Summary

Particularly interested in TR’s information about peaches. Accepts offer of double-flowering peach-trees.

Will build a small hothouse for experiments.

Summary

JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.

Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.

Summary

CD’s paper [on Linum] is announced for reading at the Linnean Society on 5 February.

Summary

Experiments to cut Laelia stigma from rostellum and then to fertilise rostellum are baffled by "a latent instinctive power". Somehow the pollen-tubes find their way to the style.

Suggests CD study variation in ferns.

Summary

Can TR distinguish generally, always, or never, a nectarine-tree from a peach-tree before it flowers or before it fruits? He wants to quote TR’s answer.

Summary

His work on Mexico has some geology, which might interest CD.

He is currently at work on the "filiation des genres des espèces et des moeurs des guepes [hornets]".

Summary

Thanks for "Two forms of Primula" [Collected papers 2: 45–63].

Praise for Orchids.

Summary

Has sent copy of his paper to Asa Gray.

Melastomad flowers are strikingly neglected by pollinators.

Murray has ordered many illustrations for HWB’s Naturalist on the river Amazons.

Summary

Jaw with teeth found associated with Archaeopteryx fossil. Waterhouse pronounces it a fish’s jaw.

Summary

Comments on his own review of Bates’s butterfly paper [Collected papers 2: 87–92].

Thanks AG for information on Platanthera.

Has been wasting more time with Melastomataceae; can find no nectar in Monochaetum; is there any in Rhexia?

Hopes Lincoln’s "fiat against Slavery" will have some effect.

Summary

If jaw belongs to Archaeopteryx, it will show great peculiarity. A German author has advanced the case as argument for Origin.

Summary

Discusses hybrid strawberry–raspberry

and his research on Primula and Linum.

Suggests breeding experiments.

Doubtful about Donald Beaton’s statement about Pelargonium.

Mentions experiments on peloric flowers.

Summary

Sends some trees to CD.

Would be pleased to receive the copy of Origin offered by CD as gift.

Will give CD any tree or shrub he may want.

Refers to curious strawberry hybrids noticed in Journal of Horticulture [I. Anderson-Henry, "Crossing strawberries", J. Hortic. n.s. 4 (1863): 45–6].

Summary

Urges JS to publish on orchid pollen-tubes.

Suggests comparing stigmatic tissue of sterile hybrids and fertile parent; he would expect hybrid plant’s cell contents not to be coagulated after 24 hours in spirits of wine.

Suggests JS coat orchid stigmas with plaster of Paris for his work on rostellar germination.

Asks for list of "bud-variation" cases; CD has devoted a chapter to the subject.

Inquiries about I. Anderson-Henry’s observational competence.

Summary

Thanks JvH for his address [to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury], his Geological Report [Topographical and geological exploration of the western districts of the Nelson province, New Zealand (1861)],

and for the "honourable" notice of Origin.

CD especially interested in JvH’s facts on the old glacial period.

Asks about fossil remains [of supposed living mammalia] which CD thinks may be like "the Solenhofen bird-creature" [Archaeopteryx].

Urges the recording of rate and manner of spreading of European weeds and plants and observation on which native plants "most fail".

Summary

Asks that a copy of Origin be sent to Thomas Rivers.

Curious about sale of Orchids. It is too stiff for the public. "If praise from Botanists would sell, it would go off well."

Summary

The number of "aquatic" flowers is reduced if one considers only those that expand under water.

Lecturing at Norwich.

Summary

His son wants CD’s opinion about a cub supposed by Frank Buckland to be progeny of a lioness and mastiff.

Lyell working at last proofs [of Antiquity of man]; he is scornful of Owen.

Summary

CD’s comments on JL’s paper [first part of "On the development of Chloëon dimidiatum", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 24 (1863): 61–78].

Summary

JDH delivers CD’s letter to C. V. Naudin.

Neither Naudin nor Decaisne appreciates Origin.

Discusses Naudin on physiological causes of species formation;

Decaisne on plant heredity.

JDH on Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation.