Summary

Has finished Climbing plants;

resuming work on Variation.

Sends abstract of John Scott’s paper [see 4332].

Has received review of Herbert Spencer but cannot believe AG wrote it unless he has muddled his brains with metaphysics.

Summary

Asks for a Smilax to study movement.

Summary

No book has made such a powerful impression on EH as the Origin. Most older German scholars opposed to it, but number of supporters growing among the young. Fortunately strength of religious dogmas now small among educated Germans. Situation in Jena especially favourable. Defended CD’s theory last year at Congress of German Scientists in Stettin.

Intends special study of jellyfish.

Plans general work on natural history.

Hard fate [death of Anna Sethe Haeckel] has made EH indifferent to criticism.

Colleagues August Schleicher and Carl Gegenbaur also convinced by CD’s theory.

Summary

CD’s pleasure at JDH’s willingness to help Scott find a position in India.

Naudin underrates contamination of his experiments by insects. Thus CD doubts Naudin’s results on rapidity and universality of reversion in hybrids.

Wallace’s paper on man [see 4494] reflects his genius, although CD does not fully agree with it.

Summary

Request for plants.

CD’s continuing ill health.

Summary

Has not worked for six months due to illness.

Has been looking at climbing plants.

Hermann Crüger’s paper shows that CD was right about Catasetum pollination. Crüger’s account of pollination of Coryanthes "beats everything".

Summary

Writes of dimorphic plants.

Summary

Congratulates CD on the Copley Medal.

Is making inquiries on the habits of American cuckoos and sends a letter from Henry Bryant on that subject.

Discusses the Civil War.

Encloses letter from W. H. Leggett containing observations on Amphicarpaea.

Summary

Discusses homologies of plant organs.

The passion-flower tendril should be considered a modified branch rather than a modified flower. Considers the distinction between the peduncle and the leaf midrib.

Summary

Describes difference between Pulmonaria flowers; wishes to know whether it is general.

Summary

Doesn't think will be able to find Buckthorn. Sends reference from Revue de Deux Mondes. Is settled at the Bank.

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

Pleased with news of BAAS meeting

and Scott’s possible position as Thomas Anderson’s curator.

Suggests Wallace is due for a Royal Medal.

Agrees with JDH’s criticism of Lyell’s address [see 4614].

Bentham’s Linnean Society address treats continuity of life in a vague non-natural sense.

Rereading his old MS [Natural selection] CD is impressed with work he had already done.

Writing Variation much harder than Climbing plants.

Encloses request to JDH to propose, or suggest on his behalf, that the Ray Society publish a translation of C. F. von Gärtner’s Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (1849).

Summary

CD thinks JDH takes a hard view of Scott’s character, but will not argue further.

Leersia.

Working on homomorphic and heteromorphic crosses in Primula.

Summary

Would like his fowl skulls back.

Breeding experiments seem to show mongrels are just as fertile as pure breeds.

Summary

Has finished correcting Primula paper [see 4332].

Has presented paper on monoecious spikes of maize [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 19 (1864): 213–20].

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

Sends his MS of orchid paper ["A few notes on the fecundation of orchids and their morphology", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 127–35] for CD to send to an editor.

CD was right about Catasetum sexes.

Ficus experiments fail.

Summary

Requests climbing plants.

Asks that Oliver be told that he now does not care "how many tendrils he makes axial".

Summary

Urges Emma to bring CD to hydropathic establishment at Forres.