Summary

AdeC’s two letters on bloom will be very useful; his remarks on evaporation and absorption seem very just. CD has made few experiments as yet. The investigation has been tedious and difficult.

Summary

Is pleased that AdeC is interested in the Primula case ["Dimorphic condition of Primula", Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Is pursuing analogous experiments on other plants and on seedlings raised from the unions.

CD’s "large work" progresses slowly owing to ill health and his work on Orchids.

CD is not surprised that AdeC is unwilling to admit natural selection – "the subject hardly admits of direct proof or evidence. It will be believed in only by those who think that it connects & partly explains several large classes of facts".

Hopes AdeC will publish on Quercus

and rejoices that he intends to return to the study of geographical distribution. No one can claim to have read AdeC’s truly great work on that subject [Géographie botanique (1855)] with more care than CD.

Summary

Congratulations on CD’s long-overdue election to the French Academy of Sciences.

Summary

CD cannot say he cares greatly about his election to the Institut but he does care for the sympathy of his friends.

Will look to Smilax when he returns to Down.

Regrets the insecurity of the identification of fossil leaves.

He has heard that De Bary has cultivated Utricularia with and without aquatic animals and that the plants that have been fed flourished "in a stupendous manner".

Summary

Praises Orchids.

He has finished his work on Quercus.

H. Lecoq has worked on hybridism,

and P. Duchartre on orchid polymorphism.

Summary

Thanks AdeC for his memoir ["Étude sur l’espèce", Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) 4th ser. 18 (1862): 59–110].

CD astonished at the amount of variability in the oaks.

CD differs from most contemporaries in thinking that the vast continental extensions of Forbes, Heer, and others are not only advanced without sufficient evidence but are opposed to much weighty evidence.

AdeC’s comment on CD’s work [Origin] is generous.

CD is satisfied at the length AdeC goes with him and is not surprised at his prudent reservations. He remembers how many years it took him to change his old beliefs. The great point is to give up immutability. So long as species are thought immutable there can be no progress in "epiontology" [see ML 1: 234 n.]. CD is sure to be proved wrong in many points but the subject will have "a grand future".

Summary

Has read the Origin several times. His position is like Asa Gray’s: he wishes to believe in descent, but proofs of natural selection are lacking.

Looks forward to CD’s promised large book.

Thanks for Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Did CD sow the seeds of his crosses? One would like to know whether the two forms reappear at random.

Summary

Finds CD was correct in Variation: hybrid bees tend to sting more often than pure-bred bees.

Preparing a second edition of the chapter on the origin of cultivated plants in his Géographie botanique. The work done since 1855 confirms his opinions.

Summary

Thanks for AdeC’s Histoire des sciences [1873].

Sends a copy of Expression.

His health keeps him weak; he dreads grappling with the fearful subject of variation [in nature]

so he is working up some observations in botanical physiology to publish with his old papers on climbing plants.

Summary

CD thinks that he believes in as much migration as AdeC, only he does not believe nearly so much in continental extensions. CD also believes more in modification in form though he suspects the difference is not so great.

Thanks AdeC for information on melons, oranges,

and Swiss lake-habitation discoveries.

CD is almost tired of his book on variation under domestication, for his knowledge is insufficient to treat the plant part well, but he has done so much that he will finish it.

Summary

Thanks for Movement in plants. Praises the terms CD introduces, but criticises CD’s use of the teleological word "purpose".

Outlines his efforts to study the inheritance of characters in his family. F. Galton overemphasises the inheritance of good qualities.

Summary

Thanks AdeC for his long letter full of interesting facts, which will be of great use if a new edition [of Variation] is demanded.

As for when CD will publish on variation in a state of nature: he has had the MS almost ready for several years but Variation fatigued him so much

that "I determined to amuse myself by publishing a short essay on the Descent of Man".

AdeC will have plenty of time to publish his views. Asks permission to quote AdeC on a case of inheritance of scalp-muscles [see Descent 1: 20].

Hooker has expressed a view, similar to AdeC’s, "that morals & politics would be very interesting if discussed like any branch of Natural History".

Agrees with AdeC on acclimatisation

and on graft-hybrids.

CD is repeating Hildebrand’s method in producing graft-hybrid potatoes.

As for Pangenesis, very few people approve of it though it has some enthusiastic friends and CD has much faith in its vitality.

Summary

Thanks for Variation.