Summary

August Weismann is interested in JJW’s experiments on birds and the caterpillars they eat.

Summary

Asks FD to make out [Hermann] Hoffmann’s conclusions about the fertilisation of Phaseolus multiflorus [in Untersuchungen zur Bestimmung des Werthes von Species und Varietät (1869)].

Summary

Thanks for the seventh of CVR’s Annual reports on the noxious, beneficial and other insects in the state of Missouri (Riley 1869–77).

Summary

Wants to study hereditary mental characters to see whether they are limited by sex – an idea CD holds provisionally and which she doubts. She sends a questionnaire form that she asks CD to criticise. Has read Francis Galton [Hereditary genius (1869)].

Summary

Has secured rights to Variation from Judd & Co.; had to pay $350 [dollars or pounds!?] for old plates and promise 50% discount on 150 copies of the new edition. Hopes Murray’s charge for plates of new edition will not exceed cost of doing the work in the U. S. Judd lost out considerably from small sale of his edition.

Summary

Comments on AW’s work [Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie, vol. 1 (1875)].

On seasonal dimorphism in Lepidoptera in relation to sexual selection.

Discusses evolutionary reversion.

Comments on birds’ avoiding brightly coloured caterpillars. Offers references on subject.

Alpheus Hyatt says Franz Hilgendorf mistaken [about Planorbis multiformis].

Quotes from letter from J. J. Weir on birds’ rejection of brightly-coloured caterpillars.

Summary

Thanks FFH for his note and enclosure [see 9982]. Quotes from Le Couteur [On … wheat (1836)?] to justify statements made in Variation [1868].

Summary

CD cannot remember whether he was on the committee of the Jamaica affair [for prosecution of Governor Eyre in 1866] but he subscribed £10.

It is curious and amusing how positivists hate all men of science, possibly because their prophet [Comte] made laughable and gigantic blunders in predicting the course of science.

Summary

Asks to borrow Ernst Haeckel’s Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Hydromedusen (1865) [and Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Siphonophoren (1869)].

Has not been neglecting Pangenesis for Medusae.

Summary

A set of electros of the woodcuts to Variation was sent to an Italian publisher in 1869, but no reply or payment has been made since then.

Summary

Thanks for errata in Insectivorous plants.

Sends spare copies of his papers, but thinks several are not worth publishing.

Has only one copy, which he will lend JVC, of the best one, on "Erratic boulders of South America" [Collected papers 1: 145–63].

Has not sent "Parallel roads of Glen Roy" [Collected papers 1: 87–137], as he is sure he was wrong.

Summary

Thiselton-Dyer has asked on CD’s behalf for results of experiments at Rothamsted on herbage of permanent meadow land. Sends report and tables of botanical analysis.

Summary

Canestrini still owes £10 from 1869 for electros of 1st edition [of Variation].

RC has urged Clowes on with printing of Variation [2d ed.],

but with Climbing plants [2d ed.] ready, it need not be done before the annual sale.

Summary

Is on the eve of another row with the Office of Works about his application for assistance.

Summary

Sends last part of his book [Ulteriori observazioni sulla dicogamia (1868–74)] [osservazioni!?] and describes contents.

Summary

Would be obliged for correction of references in Variation [1st ed.].

Summary

Is staying at a friend’s [T. H. Farrer’s] house for rest until after 6 July, so cannot see CVR at Down.

Hopes he thanked CVR for the last Report [one of CVR’s Annual reports on the noxious, beneficial and other insects of the State of Missouri (1868–76)].

Summary

V. O. Kovalevsky has paid for the Expression plates.

Still has 400 copies of Chauncey Wright’s pamphlet

and 450 of Müller’s Facts and arguments for Darwin.

Summary

Sends a moth from Queensland, Australia. The sender says a large number have been caught with proboscises embedded in oranges. CD interested as having a bearing on his Orchis work. Can AGB name the family and any closely allied English genus? The proboscis seems an extraordinary structure [see F. Darwin, "On the structure of the proboscis of Ophideres fullonica", Q. J. Microsc. Sci. n.s. 15 (1875): 384–9].

Summary

On colour changes in rabbits. Suspects JBI’s is of impure origin.

Is correcting proof of Insectivorous plants.