Summary

Claims to have proved the great antiquity of several plant races. But this does not contradict the tendency to vary. Insists that heredity can make permanent varieties of sufficient duration to occur as fossils.

Summary

Thanks for information about Hottonia.

Has found dimorphism in Forsythia.

Considers AG’s arguments on different terms for dimorphism, but cannot change to using the proposed new term [see 10699].

Summary

Suggests JSBS’s new machine for observing arterial action be used to test CD’s hypothesis that blushing is caused by thinking intensely about a part of the body and thus releasing the arteries.

Summary

Has repeated his observations and experiments used in Insectivorous plants; finds them sound.

Revises his reference to production of pepsin.

Summary

Thanks for volume on craniology

and for suggestion to Austrian Government that CD receive volumes on Novara voyage.

Summary

Sends congratulations and a teapot on the occasion of JT’s engagement.

Is pleased JT is not giving up on the spontaneous generation question. Feels strongly that subject will not be clear until it is understood how J. S. Burdon Sanderson and others succeeded in getting bacteria in infusions they had boiled for a long time.

Summary

CD has read the two reports on culture of poppies with interest and has planted seeds.

Suggests an experiment for evidence on whether plants, thought merely varieties, are like species and fail to intercross, despite insect pollination.

Summary

Hopes GdeS will publish on subjects discussed in his letter [10587]. CD had noted similar persistence of variation in fossil shells.

Calls his attention to Nägeli’s work on Hieracium.

Expresses skepticism about O. Heer’s view that dicotyledonous plants developed suddenly. Believes they must have developed slowly in some part of the globe completely isolated from other regions.

Summary

Response to ARW’s "grand and memorable work" [Geographical distribution (1876)]. Most interesting part to CD is ARW’s "protest against sinking imaginary continents".

Summary

Plants received from JDH.

Requests he verify an identification by Fritz Müller.

Summary

Has sent FM’s letter on to Nature ["Brazil kitchen middens, habits of ants, etc.", Nature 13 (1876): 304–5].

Would be grateful for Ceropegia seeds.

Summary

Insectivorous plants is out

and Climbing plants is at the printer’s.

He is now at work on the geological writings.

Thinks all of CD’s papers extremely interesting "for the spirit and the method".

Cites some misprints in Climbing plants.

Summary

Thanks FD for corrections [to Orchids (1877)].

Thinks Johann von Fischer’s paper on monkeys’ rumps [Der Zoologische Garten 17 (1876): 116–27, 174–9] worth translating, and he intends to write a letter on it to Nature [Collected papers 2: 207–11].

Summary

He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]