Summary

JDH reports his battle with Lord Henry Lennox over whether to locate new Herbarium on the Queen’s or public part of Garden.

Summary

Is going to Norwich again on account of his mother’s health.

Summary

Sends leaves and names by post.

Is writing everywhere for Drosophyllum.

Is deeply interested in Desmodium.

Had no intention of publishing on Nepenthes, the experiments were solely for CD’s "eating". Will continue with egg and raw meat experiments. Asks for advice on how to prove fluid is secreted by the glands.

Searles Wood’s letter is confused and would deny atavism if his principles were accepted.

Summary

Trail’s case is interesting, hopes it is true.

Has little faith in I. Anderson-Henry’s exactness.

Pleased with Paris exposition.

Summary

Outlines address to York BAAS meeting on history of geographical distribution. Organising theme: advancement in this science based on ideas enunciated by scientific voyagers. Asks CD’s advice.

Summary

On novels he has been reading: Eliot, Richardson, etc.

On Wallace, the Reader, and anthropology.

Summary

British attitude towards America: not hate as Asa Gray thinks, but contempt.

Summary

JDH suggests Scott go to India; he will write letters of introduction.

Conversation with Herbert Spencer.

George Bentham would like to know how CD’s view of hybridism diverges from Charles Naudin’s.

Summary

George Bentham’s list of aberrant plant genera. JDH appended the number of species in each genus according to E. G. Steudel’s catalogue [Nomenclator botanicus (1840–1)] and according to JDH and Bentham.

JDH speculates on effect of splitting Australia longitudinally on distribution; it becomes an argument for new creations.

Summary

Identifies three plants sent by CD.

Summary

Reports on Norwich address [Rep. BAAS 38 (1868): lviii–lxxv]. Left out some things, i.e., Asa Gray’s being superseded.

Tyndall says CD and JDH are types of "unconscious merit".

Summary

Sends proofs [of "On the tendency of species to form varieties … ", read 1 July 1858, Collected papers 2: 3–19]. CD could publish his abstract [later the Origin] as a separate supplemental number of [Journal of the Linnean Society].

JDH has studied in detail CD’s manuscript on variable species in large and small genera and concurs with its consequences. Discusses methodological idiosyncrasies of systematists, e.g., Bentham, Robert Brown, and C. C. Babington, which complicate CD’s tabulations.

Summary

More on Ayrton affair. Conduct of Gladstone and the Ministry despicable. They have owned him to be in right but will not raise a finger until exposure in Parliament is imminent.

Summary

Recounts the trip back from St Petersburg – visits to botanic gardens and museums throughout Western Europe.

Pleased that CD admired Bentham’s address [see 6793]. JDH had read it in MS and modified some very heterodox passages about insularity. CD has hit the flaw in it.

F. A. W. Miquel is a convert.

Summary

Will not be inclined to challenge Pangenesis.

Admits CD’s victory over JDH’s continental hypothesis (but will not give up Greenland).

Relation of variation to circumstances is shown by discovery of endemic St Helena umbellifer having same palm-like habit as an endemic Madeiran species.

Has completed Boott’s Carices [Illustrations of the genus Carex, pt 4 (1867)],

is printing W. H. Harvey’s work [Genera of South African plants, 2d ed. (1868)],

and is revising English edition of Alphonse de Candolle’s Laws of botanical nomenclature [trans. H. A. Weddell (1868)].

Arrangements at Kew. Gardener [John Smith] is very ill; Oliver reigns supreme in the Herbarium.

Summary

Sends Nepenthes laevis.

Wallace for the Royal Medal is a good thought.

W. H. Harvey is at Kew and JDH has asked him about desert climbers.

Summary

Has declined Presidency of BAAS.

Relation of insular and continental genera will always be difficult problem.

On Providence and the "continuity theory".

Summary

Raises some points for revision of CD’s Journal of researches.

Southern island floras. "The more I ponder upon Insular Floras the less inclined I am to admit the mutation of species to any very great amount."

Summary

Again refuses to help Scott as "unfitted" to make his way in the world. Scott is unwilling to take his part in the "struggle for life", unlike Tyndall, Faraday, Huxley, and Lindley, who established themselves. Scott’s work is not science, but "scientific horticulture".

Summary

JDH approves MS section on geographical distribution.

Never felt so shaky about species before.

His objections to some mechanisms of distribution that CD proposes.