Summary

Thanks WJH for information on J. D. Hooker’s progress.

J. D. Hooker promised a copy of his Galapagos paper. Can WJH forward one to the Athenaeum?

Summary

Does not recommend that JDH publish extracts of his letters from India in the Athenæum.

CD criticises JDH’s observations on glacial deposits in Himalayas as insufficiently clear and detailed.

CD will live to finish barnacles and make a fool of himself over species.

Summary

Continues prior letter of this date. Has received CD’s [1202]. Thanks CD for saving his correspondence.

Sent "a yarn about species" in October mail.

Some "puerile" JDH letters printed in Athenæum.

Requests CD extract anything valuable from his letters to CD and Lyell for Athenæum.

CD’s complemental males in barnacles wonderful.

Warns CD to drop his battle about perpetuity of names in species descriptions.

Summary

CD partly right. JDH was calling "stratification" what CD calls "foliation". Answers CD’s question on cleavage foliation in Himalayas. Glacial action.

Charmed by CD’s Admiralty instructions on geology [in Manual of scientific enquiry (1849), Collected papers 1: 227–50], but complains he does not give prices of books and instruments he recommends.

Summary

Pleasure at receiving CD’s scientific letters to JDH and Hodgson.

The H. Wedgwoods’ pecuniary loss.

Condolences at CD’s father’s death.

Rajah harasses JDH’s work. Lack of supplies, rain, malarial valleys, and landslips make going difficult. Cannot get into Tibet.

"Twenty species [of plants] here [Camp Sikkim] to one there [Tierra del Fuego?] always are asking me the vexed question, ""where do we come from?""."

From observation of terraces descending to steppes and plains of India, he thinks that the Himalayas were once a grand fiord coast.

Has information CD requested on Yangsma valley. JDH’s detailed hypothesis of origin of dam there. Does not agree with CD’s interpretation.

Summary

CD’s health and his father’s death have delayed his answer. Describes J. M. Gully’s water-cure.

JDH’s Galapagos papers [Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 20 (1851): 163–233] have excellent discussion of geographical distribution, but why no general treatment of affinities?

CD’s views on clay-slate laminae.

Turmoil in Royal Society between naturalists and physicists.

Summary

CD thinks great dam across Yangma valley is a lateral glacial moraine.

Reports on Birmingham BAAS meeting.

Details of water-cure.

Barnacles becoming tedious; careful description shows slight differences constitute varieties, not species.

Lamination of gneiss.

Summary

Physical description of Sikkim mountains.

Travelling through Kinchin snows.

Transported boulders.

Summary

Thanks JSH for information and suggestions on benefit clubs,

and for a shipment of fossil cirripedes.

Summary

Clarifies the notion and use of type-species and applies it to CD’s problem with Conchoderma.

Summary

J. B. Innes is greatly obliged for JSH’s letter. JSH’s observation of chalk flints strikes CD as "very curious".

Summary

Thanks him for specimens of Alcippe.

Comments on sketches by AH and on cirripede paper by Lovén.

Discusses Lithotrya and its burrowing habits.

Summary

Encloses diagram illustrating difference between Chthamalus and Balanus. Specimens sent. Finds no Chthamalus in WT’s collection.

Has read with much interest WT’s book [The natural history of Ireland, vol. 1 (1849)].

Recommends E. S. Dixon’s book [Ornamental and domestic poultry; their history and management (1848)].

Summary

Describes the Birmingham meeting [1849] of BAAS.

His health is poor. Continues with water-cure with considerable benefit.