Summary

On JDH’s suggestions for new edition of Origin.

Gray’s Atlantic Monthly articles to be published [in England] as a pamphlet.

Summary

Sends Haast’s report; JDH may use any and all of the details in the letter.

Asks identity of a reviewer of Lyell’s Antiquity of man [Edinburgh Rev. 118 (1863): 254–302].

Summary

Agrees that Lyell’s letters shed no new light on extensions issue. Continental extensions: opposes their being hypothesised all over world.

Commonality of alpine plants damns both extension and migration.

Summary

Anxious to hear of JDH’s prospects [at Edinburgh].

Has completed his Journal of researches.

Summary

Tendril-bearing plants seem to CD "higher" organised with respect to adaptive sensibility than lower animals.

Wishes to encourage John Scott.

Death of JDH’s daughter makes CD cry over his own dead daughter Annie.

Sedgwick’s scientific merit.

Summary

Hopes JDH will enjoy Edinburgh.

Has just finished Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire on animal monsters [Anomalies de l’organisation chez l’homme et les animaux (1832–7)], "and a nasty curious subject it is".

Summary

Would like to borrow the pamphlet on variation [Frédéric Gérard, "De l’espèce dans les corps organisés" (1844), extract from Dictionnaire universel d’histoire naturelle, ed. C. D. d’Orbigny].

Glad to hear Humboldt’s views on migration. CD believes we cannot "put any limit to the possible and even probable migration of plants".

Wants good book on plant morphology.

Summary

Whether or not there should be movement of particles according to Tyndall’s theory of glacial action ["Observations on glaciers", Not. Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 2: 54–8, 441–3].

CD subscribes to H. C. Sorby’s view of gneiss [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 55 (1853): 137–50].

Seed-salting.

Pigeons.

Significant differences in skeletons of domesticated rabbits.

Summary

Opinions on the Origin: AG thinks it masterly; Agassiz considers it very poor.