Summary

"The longer I live the more I come to believe in inheritance. I have some ""orderlings"" in my own composition, and I wish I had transmitted more of it to my own offspring."

Summary

Caroline [Wedgwood] has been ill for the last 20 months.

James Paget to be consulted about William Darwin’s brain concussion.

Summary

Thanks for copy of Claus’s book, Untersuchungen zur Erforschung der genealogischen Grundlage des Crustaceen-Systems: ein Beitrag zur Descendenzlehre (Studies on the investigation of the genealogical foundation of the Crustacea: a contribution to the theory of descent; Claus 1876).

Summary

Comments on Weismann’s remarks on the possibility of sexual selection in the genus Daphnia.

A. R. Wallace has published paper giving up sexual selection [Review of St George Jackson Mivart’s Lessons from nature, as manifested in mind and matter.] in Academy, 10 and 17 June 1876, pp. 587–8.]

Summary

Thanks for a correction. Hopes AG now has all the sheets of Cross and self-fertilisation.

Summary

Further comments on GHD’s work on the influence of geological changes on the earth’s axis.

Frank [Francis Darwin] has made a fine zoological discovery.

Summary

Asks GB to send him flowers of the two forms of Boronia pinnata, as he is republishing his papers on dimorphic plants [Forms of flowers].

Sends copy of Cross and self-fertilisation.

Summary

Considers some flowers especially adapted for self-fertilisation, and believes all flowers are self-fertilising under some conditions. Gives examples of plants in which he believes all flowers are cleistogamous. Believes self-fertilisation is the primordial condition of flowering plants.

Summary

Describes new journal, Kosmos, to be edited by Ernst Krause. Asks CD to lend his name to journal.

Has sent Anthropogenie, 3d ed.

Will send his study [Biologische Studien, pt 2: Studien zur Gastraea-theorie (1877)] in January.

Thanks CD for hospitality at Down.

Summary

Obliged for the new edition of The Andes.

Summary

RLT to review 2d ed. of Variation and write an article on Pangenesis.

Discussion of "Survival of the Fittest".

Summary

Regrets he cannot hear lecture by F. C. Donders.

Hopes to see WB before he returns home.

Summary

Proposes to work on the origin of diseases; is going to study syphilis.

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

He has never observed the straight line flight routes in male humble-bees that CD reports.

His last letter was in error: alpine Bombus terrestris does break into some flowers.

Summary

Plans to republish his paper on dimorphism with additions [Forms of flowers]. Is convinced it is necessary to compare pollen-grains and the state of the stigma to recognise dimorphic plants. Requests specific plants to test for dimorphism and would welcome examples from any family in which he has not encountered dimorphic species.

Summary

Has sent his paper on Echinoidea [see 10373] as a token of his veneration. He tried to address the confusion in knowledge about the different parts of the exoskeleton of the Echinodermata by tracing certain relations of homology not previously noticed. Much more work is required.

Summary

His research on Orchis maculata.

Discusses effect of disuse of anthers in Salvia officinalis.

Pleased CD can use his observations on Primula elatior.

Summary

Floral structure. The order of the development of the whorls and its relationship to a protandrous or protogynous condition in flowers.

Summary

Observations on pollinia of Orchis maculata

and on Primula elatior. [On latter, see Forms of flowers, p. 34.]