Summary

Encloses a few additions [missing] for new [4th] German edition of Origin

and a new application to publish translation of [Descent].

Summary

Discusses changes in 5th edition of Origin owing to new evidence. CD now places more value on action of external conditions; thinks lapse of time [required for development of species] not so great as some geologists have thought, and single variations [saltations] of even less importance compared with individual differences.

Summary

Thanks JVC for his information (from two correspondents) on the rate of growth of merino rams’ horns.

CD has been revising Origin [5th ed.]. Has found a good deal to alter.

Summary

Williams and Norgate inform CD that they dispatched the small parcel to Leipzig on 23 February. CD fears it may not be worth the trouble to CC.

Summary

Glad to hear the news about the professorship was partly erroneous, but still wishes JVC to have the rights to translate [Descent]. Has written to Herr Koch [of Schweizerbart], but not in such a way as to commit JVC to publish with him.

Summary

Thanks AR for his offer to send his observation notes, but since CD will not pursue the subject of variation under domestication, and his German is poor, he urges him to publish them in some periodical.

Summary

Thanks AR for specimens and notes. Will keep them for future edition [of Variation]. Particularly struck by difference in hardiness of varieties of Syringa persica.

Summary

Has received a letter from Carl Vogt, expressing his readiness to translate Descent at the request of the publisher Franz Anton Ricker

Summary

Carl Vogt has written that JVC is no longer a professor at Leipzig. Since this circumstance would provide more time to JVC for translation, Vogt withdraws his offer to translate [Descent]. CD asks JVC to accept the right to translate and to negotiate for best terms with whatever publisher he chooses.

Summary

Librarian to the Board of Trade proposes a celebration of CD’s 60th birthday by the Vienna Free Press.

Summary

Asks JVC to ascertain the age at which merino rams develop horns, and whether they grow faster or more slowly than in other breeds of sheep in which both sexes have horns.

Asks how JVC’s translation [of Variation] has sold.

Summary

Sends new edition of the Origin. Has made some corrections.

Has been led into dreadful blunder on p. 75 by erroneous calculations of a mathematical friend.

Opposes change of Entstehung into Ursprung [in title] even if more correct. It would make readers think it is a new book.

Summary

Thanks CC for two memoirs [see 6575. The other was possibly "Die Cypris-ähnliche Larve der Cirripedien", Schr. Ges. Beförd Naturw. Marburg (1869)].

Haeckel is too enthusiastic and too bold in drawing conclusions.

CD sees no reason to add to what he says on isolation, in new edition of Origin.

Lists specimens he has available for CC’s intended study of metamorphoses of Lepas.

Summary

His book [Descent] will not be ready for a year because of his health and the laboriousness of work on sexual selection. Has deferred arrangements for German translation, but would feel secure with JVC. Carl Vogt has offered to translate it.

Summary

Has corresponded with Macmillan about Nature.

Will get the Kerner book.

Mere guesses must determine which form to fix on as the type.

Raises questions about the genealogical tree.

Serves Mlle Royer right.

Lyell declines Royal Society Presidency; now look to W. R. Grove. Long postscript on JDH’s views about knighthood.

Summary

CD finds GB’s address interesting; assures him that he has never said GB was wrong on any point, but that there were differences between them, which he now thinks are not great.

Comments on specific parts of the address [see 6793]: colonisation, variability of large and small genera, descent from a single parent or pair of parents, rapid multiplication and change in species, isolation.

Summary

Sends a single specimen of Drosophyllum lusitanicum with description from F. de Avellar Brotero’s Flora Lusitanica [1804].

Discusses Portuguese ferns,

inherited mutilation,

and the earth’s geological history.

Evolution of behaviour and beauty by natural selection.

Summary

An article in North British Review by mathematician against Hooker and Huxley and for William Thomson [P. G. Tait, "Geological time", North Br. Rev. 50 (1869): 406–39]. Feels a conviction that world will be found older than reviewer makes it.

Article on "Design" [by J. B. Mozley] in Quarterly Review [127 (1869): 134–76].

Has JDH studied Drosophyllum?

Summary

Lyell says CD is revising what he says about the Weald in the Origin. Asks CD to look at his subaerial denudation views in his book [Physical geology and geography of Great Britain, 2d ed. (1864)].

Summary

FM much gratified by the appearance of Für Darwin translation.

Discusses dimorphism in Rubiaceae.