Summary

Lyell urges CD to publish a sketch of species theory; CD asks JDH’s opinion on best course.

Concerned about opposition, particularly by Owen, to Huxley’s admission to Athenaeum.

Summary

Comments on JDH’s report of Liverpool meeting.

Huxley’s address.

Sir Roderick [Murchison]’s "apotheosis".

Tyndall’s lecture is "grand" except for egotistical beginning. Some Frenchmen have pitched into CD for using the "as if" reasoning, which Tyndall shows is justified.

Has just read George Rolleston’s address in Nature.

Anton Dohrn says German public have high opinion of Lyell.

Summary

Thanks for RAvK’s work [Anatomisch-systematische Beschreibung der Alcyonarien, pt 1, Die Pennatuliden (1870)].

Asks whether muscles to quills of porcupine are striped. Are they homologous to muscles of ordinary hairs? Could unstriped muscles develop into striped?

Summary

Thinks well of Claparède’s criticism; worth publishing as an answer to Wallace. Bates thinks Wallace’s heterodox views have done mischief to the cause of evolution. Wallace thinks Claparède’s article very weak, CD concludes, because Claparède has arrived at an unpleasant judgment very much like Lyell’s about Bentham’s address.

CD would wager Lyell lately has said something about European Proteaceae.

Does not remember anyone before Wallace on Sumatra and Java.

CD does not think he has a chance against Brandt in French Academy election.

Summary

Has just sent MS of Descent to printers. Recognises that [because of Franco-Prussian War] the publisher will have given up idea of a German translation.

Though the war is a misfortune for science, CD rejoices at the wonderful success of Germany; has met no one who does not share this feeling.

Summary

Thanks WWR for information on the Nehro idea of beauty and other facts relating to expression.

Summary

Asks whether JDH can send seeds of Hibiscus africanus and of Nolana prostrata raised at Kew.

Summary

CD much interested by ERL’s book [On comparative longevity (1870)]. Is pleased to find ERL refers to CD’s "despised child" Pangenesis, and is also pleased how thoroughly ERL appreciates Herbert Spencer, a philosopher perhaps equal to any that has lived.

Summary

Sends two sheets [of Descent] for correction of names of birds. PLS will save him many disgraceful misspellings. Descent now being prepared in five foreign editions.

Summary

Thanks JDH for offer of lilies.

The paper on orchids is by Hermann Müller [Verh. Naturhist. Ver. Preuss. Rheinlande & Westphalens 25 (1868): 1–62], on Platanthera and Epipactis.

Cites another work by P. Rohrbach [Über den Blüthenbau (1866)].

MS [of Descent] ready for printer.

Has read Bentham’s last Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1870): lxxiv–xciv] with great interest.

Summary

Thanks PLS for his generous offer to go over the part on birds [in Descent]. Does not think PLS realises that there are more than 200 pages – most of which will have nothing new for him.

W. H. Hudson’s proofs have arrived ["Letters on the ornithology of Buenos Ayres", Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. (1870): 87–9, 158–60, 332–4, 545–50, 671–3, 748–50, 798–82; (1871): 4–7, 258–62, 326–9].

Summary

Congratulates BJS on his K.C.B.

In autumn he will publish a book partly on man [Descent], which he expects "many will decry as very wicked".

Thinks the success of the Tierra del Fuego mission is wonderful.

Summary

Accepts PLS’s offer to read proofs of [Descent].

W. H. Hudson’s paper is interesting.

Summary

Comments on WP’s biographical article on CD. Asks him to thank O. F. Peschel for his present of the publication [Das Ausland 2 Apr 1870].

Summary

Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].

Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.

CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".

Saw Alfred Newton.

CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,

and on cross- and self-fertilisation.

Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?

Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.

Summary

Has forwarded JPMW’s papers to the Linnean Society [four articles by J. P. M. Weale, J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 13 (1870–2): 42–58].

Comments on JPMW’s findings concerning flowers and their fertilisation.

Summary

Praise for ARW’s reply [Nature 3 (1870): 49–50] to a paper by A. W. Bennett ["Natural selection from a mathematical point of view", Nature 3 (1870): 30–3] holding that mind is a leading cause of variation.

Is reading proof of his "confounded book" [Descent].

Summary

Thanks for the information sent by WGS in his letter of 4 November 1870.

Summary

Crossing experiments and self-sterility [in Eschscholzia].

Pangenesis.

Hermann Müller on insect adaptations for fertilisation of flowers.

CD working on book on man and sexual selection.

Summary

Thanks FCD for information.

Hopes that translation of his paper will appear in Dublin Journal.

Notes experience of his son [Leonard Darwin] on engorgement of eyes with blood. Discusses secretion of tears when eye muscles are involuntarily contracted.