Summary

Will see to Masdevallia and Bonatea.

Domestic matters.

Lyell’s health.

CD’s eczema.

Hopes CD will solve the mystery of Melastoma.

Summary

Louis Pasteur’s memoir "is a very able and convincing one" ["Mémoire sur les corpuscles organisés qui existent dans l’atmosphère", Ann. Sci. Nat. (Zool.) 3d ser. 16 (1861): 5–98].

Summary

Enthusiastic about Lectures IV and V [Lectures to working men (1863)].

Sends specific comments on fantail pigeon,

sterility of hybrids,

the geological section diagram.

Summary

JS’s facts on Primula are new to CD.

In Linum CD has also found dimorphic and non-dimorphic species.

Plans to publish next autumn on successive homomorphic generations in Primula.

"Fluctuating forms" due to culture.

Urges JS to publish.

Lobelia functionally monoecious.

Where did JS publish on Clivia hybrids? Did he count parent and cross seeds, as Gärtner shows is necessary?

CD has done large experiments on artificially fertilised cowslips. They never resemble oxlips.

Would welcome detailed criticism of natural selection by a careful observer like JS. Most criticism worthless. Expects a great deal from Lyell’s reaction.

Suggests JS do orchid experiment to see if rostellum can be penetrated by pollen.

Summary

Refers to his Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Asks GHKT to investigate a similar case in Cinchona.

Summary

In reply to CD’s letter, "Peas" in Gardeners’ Chronicle [8 Nov 1862; Collected papers 2: 70] sends information on the duration of some of A. Knight’s crossed varieties.

Summary

Discusses Stellaria and other plants said to be dimorphic.

Asks for plants he wants for experiments.

Preparing a little book on Orchids.

Summary

Yellow anthers of Heterocentron produce on the same plant thrice as many seeds as the crimson anthers. Crimson anther seeds produce dwarf plants, others rise high up. Monochaetum ensiferum facts are still more strange. Wants to investigate the case, and asks for a plant of the Melastomataceae just before flowering.

Has JDH a Rhododendron boothii from Bhutan with pistil bent the wrong way?

Summary

Sends CD West Ireland soundings.

More detail on his review "a la Lindley" [see 3797].

Bates’s paper ["Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 495–566] is capital.

Andrew Murray’s article plays into CD’s hands through sheer ignorance.

JDH is on Royal Society Council.

Has no recollection of applying natural selection to Polynesians. None but a German would dig out such a passage if it exists [see 3812].

Has caused Tyndall to modify his pseudo-geology.

Has not seen Duke of Argyll’s review [Edinburgh Rev. 116 (1862): 378–97]. [The Duke] did not understand Orchids the least little bit, nor the Origin, when JDH saw him.

Summary

CD too ill to write.

He thanks Appleton for most beautiful work of natural history he has ever seen.

Summary

Explains how melting of ice in Glen Spean could have successively freed two lower cols, thus establishing the water-levels that determined the two lower shelves in Glen Roy.

Plans to read a paper to the Linnean Society ["Sexual forms of Catasetum", Collected papers 2: 63–70].

Summary

Cites descriptions of melastomads in C. V. Naudin, Annales des Sciences Naturelles 3d ser., vols. 12–18.

Summary

Thanks for Dawson’s letter. Doubts his evidence that climate of land was not glacial when upheaved after submergence.

Encloses memorandum of questions for C. V. Naudin.

Expression of the emotions.

Is building a hothouse for plant experimenting.

JDH’s ideas on America are more atrocious than his. What a new idea that struggle for existence is necessary to try to purge a government! Probably true. Slavery draws him one way one day, another the next. Yankees are "detestable toward us". Tocqueville.

Summary

Sends letter via his brother visiting England. Awaits continuation of CD’s "wonderful book", which excites much interest.

Comments on Civil War which he expects will end slavery.

Summary

Finds JL’s facts on the diving insect that remains four hours under water new and interesting [see "On two aquatic Hymenoptera", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 24 (1864): 135–42].

Summary

On success of THH’s Edinburgh lectures.

Agrees that THH is right that the hybrid question is a "hiatus" [in the argument for natural selection] but he overrates it. Crossed varieties frequently produce sterile offspring. On this question asks THH to read his Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. CD suspects sterility will come to be viewed as a selected character.

Summary

Criticises style of JS’s fern paper [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 16 (1862): 209–27].

JS’s remark on "the two sexes counteracting variability in the product of the one" is new to CD.

Does the female [fern?] plant always produce female by parthenogenesis?

They seem to work on same subjects; CD has much material on Drosera.

Does not understand JS’s objections to natural selection.

Offers to suggest experiments.

Summary

Returns Asa Gray’s letter. Disappointed with Gray. Comments on America. British–American relations.