Summary

Response to CD’s comments on "Creation by law" [see 5637].

The limits of variation discussed.

Summary

Chauncey Wright’s article is sound, but so obscure ARW doubts utility of printing it separately.

Gives his own detailed analysis of Mivart’s attack.

Summary

Sends papers with comments. Convinced that the Aru pig is a species peculiar to New Guinea fauna, not a domestic animal that ran wild.

Admires CD’s paper ["Three forms of Lythrum", Collected papers 2: 106–31].

Summary

Has sent CD’s letter to Nature [see 8448].

Expresses admiration for H. C. Bastian’s The beginnings of life [1872] and comments on its bearing upon Origin.

Summary

Accepts invitation.

Summary

Sorry CD allows criticisms of Darwinism to worry him.

Summary

On sounds produced by Euchirus longimanus beetle. Sends a pair by post.

Summary

Thanks CD for 4th ed. of Origin.

Discusses abnormal sexual characters produced by mimicry. ARW’s papers on the subject.

Agassiz’s "marvellous" Amazonian glacier theory.

Summary

Responds to CD’s new work [Cross and self-fertilisation]. Suggests results might have been more convincing if CD had measured weights instead of heights. The fact that infertile hybrids have not been produced means that the "one great objection" has not been got rid of: the physiological characteristic of species. Suggests an experiment to produce "sterile mongrels" which would remove objection.

Summary

Asks whether sexual selection could produce the changing plumules or "battledore" scales on the wings of certain butterflies.

Summary

Looks forward to reading Variation.

Explains how two or more female forms occur in one species through selection. The physiological problem remains of how each produces offspring like the other without intermediates. Is not CD’s case of varieties that will not blend the physiological test of a species needed for "complete proof of the origin of species"?

"Travels" postponed.

Summary

Submits a 15–point argument against CD’s views on the coloration of female birds and insects.

Summary

Informs CD of his reply to Argyll and the North British Review criticisms [in "Creation by law", Q. J. Sci. 4 (1867): 471–88]. Cites "the predicted Madagascar moth" and Angraecum sesquipedale.

Birth of Herbert Spencer Wallace.

Summary

On triumph of "Darwinianism".

Discussion of their differences on subject of protection.

Summary

His distress that his engagement has been broken off.

Sends copies of two papers ["On the parrots of the Malayan region", Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. (1864): 279–97;

"On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago", J. R. Geogr. Soc. 33 (1863): 217–34].

Summary

Thanks for Variation.

Reports work on his travel book [The Malay Archipelago (1869)].

Summary

Remarks on ARW’s review of Samuel Haughton’s paper on bees’ cells

and Origin.

Agassiz’s strength as geologist and weakness in natural history theory.

Work problems.

His butterfly collection.

Problems with book on Malay journey.

Recommends Herbert Spencer and his Social statics.

Spencer’s "masterly" nebular hypothesis.

Summary

Never imagined that the facts about sexual selection could be new to CD. Thought fact that brightly coloured females build concealed nests and almost all those in which sexes differ remarkably build exposed nests might be new to him. Some problems remain. Sends his notes for CD to use if he wants.

Summary

Now recalls a Melastoma visited by some small Cetoniadae and bees (Xylocopa) in Malay Archipelago.

Summary

Information concerning improvements in the Reader under new sponsorship.

Current reading and work [on pigeons for Ibis 1 (1865): 365–400, and catalogue of his collection of birds].

Book of travels postponed indefinitely.