Summary

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

Summary

Sexes of algae.

Summary

John Scott’s career.

Huxley’s vicious attack on anthropologists.

Critique of Joseph Prestwich’s theory of rivers.

Bitter feelings between the Hookers and the Veitch family of nurserymen.

Summary

Criticisms and comments on JDH’s "Insular floras" in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1867): 6].

Summary

Pleasure at receiving CD’s scientific letters to JDH and Hodgson.

The H. Wedgwoods’ pecuniary loss.

Condolences at CD’s father’s death.

Rajah harasses JDH’s work. Lack of supplies, rain, malarial valleys, and landslips make going difficult. Cannot get into Tibet.

"Twenty species [of plants] here [Camp Sikkim] to one there [Tierra del Fuego?] always are asking me the vexed question, ""where do we come from?""."

From observation of terraces descending to steppes and plains of India, he thinks that the Himalayas were once a grand fiord coast.

Has information CD requested on Yangsma valley. JDH’s detailed hypothesis of origin of dam there. Does not agree with CD’s interpretation.

Summary

A German scholar says JDH first applied natural selection to replacement of races of men, the ruder races of Polynesians yielding to civilised Europeans. CD cannot remember reading this.

Warns JDH to take care Welwitschia does not turn into a case of barnacles and consume years instead of months.

In what months do flowers appear in Acropera loddigesia and A. luteola? CD is alarmed by John Scott’s observations on them, which differ from his own. "I am very uneasy."

Summary

Thanks for writing about E. A. Darwin’s illness. Will never forget the comfort she was [when Anne Darwin died, 1851].

Summary

Explains more clearly what he is looking for in his work on poultry: relative variation at different ages, the effect of disuse on different parts, breeding between wild and domestic, and degree of fertility of "mongrels of very diverse races".

Summary

Thanks WJH for information about J. D. Hooker; CD was very anxious to hear something about his safety.

Summary

Discusses the structure of grass embryos; states differing theories regarding which part of the seed corresponds to the cotyledon.

Summary

Lady Dorothy Nevill is CD’s best chance for Dionaea.

Reports on Belfast meeting of BAAS. Lubbock’s lecture went off admirably. Huxley’s was the magnum opus.

Encloses letter from Mrs Barber on protective coloration of animals.

Summary

When JDH goes to Germany, will he ask seed men if their marvellous true breeding lines are the result of selection.

Summary

Sends proofs [of "On the tendency of species to form varieties … ", read 1 July 1858, Collected papers 2: 3–19]. CD could publish his abstract [later the Origin] as a separate supplemental number of [Journal of the Linnean Society].

JDH has studied in detail CD’s manuscript on variable species in large and small genera and concurs with its consequences. Discusses methodological idiosyncrasies of systematists, e.g., Bentham, Robert Brown, and C. C. Babington, which complicate CD’s tabulations.

Summary

"Close" species in large and small genera.

Alphonse de Candolle on geographical distribution [Géographie botanique raisonnée (1855)].

Species variability.

Summary

Grief at the death of Edward Forbes.

Summary

Sorry to hear of baby’s illness.

Comments on statement that belief in natural selection is passing away. Common descent of species is almost universally accepted now, and this is more important. In large part acceptance is due to Origin. Discusses reception of and interest in Origin in various countries.

Summary

Edward Sabine’s official letter announcing CD’s receipt of Royal Society Medal left him cold. JDH’s informal one moved him.

Applauds JDH for supporting John Lindley.

Summary

Glad CD has given up on Acropera ovules.

Doubts phanerogams less different in extreme forms [than Crustacea].

No systematic parallelism between plants and animals.

Offers list of Arctic plants with their colours. Asks CD whether it is useful to add colour to [descriptions of] plants.

Summary

Replies at length to JDH’s worried reaction to his comments on lowness of Australian plants. CD distinguishes between "competitive highness", i.e., which fauna would be exterminated and which survive if two faunas were placed in competition, and ordinary "highness" of classification.