From John Denny 12 July 1872
Summary
Replies to CD’s queries. Duke of Cornwall Pelargonium is fertile with its own pollen. Has failed to produce hybrids from other varieties besides P. peltatum and P. elegans. Sends numbers of the Florist which contain an account of his mode of procedure ["On cross-breeding pelargoniums" Florist & Pomologist (1872): 10, 34, 50].
Reports a confirmation of his theory of the prepotence of the male parent.
| Author: | John Denny |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 12 July 1872 |
| Classmark: | DAR 162: 159 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8407 |
To John Denny 14 July [1872]
Summary
Discusses JD’s crossing experiments with Pelargonium; notes that his conclusions on male prepotence oppose those of Gärtner. Suggests that his observations on differences in fertility of certain varieties of Pelargonium crossed with certain other varieties be communicated to the Linnean Society.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | John Denny |
| Date: | 14 July [1872] |
| Classmark: | DAR 96: 114–15 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8410 |
From John Denny 20 July 1872
Summary
Thanks CD for his offer to communicate the results of his experiments with Pelargonium to the Linnean Society. Prefers to continue experimenting for at least another season before doing so.
| Author: | John Denny |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 20 July 1872 |
| Classmark: | DAR 162: 160 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8421 |
From Hubert Airy 24 July 1872
Summary
Responds to CD’s comments on his MS on phyllotaxy.
The initial variation required by his theory would be a slight twist of the bud-axis; believes the frequent twisting of stems and branches renders such a variation possible.
Admits he placed too much emphasis on the importance of frost. He should have spoken more generally of "vicissitudes of climate".
| Author: | Hubert Airy |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 24 July 1872 |
| Classmark: | DAR 159: 20 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8426 |
From B. J. Sulivan 23 January 1872
Summary
Louis Agassiz is going on a voyage to the Falklands, and BJS wonders whether it is worth while telling him of the Gallegos fossil bed so that he can investigate.
| Author: | Bartholomew James Sulivan |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 23 Jan 1872 |
| Classmark: | DAR 177: 297 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8175 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … 1849 ). Sulivan was a member of the South American Mission Society (see Correspondence vol. 18, letter …
- … letters, and works of Louis Agassiz. 2 vols. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. Modern English biography : Modern English biography, containing many thousand concise memoirs of persons who have died since the year 1850. By Frederick Boase. 3 vols. and supplement (3 vols. ). Truro, Cornwall: the author. 1892–1921. O’Byrne, William R. 1849. …
From W. W. Reade 13 February 1872
Summary
Sending sheets of his forthcoming work on Africa [Martyrdom of man (1872)] with views that differ from CD’s on music and sexual selection.
The Pall Mall Gazette will review the new [6th] edition of the Origin, together with Mivart’s Genesis of species [1871].
| Author: | William Winwood Reade |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 13 Feb 1872 |
| Classmark: | DAR 176: 52 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8210 |
From J. F. Mackenzie 8 February 1872
Summary
An engineer in India, who has read Descent, sends observations on native racial characters.
| Author: | John Finlayson Mackenzie |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 8 Feb 1872 |
| Classmark: | DAR 171: 5 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8202 |
From W. D. Fox 25 October [1872]
Summary
Has not seen CD for about 25 years. Has heard an absurd story that CD and Emma are exploring an unknown part of America.
| Author: | William Darwin Fox |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 25 Oct [1872] |
| Classmark: | DAR 164: 196 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8577 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter to Fox was that of 16 July 1872. Sandown is a seaside town on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight. Fox lived in Northwich, Cheshire, where he was vicar of Delamere until his retirement in 1873. From 1873, Sandown was his permanent home. According to Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242), Fox visited Down on 2 November 1849, …
To John Denny 9 July 1872
Summary
Has read JD’s articles in the Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1872): 872, 904–5].
Questions him on the fertility of certain varieties of Pelargonium which are fertile with some varieties but infertile with others.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | John Denny |
| Date: | 9 July 1872 |
| Classmark: | University of Otago Library, Special Collections (DeB MS 55) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8403 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1849 are in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 248–98). Instances of sterility, especially between varieties, were of great importance to CD because he believed that they provided the clearest evidence of evolutionary gradation from varieties to species. For the significance he placed on Karl Friedrich von Gärtner’s experiments on crossing Verbascum , see Correspondence vol. 9, letter …
| letter | (9) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (7) |
| Denny, John | (2) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (9) |
| Denny, John | (4) |
| Airy, Hubert | (1) |
| Fox, W. D. | (1) |
| Mackenzie, J. F. | (1) |
Darwin's health
Summary
On 28 March 1849, ten years before Origin was published, Darwin wrote to his good friend Joseph Hooker from Great Malvern in Worcestershire, where Dr James Manby Gully ran a fashionable water-cure establishment. Darwin apologised for his delayed reply to…
Matches: 1 hits
- … On 28 March 1849, ten years before Origin was published, Darwin wrote to his good friend …
Darwin in letters, 1847-1850: Microscopes and barnacles
Summary
Darwin's study of barnacles, begun in 1844, took him eight years to complete. The correspondence reveals how his interest in a species found during the Beagle voyage developed into an investigation of the comparative anatomy of other cirripedes and…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Species theory In November 1845, Charles Darwin wrote to his friend and confidant Joseph …
1.3 Thomas Herbert Maguire, lithograph
Summary
< Back to Introduction This striking portrait of Darwin, dating from 1849, belonged to a series of about sixty lithographic portraits of naturalists and other scientists drawn by Thomas Herbert Maguire. They were successively commissioned over a…
Matches: 1 hits
- … < Back to Introduction This striking portrait of Darwin, dating from 1849, belonged …
Women’s scientific participation
Summary
Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants Darwin’s correspondence helps bring to light a community of women who participated, often actively and routinely, in the nineteenth-century scientific community. Here is a…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants …
Scientific Practice
Summary
Specialism|Experiment|Microscopes|Collecting|Theory Letter writing is often seen as a part of scientific communication, rather than as integral to knowledge making. This section shows how correspondence could help to shape the practice of science, from…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Specialism | Experiment | Microscopes | Collecting | Theory Letter writing …
Species and varieties
Summary
On the origin of species by means of natural selection …so begins the title of Darwin’s most famous book, and the reader would rightly assume that such a thing as ‘species’ must therefore exist and be subject to description. But the title continues, …or…
Matches: 1 hits
- … On the origin of species by means of natural selection …so begins the title of Darwin’s most …
Darwin’s reading notebooks
Summary
In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to read in Notebook C (Notebooks, pp. 319–28). In 1839, these lists were copied and continued in separate notebooks. The first of these reading notebooks (DAR 119…
Matches: 1 hits
- … In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to …
Scientific Networks
Summary
Friendship|Mentors|Class|Gender In its broadest sense, a scientific network is a set of connections between people, places, and things that channel the communication of knowledge, and that substantially determine both its intellectual form and content,…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Friendship | Mentors | Class | Gender In its broadest sense, a scientific …
Darwin's notes for his physician, 1865
Summary
On 20 May 1865, Emma Darwin recorded in her diary that John Chapman, a prominent London publisher who had studied medicine in London and Paris in the early 1840s, visited Down to consult with Darwin about his ill health. In 1863 Chapman started to treat…
Matches: 1 hits
- … On 20 May 1865, Emma Darwin recorded in her diary that John Chapman, a prominent London publisher …
What is an experiment?
Summary
Darwin is not usually regarded as an experimenter, but rather as an astute observer and a grand theorist. His early career seems to confirm this. He began with detailed note-taking, collecting and cataloguing on the Beagle, and edited a descriptive zoology…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin is not usually regarded as an experimenter, but rather as an astute observer and a grand …
Barnacles
Summary
Sources|Discussion Questions|Experiment Darwin and barnacles Darwin’s interest in Cirripedia, a class of marine arthropods, was first piqued by the discovery of an odd burrowing barnacle, which he later named “Mr. Arthrobalanus," while he was…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Sources | Discussion Questions | Experiment Darwin and barnacles …
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Summary
George Eliot was the pen name of celebrated Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She was born on the outskirts of Nuneaton in Warwickshire and was educated at boarding schools from the age of five until she was 16. Her education ended when she…
Matches: 1 hits
- … George Eliot was the pen name of the celebrated Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She …
John Murray
Summary
Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was published on 22 November 1859. The publisher was John Murray, who specialised in non-fiction, particularly politics, travel and science, and had published…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was …
'An Appeal' against animal cruelty
Summary
The four-page pamphlet transcribed below and entitled 'An Appeal', was composed jointly by Emma and Charles Darwin (see letter from Emma Darwin to W. D. Fox, [29 September 1863]). The pamphlet, which protested against the cruelty of steel vermin…
Matches: 1 hits
- … The four-page pamphlet transcribed below and entitled 'An Appeal', was composed jointly by Emma …
Dramatisation script
Summary
Re: Design – Adaptation of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Asa Gray and others… by Craig Baxter – as performed 25 March 2007
Matches: 1 hits
- … Re: Design – performance version – 25 March 2007 – 1 Re: Design – Adaptation of the …
Darwin's illness
Summary
Was Darwin an invalid? In many photographs he looks wearied by age, wrapped in a great coat to protect him from cold. In a letter to his cousin William Fox, he wrote: "Long and continued ill health has much changed me, & I very often think with…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Was Darwin an invalid? In many photographs he looks wearied by age, wrapped in a great coat to …
Fritz Müller
Summary
Fritz Müller, a German who spent most of his life in political exile in Brazil, described Darwin as his second father, and Darwin's son, Francis, wrote that, although they never met 'the correspondence with Müller, which continued to the close of…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Francis Darwin, in Life and letters of Charles Darwin , wrote of Fritz Müller They …
Living and fossil cirripedia
Summary
Darwin published four volumes on barnacles, the crustacean sub-class Cirripedia, between 1851 and 1854, two on living species and two on fossil species. Written for a specialist audience, they are among the most challenging and least read of Darwin’s works…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin published four volumes on the crustacean sub-class Cirripedia between 1851 and 1854, two on …
Bibliography of Darwin’s geological publications
Summary
This list includes papers read by Darwin to the Geological Society of London, his books on the geology of the Beagle voyage, and other publications on geological topics. Author-date citations refer to entries in the Darwin Correspondence Project’s…
Matches: 1 hits
- … This list includes papers read by Darwin to the Geological Society of London, his books on the …
Darwin and Design
Summary
At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religion and the sciences were generally thought to be in harmony. The study of God’s word in the Bible, and of his works in nature, were considered to be part of the same truth. One version of this…
Matches: 1 hits
- … At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religion and the sciences were generally …
