Summary

On ACR’s paper on glacial origin of lakes. CD thinks it is correct. Suggests further investigation to corroborate it. His only doubt has to do with areas of great activity.

On ACR’s view of cause of glacial period: CD did battle with Hooker on same point.

T. F. Jamieson has smashed CD’s Glen Roy marine theory in splendid style.

Summary

Asks if WDF has ever crossed wild and common turkeys. Would like to quote his authority [see Variation 1: 292].

Also curious whether WDF has known the so-called japanned peacock to appear from common peacock [Variation 1: 290].

Summary

Admires JDH’s paper on Arctic plants ["Distribution of Arctic plants", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 251–348]. Such papers compel people to reflect on modification of species;

JDH will be driven to a cooled globe.

Serious erratum in paper.

New and original evidence in case of Greenland. Its flora requires accidental means of transport by ice and currents.

Summary

CD interested in hybrid sterility and encloses his preliminary MS. Outlines experiments to test for existence of sterility in breeds of poultry and pigeons.

Experiments on dimorphism have led him to change in part his opinion as given in Origin, and he is now asking pigeon and poultry fanciers for any examples of special selective sterility [i.e., a particular pair are sterile when crossed, but each individual is fertile with others] and hopes to investigate its inheritance.

Summary

Thanks CD for his Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63].

Asks if CD has observed the true oxlip (Primula elatior).

Comments on Hottonia and Stellaria graminea. [See Forms of flowers, pp. 72, 313.]

Summary

In reply to CD’s letter, "Peas" in Gardeners’ Chronicle [8 Nov 1862; Collected papers 2: 70] sends information on the duration of some of A. Knight’s crossed 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

Cannot aid TWW with respect to bees from East Indies. Suggests he write to Edward Blyth.

Thanks him for getting query on variation in bees circulated in Germany.

Summary

Wife’s health improved by trip.

Heer’s collections convince JDH that Miocene vegetation was Himalayan, not American, as Heer supposed.

Zurich promises to be a good natural history school.

Review of Natural History Review in Parthenon [1 (1862): 373–5].

Summary

Thanks for Orchids.

Plans to publish soon on hybrids.

Summary

E. A. Parkes informs him there will be difficulty about the Army returns [on CD’s Query to Army surgeons, see Freeman, Works of Charles Darwin, p. 111] owing to official obstructions by Director General. [Enclosed letter from Parkes to GB says that the Director General does not think that Army surgeons could be asked to collect information systematically for CD, but perhaps some informal, voluntary arrangement could be made.]

Summary

Thanks LB for copy of his Aus Natur und Wissenschaft [1862]. Responds to LB’s comment [on Origin].

Summary

Discusses cases of assumed correlation, e.g., facial hair and generative organs, sexual characters in castrated oxen. Finds it difficult to see how correlation of functions which would be useless separately can be accumulated gradually through natural selection.

Summary

Pleased that new German edition of Origin is wanted. Wishes to make corrections.

Suggests German translation of Orchids.

Comments on HGB’s book [Untersuchungen (1858)].

Summary

Variation in Mollusca. The most abundant forms vary most.

Summary

J. C. Wickham and Arthur Mellersh are in town and BJS wonders whether there is any chance CD might join them.

Summary

DO’s observations on polymorphism in Primula and Campanula. CD recognises three classes of dimorphism, as in Primula, Thymus, and Campanula and violets.

DO’s Campanula paper and Royal Institution lecture [Not. Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 3 (1858–62): 431–3].

CD’s interest in Fumariaceae from A. Gray’s comments on "selfing".

Bees bite holes in flowers when same species grows in high density.

Organisation of CD’s notes.

Summary

Reports some observations on the fertilisation of wheat which WED might follow up.

Summary

Thanks for letter and "valuable" extracts.

If S. American Carabi differ more from other species than do those from other distant locations (e.g., Siberia, Europe, etc.), CD agrees that difference would be too great to have occurred in the recent glacial age; CD also rejects independent origin. Plants seem to migrate more readily than animals. HWB should not underrate length of glacial period; CD also believes they will be driven to an older glacial period.

Sorry about news of British Museum – hopeless to contend against anyone supported by Owen.

CD dearly wishes HWB could find a situation in which he could give time to science.

Summary

Thanks for Haast’s observations. Particularly glad to get geological evidence of glacial action (in Southern Hemisphere).

Thinks Ramsay’s theory to large extent true, but thinks that in a much disturbed country some lakes would have been formed in depressions.