Summary

JM reports sales of Facts and arguments for Darwin, Variation, and Origin [5th ed.].

Sends best wishes for success in putting down "Parisian blasphemers".

Summary

Asks JM to grant permission for a French translation of his "Naturalist’s voyage" [Journal of researches].

Summary

Suggests best form of lettering for spine of Müller’s Facts and arguments for Darwin.

Summary

Has sold 400 copies of Facts and arguments for Darwin. It is a poor time for bookselling.

Last Quarterly Review has best exposition of Darwinism he has met with [A. R. Wallace, "Geological climates, and origin of species", Q. Rev. 126 (1869): 359–94].

Proposes to print 2000 copies of a new [5th] edition of Origin.

Summary

JM is about to start a new monthly literary review [the Academy]. Would like to publish in first number a short notice of the new work upon which CD is engaged [Descent].

Summary

Wishes JM’s new periodical [the Academy] could have been a weekly so it might kill the Athenæum by a lingering death.

Has drafted a piece [about Descent] but is not pleased with it.

Summary

Gives consent, which is unnecessary because term of protection has expired, for French translation of Journal of researches.

Is at a loss to know how many copies of F. Müller’s Facts and arguments for Darwin to print.

The printer is ready for copy for a new "edition" of Variation. [Presumably another issue. 2d edition did not appear until 1875.]

Summary

Thanks JM for Quarterly Review. A. R. Wallace’s article inimitably good – and a triumph that it appears where it will make B[ishop] of O[xford] and Owen gnash their teeth.

Delighted at the sale of F. Müller’s book.

Thinks he has brought Origin up to "present standard of science" [5th ed. (June 1869)].

Slow progress on Descent.

His horse rolled over him, but he is recovering rapidly.

Summary

JM advises CD regarding his relations with Masson, the French publisher of the Origin [1866], and the possibility of Reinwald’s publishing a translation of the 5th edition.

Summary

Masson et Fils have brought out a third French edition [of Origin] without informing CD and without the advantage of the corrections of the 4th and 5th English editions. For this and other reasons CD wants to give translation rights for the 5th English edition to C. Reinwald.

Summary

Encloses memorandum for CD concerning JLS’s career and the development of his transformist views.

Summary

Sends excerpt on polygamous breeding habits of Asiatic elephants by Lieut. Johnstone [Proc. Asiat. Soc. Bengal (1868): 128]. [See Descent 1: 268.]

Summary

Describes experiments with sterility in Abutilon.

Describes hermaphroditism in a wild Begonia in Brazil.

Has been observing humble bees on Salvia.

Summary

Role of humming-birds in plant fertilisation.

Alexander Agassiz has visited Down.

Sales of Facts and arguments for Darwin.

Encloses copy of T. H. Farrer letter [7015] and observations on the self-sterility of Eschscholzia.

Summary

Congratulates JDH on his becoming a C.B.

Hard at work on sexual selection – weary of everlasting males and females, cocks and hens.

Has read J. H. Stirling vs Huxley on protoplasm [As regards protoplasm (1869)]

and E. B. Tylor on survival of old thoughts in modern civilisation.

Bentham’s Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [see 6793] is worth its weight in gold in making converts. C. J. F. Bunbury is impressed by it.

Likes JDH’s review of K. F. Schimper’s work [Paléontologie végétale, in Nature 1 (1869): 48].

Summary

Expressions of emotions in Gold Coast tribes.

Differences between males and females in sexual characteristics.

Castrated rams lose horns and manes.

Female members of tribes have no difficulty getting the husbands they want.