Summary

Asks CD whether he knows of a medicine to check vomiting – for a friend dying from starvation as a result.

Duke of Somerset is looking for two naturalists for survey ship to Korea and Strait of Magellan.

Summary

CD’s seed paper in Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 255–8];

CD attacks Forbes’s "Atlantis".

Considers solutions to floating problem. Decides to test Azores seeds.

Photographs and drawings of CD.

Plant movement experiments with Hedysarum gyrans.

Summary

Answers CD’s questions.

Reception of Descent. Evolution accepted everywhere; descent of man accepted calmly.

Morocco plans.

Fears for Huxley, who is overworked.

Summary

Henri Lecoq’s miserable book on plant geography [Étude sur la géographie botanique de l’Europe (1854–8)].

H. W. Bates’s pleasure at meeting JDH.

Summary

Asks WDF to observe at what age pigeons have tail-feathers sufficiently developed to be counted.

CD is hard at work on his notes for a book with all the facts "for & versus" the immutability of species.

Asks for a young chicken and a nestling common pigeon.

Summary

Requests authoritative information on erratic boulders and marks of glaciers in New Zealand, and especially in southern islands.

Summary

CD experiments: sowing seeds in fields; "breaking" seeds’ constitution with coloured light; plant hybridisation. Compiling works on hybridism.

Respect for W. B. Carpenter.

Note on "nectar secreting" to Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 258–9].

Summary

Sends list of aberrant forms of Curculionidae.

Discusses in detail the artificiality of Carl Johan Schönherr’s classification. Sound generalisations about geographical distribution depend on sound classifications. Warns against putting too much faith in current catalogues.

Summary

Arrangements for obtaining Carl Nägeli a set of British Hieracium specimens.

Summary

Cites cases of leguminous plants whose cleistogamic flowers produce more seed than perfect flowers. [See Forms of flowers, p. 326.]

Summary

Reports on personalities at the Bath meeting of BAAS [Sept 1864].

Summary

Has CD ever come across Dischidia rafflesiana?

Summary

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

Summary

CD finds Alphonse de Candolle very useful, though JDH has low opinion.

CD argues for accidental introductions explaining some odd distributions, e.g., New Zealand vs Australian plants.

CD’s method.

Diverging affinities in isolated genera.

Summary

Lyell is "half-hearted but whole-headed" for CD’s theory. George Bentham wholly converted.

Bates’s book delightful but has a Darwinistic bias.

Cameroon plants.

JDH defends Bates against J. E. Gray’s slanders.

Summary

Thanks for AG’s remarks on disjoined species. CD’s notions are based on belief that disjoined species have suffered much extinction, which is the common cause of small genera and disjoined ranges.

Discusses out-crossing in plants.

Has failed to meet with a detailed account of regular and normal impregnation in the bud. Podostemon, Subularia, and underwater Leguminosae are the strongest cases against him.

Summary

Asks that in the event of his death, Emma should have the sketch of his species theory edited and published. Suggests possible editors, among them Lyell, Edward Forbes, and J. D. Hooker. [CD annotation on cover: "Hooker by far best man to edit my species volume Aug 1854".]

Summary

Asks GB to vote for "a distant connexion of mine" at Athenaeum, and to mention this to Hooker.

Summary

CD is unsure about JDH’s recommendation that he publish a separate "Preliminary Essay". It is unphilosophical to publish without full details.

CD will work for Huxley’s admission to Athenaeum.

Summary

Discusses how best to simulate the light at a particular point on the earth’s surface using coloured glass; considers sunlight as composed of three "principles", varying in proportion according to latitude, which affect germination, lignification, and floriation.