sumatra and Java.

CD does not think he has a chance against Brandt in French Academy election.

Summary

Orders seeds, ripened in Algiers; imported seed would be of no use. [Forwarded to Algiers by JDH, see 7272.]

Summary

Comments on JDH’s report of Liverpool meeting.

Huxley’s address.

Sir Roderick [Murchison]’s "apotheosis".

Tyndall’s lecture is "grand" except for egotistical beginning. Some Frenchmen have pitched into CD for using the "as if" reasoning, which Tyndall shows is justified.

Has just read George Rolleston’s address in Nature.

Anton Dohrn says German public have high opinion of Lyell.

Summary

Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].

Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.

CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".

Saw Alfred Newton.

CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,

and on cross- and self-fertilisation.

Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?

Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.

Summary

Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.

CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.

Summary

Would like to see JDH become Sir J. H. Does not think JDH owes his position in science to his father.

Sends questions on Round Island – if JDH should write [to Henry Barkly?].

Has he read Federico Delpino on Marantaceae [Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 1 (1869): 293–206]?

Summary

Has not heard of Curtis on Dionaea.

Duke of Argyll is clever, but it is a sin to speak of a real old Duke as a "little beggar".

"My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design."

On spontaneous generation and Bastian.

Summary

Thanks JDH for offer of lilies.

The paper on orchids is by Hermann Müller [Verh. Naturhist. Ver. Preuss. Rheinlande & Westphalens 25 (1868): 1–62], on Platanthera and Epipactis.

Cites another work by P. Rohrbach [Über den Blüthenbau (1866)].

MS [of Descent] ready for printer.

Has read Bentham’s last Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1870): lxxiv–xciv] with great interest.

Summary

Does not think so poorly of Nature as JDH does, by any means; fears Popular Science Review is rather ephemeral but more durable than Nature.

The case of the charlock.

Summary

Asks whether JDH can send seeds of Hibiscus africanus and of Nolana prostrata raised at Kew.

Summary

The date-palm seed case is important for Pangenesis.

Reports experiments on pollination of Ipomoea.

"Insular floras": A. Murray’s paper in Gardeners’ Chronicle is poor.

John Scott’s work on acclimatisation of plants.

The anomaly of the Azores flora on the migration theory.

Summary

No paradox that unimportant characters are important systematically. This view removes heavy burden from CD’s shoulders. Relief that JDH does not object.

Summary

Sorry to hear of JDH’s troubles;

pleased he thinks so highly of Huxley’s article [see 7977].

Huxley makes CD feel infantile in intellect (as JDH once said of himself). CD is not so good a Christian as JDH thinks, for he did enjoy his revenge on Mivart.

Summary

Royal Society Council would feel bound to vote for Candolle, but privately would twenty times rather see Asa Gray elected.

Asks for title of Wollaston’s Cape Verde book [Coleoptera Hesperidum (1867)].

Supposes JDH has received his letter in answer to Gray.

Has been writing two long papers for Linnean Society [reprinted in Forms of flowers].

Summary

CD thought Watson’s article beastly in its criticisms of JDH. Watson’s criticism of CD was not new or important, but fair, so CD could honestly thank him, adding his regret at what was said about JDH.

Is sitting for Woolner bust.

Has read James Croll on alternation of glacial and warmer periods in north and south, which would remove JDH’s objections to cool period extending to equator.

Summary

Hopes JDH will beat Sir Douglas Galton.

Continues to work on insectivorous plants.

Summary

Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.

A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.

Summary

Glad to know about C.B.

Thinks better of Nature than JDH does.

Likes Academy.

Is reading Anton Kerner on Tubocytisus [in Die Abhängigkeit der Pflanzen von Klima und Boden (1869)].

The genealogical tree reveals the very steps of the formation of the species.

Mlle Royer has brought out a third edition of her translation of the Origin without informing CD, so corrections to fourth and fifth English editions are lost. Has arranged for a new translator of the fifth English edition.

Summary

Transmits letter [from Fritz Müller].

Has been asked to permit a French translation of Orchids and Journal of researches.

At work on sexual selection.

Summary

Thanks for Haast’s observations. Particularly glad to get geological evidence of glacial action (in Southern Hemisphere).

Thinks Ramsay’s theory to large extent true, but thinks that in a much disturbed country some lakes would have been formed in depressions.