Summary

Will do his best on the tooth [sent by CD] but does not put much weight on conclusions based on a single tooth of a horse.

Darwin attacked by three clergymen at BAAS meeting [Exeter, 1869].

Summary

Haeckel wants British specimens of calcareous sponges. Can THH tell him to whom he can apply?

Health not improving – cannot climb even a hill.

Has heard THH’s article on Comte ["Scientific aspects of Positivism", Lay sermons (1870)] is a splendid success.

Summary

Looks forward to Descent, though he expects to find more to differ with than in any other of CD’s books.

Problems of usefulness of incipient organs and of the independent origin of similar complex organs are real difficulties.

Plans a little book on "Distribution of animals".

Summary

Book [Facts and arguments for Darwin] is being bound; it is probably too late to alter lettering.

Summary

Has sold 400 copies of Facts and arguments for Darwin. It is a poor time for bookselling.

Last Quarterly Review has best exposition of Darwinism he has met with [A. R. Wallace, "Geological climates, and origin of species", Q. Rev. 126 (1869): 359–94].

Proposes to print 2000 copies of a new [5th] edition of Origin.

Summary

Thanks CD for the English edition of his brother’s book [Fritz Müller, Facts and arguments for Darwin (1869)]

and for CD’s memoir on orchids ["Fertilization of orchids", Collected papers 2: 138–56].

Summary

Explains the point about gravitation and heat that CD does not understand in J. Croll’s letter [6218?].

Cambridge news.

Summary

Agrees that it is wise to delay [publishing?] on Passiflora.

Puts queries he wants CD to send [to Fritz Müller] on bees visiting flowers in winter.

Summary

Thanks for information about expression.

Comments on JC-B’s photographs of insane people.

Sends copy of Duchenne [see 6755].

Asks for further information about platysma, his bête noire for a year or two.

Summary

Last letter was written to be passed on for Lushington’s edification. "(Standing on the points of my toes and my tail very stiff)." Is tiring of controversy as a waste of time. Begins to understand CD’s sufferings over Origin.

Summary

Comments on paper by JJW ["On insects and insectivorous birds", Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (1869): 21–6]. JJW’s verification of A. R. Wallace’s suggestion regarding inheritance is quite a discovery.

Summary

Thanks EB for his attempts to find out about the mandrills;

sorry to hear that he has been so badly treated by the manager of Land and Water.

Summary

Has heard that book by Alphonse M[ilne]-Edwards [? Recherches anatomiques et paléontologiques, 4 vols. (1867–71)] is excellent.

Asks when horns appear on young male fallow deer.

Summary

Reports on events at Exeter [BAAS] meeting. G. G. Stokes made a first-rate President.

Huxley "poured boiling oil" over James McCann in answer to his "conceited dogmatic sermon".

F. A. W. Miquel is coming to stay.

Summary

Hopes ARW has not "murdered too completely your own and my child" [natural selection] in his Quarterly Review article ["Sir Charles Lyell on geological climates and the Origin", 126 (1869): 359–94] on Lyell’s Principles [10th ed.].

CD is attributing more significance to useless variability in new [5th] edition of Origin.

Summary

Discusses changes in 5th edition of Origin owing to new evidence. CD now places more value on action of external conditions; thinks lapse of time [required for development of species] not so great as some geologists have thought, and single variations [saltations] of even less importance compared with individual differences.

Summary

Comments on Fritz Müller’s book [Facts and arguments for Darwin].

Responds to CD’s corrections of his work [Malay Archipelago].

Plumage of birds of paradise.

Summary

Thanks correspondent, "Ponderer", for pointing out his erroneous calculation of the rate of increase of elephants in Origin [p. 64]. [!?or p. 74!? (see 6775f), or 75, (see 6790)]

Summary

Role of humming-birds in plant fertilisation.

Alexander Agassiz has visited Down.

Sales of Facts and arguments for Darwin.

Encloses copy of T. H. Farrer letter [7015] and observations on the self-sterility of Eschscholzia.

Summary

Sends a lower molar of fossil horse from Quito. Curious as to its species, especially in view of Owen’s findings in Mexico.