Summary

Encloses seeds.

Lecoq’s work mentions instances of apparent dimorphism. [H. Lecoq, Études sur la géographie botanique de l’Europe, 9 vols. (1854–8).]

Summary

Informs CD that the letter CCG received from him has been framed to be hung in the Kentucky State House.

Summary

CD’s framed letter may be hung in a fireproof gallery in the State House, now being finished.

Summary

Has found no reference to construction of bees’ cells in works referred to by CD. Describes cell of Osmia atricapilla. Hive-bees’ cell was described at Entomological Society.

Summary

Summary

CD is urged to increase to 20 his shares in the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Co. Ltd. Many prominent people have done so.

Summary

Thanks CD for paper ["Climbing plants"].

Reports case of variation becoming at once hereditary – a crested blackbird with crested young.

Summary

Notification of the Society’s intent to withdraw funds from its account.

Summary

Is about to send his paper on Galapagos beetles to press. Has written some introductory material on which he invites CD’s comments.

Summary

Thanks for presentation copy of Descent.

Mivart’s Genesis of species [1871] is poor.

Mathematical illustrations of Pangenesis at Cambridge.

Wallace’s address on Madeira not convincing ["The President’s Address", Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (1870): xliv–lxix; A. R. Wallace, Studies scientific and social (1900) 1: 250–66].

Summary

Weir’s paper on relation of protection to colour of caterpillars [Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (1869): 21–6; (1870): 337–9] confirms ARW’s hypothesis.

Summary

The problem of sterility, and its relation to natural selection.

George Bentham’s support of Darwinism.

Summary

On sterility of natural species and natural selection. Closely allied forms from adjacent islands offer best chance of finding good species fertile inter se.

Problem of minute variations and sexual selection.

Summary

Regularly attends Owen’s lectures. Owen at pains to show groups are not linked. Thus makes Lepidosiren appear fish-like.

GRW thinks embryology will become chief guide to insect classification. But contradictions between classification based on embryological and adult characters do occur.

Summary

Sexual selection, he thinks, must be left to others to settle. "Conscious" will be substituted for "voluntary" selection. Sound- and scent-producing organs attributed to "natural", not "conscious", selection.

Summary

Responds to CD’s new work [Cross and self-fertilisation]. Suggests results might have been more convincing if CD had measured weights instead of heights. The fact that infertile hybrids have not been produced means that the "one great objection" has not been got rid of: the physiological characteristic of species. Suggests an experiment to produce "sterile mongrels" which would remove objection.

Summary

Notes the differences in seed production between cross- and self-fertilized flowers of Victoria regia.

Summary

Sends a capsule of Dendrobium cretaceum. [See Orchids, 2d ed.]

Summary

Reports on his spectroscopic examination of the colouring matter in the hairs (tentacles) of Drosera.

Summary

Taeas [?] allied to L. hyssopifolia. [Cover containing packets of seed specimens.] Mentioned in the letter to H. C. Watson, 28 May [1864], f.2 (fS 4512).