Summary

Request for plants.

CD’s continuing ill health.

Summary

Request for plant.

Receipt of Oliver’s letter.

Summary

John Scott is gratified at Bentham’s proposal that he become an associate of the Linnean Society.

Summary

Emma prepares JDH for his visit to Wedgwood factory and Barlaston.

Summary

Is burning to hear CD’s reaction to Wallace’s excellent paper on man ["Origin of human races and the antiquity of man", J. Anthropol. Soc. Lond. 2 (1864): clviii–clxxxvi].

Wallace’s disclaimer of credit for natural selection is high-minded.

Summary

Falconer’s death haunts him. Personal annihilation not so horrifying to him as sun cooling some day and human race ending.

His health has been wretched.

Masters has written his agreement with CD’s "Climbing plants".

Summary

CD is not well enough to sit for Woolner.

Two Bignonia plants, which JDH does not distinguish as species, can be separated by differences in climbing and sensitivity behaviour.

Wants to write a non-quarrelsome reply to R. A. Kölliker ["Darwin’sche Schöpfungstheorie", Z. Wiss. Zool. 14 (1864): 174–86] in the Reader. Lyell opposes, but E. A. Darwin and Hensleigh Wedgwood support the idea.

Summary

CD’s photograph looks like J. R. Herbert’s Moses in the fresco in the House of Lords.

JDH is delighted about oxlip, but hybridity does not explain some large patches that are uniform and do not vary towards either cowslip or primrose.

Encloses letter from W. H. Harvey discussing Myosotis sylvatica and the common dandelion.

Summary

John Scott’s career.

Huxley’s vicious attack on anthropologists.

Critique of Joseph Prestwich’s theory of rivers.

Bitter feelings between the Hookers and the Veitch family of nurserymen.

Summary

CD finishing Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31].

Pleased at Bates’s appointment

and Wallace’s paper.

Summary

JDH on John Scott.

Curious about the rationale of pollen prepotence.

Working on variation in New Zealand flora.

Summary

Hildebrand has sent copy of his paper on Pulmonaria in Botanische Zeitung.

How much should CD contribute to Falconer’s bust?

Oswald Heer on alpine and Arctic floras.

A. R. Wallace on geographical distribution in Malay Archipelago.

Lyell’s new edition of Elements. Wishes someone would do a book like it on botany.

Summary

Falconer’s elephant paper.

Owen’s conduct.

Falconer’s view of CD’s theory: independence of natural selection and variation.

JDH on Tocqueville,

the principles of the Origin,

and the evils of American democracy.

Summary

Comments on JDH’s list – very good, but Orchids and Primula paper have too indirect a bearing to be worth mentioning. The Eozoon is a very important fact and to a much lesser degree the Archaeopteryx. Müller’s Für Darwin [1864] perhaps the most important contribution.

CD has forgotten to mention Bates on variation and JDH’s Arctic paper ["Distribution of Arctic plants", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 251–348] in new edition of Origin.

Now finds that Owen claims to be originator of natural selection.