Summary

CD partly right. JDH was calling "stratification" what CD calls "foliation". Answers CD’s question on cleavage foliation in Himalayas. Glacial action.

Charmed by CD’s Admiralty instructions on geology [in Manual of scientific enquiry (1849), Collected papers 1: 227–50], but complains he does not give prices of books and instruments he recommends.

Summary

Explains why he wants Drosophyllum.

Hopes JDH will be elected President of Royal Society.

Agrees with JDH on Greg’s Enigmas.

Would like Greg to visit Down if JDH comes as CD’s "protector".

Summary

Physical description of Sikkim mountains.

Travelling through Kinchin snows.

Transported boulders.

Summary

Has received JDH’s book [Himalayan journals (1854)]. Is very gratified by the dedication to him.

Summary

CD’s view requires only that ancient organisms resemble embryological stages of existing ones. Thus "highness" in plants is difficult to evaluate because they have no larval stages. Would compare highest members of two groups, rather than archetype, to determine which group was higher. Against Forbes’s polarity and parallelism.

Summary

JDH to be appointed Assistant Director at Kew.

On where to publish seed-salting paper. Floating problem perhaps more important than germination.

Summary

Has read a paper, presumably by JDH, using the Madeiran flora to argue against Forbes’s doctrine.

JDH asked how far CD will go in attributing common descent; he intends to show "the facts & arguments for & against the common descent of species of same genus; & then show how far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more & more widely different".

Summary

JDH busy reforming Kew’s operations.

Falconer may "fall foul" of Huxley’s anger over his attacks on Lyell.

Has heard of a coffee plantation post for Scott.

Summary

Confident of species theory as result of applying it to cirripede sexual systems.

CD’s opinion of E. Blyth. JDH should meet Blyth, inquire about domesticated varieties, study insular flora, solve coal-plant problem.

Summary

Podostemaceae flowering under water.

Summary

With scientific party to Amiens to look at gravel-pits, the geology of which JDH describes at length.

Summary

Asks TCE’s advice on preparation of birds’ skeletons.

His pigeon collection is growing; now has pairs of ten varieties.

Summary

JDH admits he wrote Gardeners’ Chronicle and Natural History Review articles on orchids [Gard. Chron. (1862): 789–90, 863, 910; Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 2 (1862): 371–6].

JDH’s objections to CD’s idea of how Greenland was repopulated. Temperate Greenland has as Arctic a flora as Arctic Greenland – a fact of astounding force. Why should certain Scandinavian species be absent? Migration by sea-currents can no more account for the present distribution in Greenland than can special creation.

Summary

Encloses a memorial concerning the Botanical Gardens at Kew signed by ‘some of our most eminent scientific men’ (including CD).

Summary

Encloses an extract from a letter received from [J. D.] Hooker which suggests a job opportunity in India. Advises careful reflection about the risks and the need for a character recommendation. Would like to support the costs of the voyage and initial living expenses.

Summary

Questions on variation in nature: taxa varying in one region but not another. Variation between vs within species. Rarity of variation in important organs within a species. G. R. Waterhouse’s views on variation in highly developed organs, which CD relates to variation in rudimentary organs.

Asks for cases of obligate self-fertilising plants.

[CD annotation proposes using the Steudel Nomenclator botanicus (1821–4) to determine if variable species occur in genera with many species.]

Summary

Is honoured by his election to the Philosophical Club [of the Royal Society].

Summary

A page of [unspecified] text is missing from a parcel of material received from GRW.

CD "hopes and expects to live to see Carboniferous, & perhaps even Silurian, mammifers!"

Has several questions to ask whenever they meet.

Summary

T. H. Farrer’s paper is capital.

Summary

JDH recounts circumstances of his receiving Star of India (K.C.S.I.).