Summary

Hookers and Lyells will visit Lubbocks so he cannot see CD in London.

Will CD sit for Woolner?

Summary

Requests climbing plants.

Asks that Oliver be told that he now does not care "how many tendrils he makes axial".

Summary

R. I. Murchison’s address [see 4595] smashes Ramsay’s glacial theory.

JDH defends his view that CD should not answer Kölliker.

Summary

CD continues to have trouble reconciling the Veitch’s names for Bignonia plants and Kew names.

Lyell and Falconer called on CD in London.

Summary

Thanks for Lectures on the elements of comparative anatomy [1864].

If Owen wrote article on "Oken" [Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th ed.] and French work on archetype he never did a baser act [see ML 1: 246 n.].

Bad health lately.

Summary

Can understand EH’s feelings on death of his wife.

CD was impressed by manner in which species in South America are replaced by closely allied ones, by affinity of species inhabiting islands near S. America, and by relation of living Edentata and Rodentia to extinct species. When he read Malthus On population, the idea of natural selection flashed on him.

Agrees with EH’s remarks on Kölliker ["Darwin’sche Schöpfungstheorie", Z. Wiss. Zool. 14 (1864): 174–86].

Asks EH to thank Carl Gegenbaur [for Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbelthiere (1864)].

Summary

CD continues very ill.

His only work is a little on tendrils and climbers. Asks whether all tendrils are modified leaves or whether some are modified stems.

Last number [Jan 1864?] of Natural History Review is best that has appeared.

Summary

Has been informed Miss E. Watts retiring from poultry department of the Field and would like to take the post if made available. Asks CD if he would provide a reference for him if necessary.

Has bred and reared a young turtle-dove.

On progress of his lawsuit.

Summary

References to and résumés of articles on climbing plants.

Summary

Again refuses to help Scott as "unfitted" to make his way in the world. Scott is unwilling to take his part in the "struggle for life", unlike Tyndall, Faraday, Huxley, and Lindley, who established themselves. Scott’s work is not science, but "scientific horticulture".

Summary

Struck with corresponding positions of tendrils and flower-stalks in Passiflora. Sends [W. E. Darwin’s] dissection drawings of earliest stages. Infers that tendril is a modified flower peduncle.

Requests DO look at mode of climbing in Tecoma.

Summary

Council of the Royal Society have awarded CD the Copley Medal.

Summary

Response to ARW’s papers on Papilionidae ["On the phenomena of variation and geographical distribution", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 25 (1866): 1–71; abstract in Reader 3 (1864): 491–3],

and man ["The origin of human races", J. Anthropol. Soc. Lond. 2 (1864): clviii–clxxxvi].

The former is "really admirable" and will be influential.

The idea of the man paper is striking and new. Minor points of difference. Conjectures regarding racial differences; the possible correlation between complexion and constitution. His Query to Army surgeons to determine this point. Offers ARW his notes on man, which CD doubts he will be able to use.

On sexual selection in "our aristocracy"; primogeniture is a scheme for destroying natural selection.

[Letter incorrectly dated March by CD.]