Summary

Sorry to hear of JDH’s household troubles.

Will try to get a couple of flowers of Leschenaultia to send him.

"What a good case that of the Cameroons"; the 4000ft [elevation] is much to CD’s "private satisfaction".

Sends JDH a copy of Orchids.

Summary

Movement of cotton plant cotyledons.

Thanks JDH for his praise of Erasmus Darwin.

Delighted that JDH is thinking about geographical distribution, wishes he would go over the New Zealand flora again.

Summary

JDH on the Lyell–Lubbock plagiarism controversy. His view of the true cause of Lubbock’s behaviour.

Summary

With scientific party to Amiens to look at gravel-pits, the geology of which JDH describes at length.

Summary

Tristan da Cunha flora.

Aquatic plants.

Density and diversity of plants in small plots in Kent, Keeling Islands, and Himalayas.

Summary

CD’s list of fifteen converts. His opinions on opponents and supporters.

Summary

Miss Arabella Buckley’s letter on Wallace’s poor health and finances leads CD to seek JDH’s aid in getting a Government pension.

Summary

On Lubbock’s plans.

Visited by Antoine Auguste Laugel.

Guessed right on Bentham’s "Planchon".

Much struck by Thomson’s article on nomenclature [see 4812]; importance of this subject.

Sorry best scientists read so little; few read any long papers.

Summary

CD preparing historical sketch, which will go into second American edition of Origin.

Asks JDH to copy out Naudin’s line on finality.

Summary

Huxley’s capital, witty letter.

Charles Kingsley has written of his interest in "Climbing plants".

Health has been very bad.

Summary

No one could have thought about evolution and not about representative species; yet no one discussed it fully until Origin, including von Baer.

Did not know of Leopold von Buch’s Description physique des îles Canaries [1836] when Origin was published.

"As far as I know no one ever discussed the meaning of the relation between representative species before I did & as I suppose Wallace did in his paper before the Linn. Soc. [1858]."

Summary

Would be delighted to see CD at Kew.

Summary

Hermaphrodite trees are enough to "knock" CD down. Can JDH observe Eucalyptus to see whether pollen and stigma mature at same time?

JDH’s facts showing European plants are more common in southern Australia than in South America are disturbing because they are improbable on CD’s views of migration.

JDH said he would give examples of Australian forms that have migrated north along the mountains of the Malay Archipelago.

Summary

Has finished last revise of his book [Variation].

Is curious to know what JDH thinks of Pangenesis. It is fearfully imperfect, yet satisfying, for it connects large groups of facts by an intelligible thread.

Thomas Woolner is coming [to do a bust of CD].

Summary

John Scott’s paper [see 4332] read at Linnean Society; praised by George Bentham.

Himalayan pine in Macedonia.

JDH is in a quarrel with H. C. Watson.

Summary

The Aldrovanda has arrived. Has examined the leaves. It is an aquatic Dionaea which has acquired some structures identical to those of Utricularia!

Summary

Praise for Movement in plants, lately arrived.

Praise for Wallace’s Island life

and astonishment that he could be a spiritualist.

Differs with Wallace on age of SW. Australian flora. JDH ascribes its peculiarities to isolation by an inland sea.

Summary

Lyell is "half-hearted but whole-headed" for CD’s theory. George Bentham wholly converted.

Bates’s book delightful but has a Darwinistic bias.

Cameroon plants.

JDH defends Bates against J. E. Gray’s slanders.

Summary

CD’s divergent series explains those anomalous plants that hover between what would otherwise be two species in a genus.

Inclined to see conifers as a sub-series of dicotyledons that developed in parallel to monocotyledons, but retained cryptogamic characters.

Mentions H. C. Watson’s view of variations.

Man has destroyed more species than he has created varieties.

Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.

In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".

Summary

Sorry to hear of Mrs Hooker’s health and domestic problems. Wishes natural selection had produced neuters who would not flirt or marry.

Will be eager to hear Cameroon results.

Wishes JDH would discuss the "mundane glacial period". Still believes it will be "the turning point of all recent geographical distribution".

Pollen placed for 65 hours on apparent (CD still thinks real) stigma of Leschenaultia has not protruded a vestige of a tube.

"Oliver the omniscient" has produced an article in Botanische Zeitung with accurate account of all CD saw in Viola.

Asa Gray’s "red-hot" praise of Orchids [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 34 (1862): 138–51].