Summary

Thanks GB for information on Leguminosae, especially about those with apetalous flowers and almost without anthers.

Summary

Thanks JP for beautiful book [? The rivers, mountains and sea-coast of Yorkshire, 2d ed. (1855)].

Summary

Arranges an appointment.

Summary

The Kentucky cave insects (Adelops) are evidently identical to European species of the same genus, some of which are cave insects, others found in damp, dark places.

Summary

Has come to think his brains were not made for thinking – he immediately feels better when at Moor Park.

News of his family.

Summary

CD finds JDH’s objections to a mundane cold period significant, and he endeavours to show how they do not rule out mutability.

He is writing on crossing.

Summary

Is interested by what CD tells him about his researches and speculations on species, variation, and distribution. Hopes he will not give up the idea of publishing his views. Advises CD on need for caution and candour. Raises some difficulties with "specific centre" theory of distribution.

Summary

Requests skins of domestic breeds or races of poultry, pigeons, rabbits, cats, and dogs from any unfrequented region. [Attached is a list of people to whom CD has written for pigeon and poultry skins.]

Summary

JDH’s arguments against transmutation: 1. Plants do not show the confusion he would expect; 2. Under clearly similar physical conditions we do not find same species.

JDH’s argument against migration: commonality of alpine species. Believes migration opposes facts of botanical distribution in Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand; prefers continental extension theory.

Summary

Reports on the naturalised animal life of Ascension.

Summary

Sends some replies to CD’s queries and data on pigeon flights between Bordeaux and Verviers.

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

Sexes of algae.

Summary

Objections to Origin which Owen and Wilberforce could have used. Why have incipient mammalian forms not arisen from lower vertebrates on islands separated since Miocene period? Knows CD would not derive Eocene Mammalia from higher reptiles, but would bats not be modified into other mammalian forms on an ancient island? This is not the case in New Zealand. Why have island seals not become terrestrial? Assumes rate of change is greatest in mammals. Difficulties are small compared with ability to explain absence of Mammalia in pre-Pliocene islands. Asks about descent of Amblyrhynchus. Believes objections apply equally well to independent creation of animal types, but not if the First Cause is allowed completely free agency.

Summary

Emma’s illness prevents his attending Philoperisteron [pigeon fanciers’ club].

Expects larger collection of skins from West Africa.

Summary

Would like to compare the length of the wings of non-migratory and migratory swallows.

Wonders if EWVH could show him skins of Columba livia.

Summary

Rule that species vary most in larger genera seems universal.

Response to Gardeners’ Chronicle note on "Bees and kidney beans" [Collected papers 1: 275–7].

Summary

There is a possibility of establishment of a Government Museum at Calcutta, with which the Asiatic Society Museum would be merged. EB would like the curatorship but fears other possible applicants. Asks CD to represent him to W. H. Sykes.

Discusses the ancients’ awareness of various cats as deduced from the etymology of their names.

Summary

Has received a batch of S. African specimens which contain many of the Atlantic genera he found in Madeira and the Canaries.

Summary

Thanks for pigeon.

Are there Shetland birds chequered with black marks, as Carl Julian Graba states are in Faeroes [Reise nach Färö (1830)] and Col. King in the Hebrides?