Summary

Comments on cool-period MS. Still believes geographical changes principal cause of former changes of climate.

Summary

Condemns theory of Edward Forbes and others that many islands were formerly connected to South America by now submerged continents.

Summary

Comments on CL’s plan to visit Tenerife.

Discusses inclination of strata on islands and around mountains.

Personal affairs of several scientists.

Visit by Henslow.

Notes publication by Hooker [Himalayan journals (1854)].

Summary

Comments on letter from Georg Hartung to CL dealing with erratic boulders.

Discusses migration of plants and animals.

A letter from Thomas Thomson on heat endured by temperate plants.

Summary

CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".

CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".

Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?

Summary

Comments on Ann Susan Horner’s escape in a dangerous incident at sea.

Compares addresses by William Buckland and CL, delivered at recent meeting of the Geological Society.

Discusses the views on Glen Roy in Chambers’ Ancient sea-margins [1848].

Speculates that Chambers wrote Vestiges [of creation (1844)].

Summary

Comments on two pamphlets by John Bachman [probably Continuation of the review of "Nott and Gliddon’s types of mankind" (1855) and An examination of the characteristics of genera and species as applicable to the doctrine of the unity of the human race (1855)].

CD’s pigeon breeding and plant hybridization experiments.

Invites CL to visit.

Summary

Communicate papers by CD and A. R. Wallace on "The Laws which affect the Production of Varieties, Races, and Species". Explain that CD and Wallace have, independently and unknown to each other, arrived at the same theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of specific forms, and that neither has yet published, although CD first sketched his theory in 1839. Give their reasons for arranging the joint presentation.