Summary

Informs JDH of CD’s death.

Summary

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

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

CD too ill to write.

Has evidence of long life of seed transported on a partridge’s foot.

Sends a squib by Samuel Butler on the Origin.

Summary

CD would be pleased to sit for a bust by Thomas Woolner for JDH, but he is too ill now.

Emma’s views on slavery and the Civil War.

Summary

Health very bad. All scientific work stopped for 2½ months.

E. B. Tylor’s Early history of mankind [1865] impresses him.

Would like JDH’s opinion of last number of Spencer’s [Principles of] Biology [vol. 1 (1864)], especially on umbellifers. CD not satisfied with Spencer’s views on irregular flowers.

ED reports on CD’s health.

Summary

Reread JDH’s letter "with infinite pleasure".

Plans to visit Kew.

Summary

Doubts Decaisne’s report of larkspur self-fertilisation.

Enthusiastically observes climbing plants. Needs to know how novel his observations are. Finds R. J. H. Dutrochet has made similar observations, so he has wasted some time. [See Climbing plants, p. 1 n.]

Summary

Apologises that the house is full this weekend, but next weekend would be good.

Summary

Congratulates JDH on receipt of Royal Medal.

CD gathering facts on aberrant genera of insects.

Summary

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

Pleased at Bates’s appointment

and Wallace’s paper.

Summary

Indignant over Owen’s conduct as described in Hugh Falconer’s article on elephants ["On the American fossil elephant of the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 43–114].

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

Yellow anthers of Heterocentron produce on the same plant thrice as many seeds as the crimson anthers. Crimson anther seeds produce dwarf plants, others rise high up. Monochaetum ensiferum facts are still more strange. Wants to investigate the case, and asks for a plant of the Melastomataceae just before flowering.

Has JDH a Rhododendron boothii from Bhutan with pistil bent the wrong way?

Summary

George Henslow’s curtness to JDH: "an attack of religion".

Embryonic leaves. Adaptive functions and taxonomic significance of cotyledons.

Asa Gray. Separation of sexes in U. S. trees.

Summary

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man and of Owen’s comment on it.

Disappointed Lyell has not spoken out on species and on man.

Pleasure of new hothouse and the plants JDH supplied for it.

Summary

CD has never doubted probability of Bering Strait land connection.

Family illness.

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.