Summary

Thanks for pleasant stay at Down.

Remarks on boulders found on southern islands.

Describes the alpine character of the Andes flora and relays information on other mountain floras.

Quotes instances of seeds that retained their vitality after being carried by ocean currents.

Sends notes on the comparative floras of New Zealand, Australia, and west coast of South America.

Encloses a copy of part of a letter from George Gardner in Ceylon concerning the European character of the mountain flora.

Summary

Henslow has sent him CD’s Galapagos plants along with Macrae’s. JDH impressed by the island endemism, which "overturns all our preconceived notions" on centres of radiation. Describes the extent, and the sharp demarcation at longitude 60° W, of the American and European Northern Hemisphere floras. CD’s plants among those he is using to do Antarctic flora. Drimys winteri shows a graded series of states down the length of the South American continent.

Summary

Reforms at Kew.

X Club Dinner. H. B. Wilson and J. W. Colenso as guests.

Troubled by Lubbock’s going into Parliament – loss to science.

Has written to Busk.

Sending Botanische Zeitung.

Summary

Comments on Hermann Müller’s article on the structure of Gunnera flowers.

Summary

JDH cites W. H. Harvey’s observations on Fucus and David Don’s on Juncus as examples of variations that are independent of climate. There are many such cases. Gives his working scheme for categorising variation.

Summary

First part of "Galapagos flora" ["Plants of the Galapagos Archipelago", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 20 (1851): 163–233] finished but not printed.

Details of distribution of Galapagos flora. Peculiarity of island floras.

Leaves for Edinburgh on Wednesday.

Summary

Sends dried specimens of Melastomataceae.

Summary

JDH’s "shock" that CD was awarded the Copley Medal.

Oliver, Thomson and JDH independently concur mature tendrils of Dicentra are foliar, though JDH remembers they were axial in the spring. Expects he and CD were fooled, but will have to look again next spring.

Praises CD’s Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31].

JDH completing F. Boott’s work on Carex [Illustrations of the genus Carex].

JDH now does suspect Mrs Boott is illegitimate daughter of Dr Erasmus Darwin [see 4389].

Summary

JDH details the subscription fund’s finances.

Has finished lecture for Royal Society on N. American plant distribution.

Summary

Continued debate on formation of species as a result of retreat from glaciers.

JDH suggests internal powers of species modification, which he knows CD abhors.

Summary

JDH’s opinion of Herbert Spencer.

Rejects CD’s view of inheritance of induced modifications.

Huxley grows fat.

Summary

On FitzRoy’s suicide.

The Lyell–Ramsay disagreement [on formation of lakes?].

Summary

Kew affairs.

H. J. Carter’s observations are wonderful but want verification.

Skeptical of H. H. Travers’ observations.

Summary

Returns Asa Gray letter. Gray has made a great blunder in his criticism of Oliver: he mistakes perpetuation of a variety for "propagation of variation". Confusion between "action of physical causes" and "effects of physical causes". Neither crossing nor natural selection has made so many divergent individuals, but simply variation. "If once you hold that natural selection can create a character your whole doctrine tumbles to the ground." CD’s failure to convey this, and the false doctrine that "like produces like" is at bottom of half the scientific infidelity to CD’s doctrine. There is something to the objection that CD has made a deus ex machina of natural selection since he neglects to dwell on the facts of infinite incessant variations.

Summary

Working on "Insular floras" lecture for BAAS Nottingham meeting [see 5135].

Puzzled at distribution of Madeiran and Canaries plants and insects.

Supports Forbes’s Atlantis hypothesis [see 956], which he has reread and to which he will allude.

Wollaston disappointing on Madeiran insects.

Summary

Lighthearted thoughts on "the development of an Aristocracy" after a visit to Walcot Hall, Shropshire.

On CD’s point about the effect of changed conditions on the reproductive organs, JDH does not see why this is not "itself a variation, not necessarily induced by domestication, but accompanying some variety artificially selected".

Summary

Hopes to arrive with MS of "Insular floras" on Saturday.

Summary

Impressed by Tylor’s book [see 4836].

Encloses admirable note from Huxley on Lyell–Lubbock affair.

Summary

Recounts row at the Royal Society over exclusion of mention of Origin from Sabine’s address awarding Copley Medal to CD.

Encloses two letters to JDH from James Hector in New Zealand.

Summary

Mimosa too far gone to send now.

CD’s marjoram is the common [Origanum] vulgare, not the pot herb.

On the water injury, Thiselton-Dyer and he may have used too fine a spray, but plant is insensitive.

Horribly angry at P. G. Tait’s letter in Nature [8 (1873): 381–2].

Tyndall writes that he is strong – the next number of Nature will prove it.

G. Henslow is much better.

JDH leaves for Bradford [BAAS meeting] tomorrow.

Rejoices at CD’s success with Drosera; longs to be at Nepenthes.