To F. J. Wedgwood [after 1 April 1871?]
Summary
Protests against FJW making the struggle for existence still more odious by calling it ‘selfish competition’.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Frances Julia (Snow) Wedgwood |
Date: | [after 1 Apr 1871?] |
Classmark: | Christie’s, London (dealers) (3 March 2004) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-7651F |
Matches: 4 hits
- … Protests against FJW making the struggle for existence still more odious by calling it ‘ …
- … protest against your making the struggle for existence (which is sufficiently melancholy …
- … chapter V) where he contends that the struggle for existence, and its consequence, natural …
- … Natural selection follows from the struggle for existence; and this from a rapid rate of …
To W. T. Preyer 29 March 1869
Summary
Congratulates WP on the success of his lectures.
Discusses the phrase "struggle for existence".
Sends a list of his papers.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | William Thierry (William) Preyer |
Date: | 29 Mar 1869 |
Classmark: | DAR 147: 254–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-6687 |
Matches: 5 hits
- … his lectures. Discusses the phrase "struggle for existence". Sends a list of his papers. …
- … on Reversion— About the term “Struggle for Existence” I have always felt some doubts but …
- … quite the same idea. — The words “Struggle for Existence” express I think exactly what …
- … to say in English that two men struggle for existence who may be hunting for the same food …
- … again it may be said that a man struggles for existence against the waves of the sea when …
Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1867a. On the struggle for existence amongst plants. Popular Science Review 6: 131–9.
Todes, Daniel P. 1989. Darwin without Malthus. The struggle for existence in Russian evolutionary thought. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
To Albert Gaudry 17 September [1866]
Summary
Thanks AG for Considérations générales [sur les animaux fossiles] de Pikermi [1866]. The observations on the various intermediate fossil forms seem most valuable.
AG does not fully understand what CD means by "the struggle for existence, or concurrence vitale".
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Albert-Jean (Albert) Gaudry |
Date: | 17 Sept [1866] |
Classmark: | Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, Milan (Library: Fondo Gaudry b. 7, fasc. 28, doc. 1) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5213 |
Bilgili, Alper. 2017. Beating the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence: Darwin, social Darwinism and the Turks. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 65: 19–25.
From Henry Groves 1 April 1882
Summary
Has forwarded some plants of Nitella opaca. Has observed their struggle for existence for several years in the gravel-pit pools at Mitcham.
Author: | Henry Groves |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 1 Apr 1882 |
Classmark: | DAR 165: 236 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-13751 |
To Carl du Prel 19 May 1874
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Carl Ludwig August Friedrich Maximilian Alfred (Carl) Du Prel, baron |
Date: | 19 May 1874 |
Classmark: | DAR 144: 5 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9462 |
To Thomas Rivers [14 February 1863]
Summary
Delighted by curious case of inheritance in the weeping ash [cited in missing letter from TR] "which produced weeping seedlings and itself lost the weeping peculiarity!" Wishes he could get authentic information on the weeping elm.
What TR says of seedlings conquering each other well illustrates struggle for existence and natural selection.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Thomas Rivers |
Date: | [14 Feb 1863] |
Classmark: | 19th Century Shop (dealers) (catalogue 5, 1988) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3982 |
From W. T. Preyer 21 March 1869
Summary
Has given a lecture series on Darwinism which was attended by 200–500 students.
Would like to compile a list of CD’s works.
Author: | William Thierry (William) Preyer |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 Mar 1869 |
Classmark: | DAR 174: 67 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-6676 |
From M. T. Masters 24 January 1876
Summary
He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]
Author: | Maxwell Tylden Masters |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 24 Jan 1876 |
Classmark: | DAR 171: 86 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-10366 |
To J. D. Hooker 3 June [1857]
Summary
"Law" [see 2092] correlating variability and abnormal development not confirmed by JDH for plants.
CD studies struggle for existence in his weed garden.
Scotch fir observed at Moor Park.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 3 June [1857] |
Classmark: | DAR 114: 200 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2101 |
From W. W. Reade 18 September 1871
Summary
There is a primary law of growth and innate improvement. Natural selection is a secondary law that operates to "arrange the details". This is not Lamarckian, because will is not involved.
Thanks for Chauncey Wright’s pamphlet [Darwinism (1871)].
Amused by critics who say CD is metaphysically unsophisticated.
Author: | William Winwood Reade |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 18 Sept 1871 |
Classmark: | DAR 176: 49 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-7950 |
Matches: 4 hits
- … without the geometrical ratio & struggle for existence— But without the battle it would …
- … of the individual. As it is, the struggle for existence supposing there is a regular law …
- … excited into special activity by the struggle for existence—or if its ordinary results are …
- … believe that had there been no struggle for existence there w d have been no development. …
From J. J. Weir [before 5] March 1868
Summary
Does not think females give preference to any males. Coloration, pugnacity; cases of use of colour in struggle for existence. [see Descent 1: 395.]
Author: | John Jenner Weir |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [before 5] Mar 1868 |
Classmark: | DAR 82: A109–12 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5985 |
From A. R. Wallace 11 March [1867]
Summary
ARW responds to CD’s list of queries about expression. Suggests acquiring informants through publishing the queries in newspapers. His doubts about their importance.
Has submitted caterpillar question to Entomological Society.
Author: | Alfred Russel Wallace |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 11 Mar [1867] |
Classmark: | DAR 106: B24, B45; DAR 82: A22 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5437 |
To William Graham 3 July 1881
Summary
Praises WG’s Creed of science.
He disagrees that the existence of natural laws implies purpose, but his "inmost conviction" is that "the Universe is not the result of chance". But then has horrid doubt whether convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from lower animals, are at all trustworthy.
Believes natural selection is doing more for progress of civilisation than WG admits.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | William Graham |
Date: | 3 July 1881 |
Classmark: | DAR 144: 345 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-13230 |
From J. D. Hooker [21 December 1862]
Summary
"Throttled off" Welwitschia paper at Linnean Society [Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 24 (1863): 1–48].
Has read Tocqueville’s Democracy in America [1835–40] – disagrees with it. Tocqueville says democracy in America is a success. Democracy has persisted because there has been no cause for its overthrow (i.e., no struggle for existence, too much mobility).
Sends J. W. Dawson’s unsatisfactory letter.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [21 Dec 1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 101: 80–2 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3856 |
From Jonathan Peel 4 March 1868
Summary
Sends copy of a paper on his flock of sheep, which confirms much of what CD says in Variation,
together with a note he made of an instance of cattle "determining the existence" of a tree [cf. Origin, ch. 3].
Author: | Jonathan Peel |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 4 Mar 1868 |
Classmark: | DAR 46.1: 96–7 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5977 |
From Anton Dohrn 12 February 1874
Author: | Felix Anton (Anton) Dohrn |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 12 Feb 1874 |
Classmark: | DAR 172: 1 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9285 |
To J. D. Hooker 24 December [1862]
Summary
Thanks for Dawson’s letter. Doubts his evidence that climate of land was not glacial when upheaved after submergence.
Encloses memorandum of questions for C. V. Naudin.
Expression of the emotions.
Is building a hothouse for plant experimenting.
JDH’s ideas on America are more atrocious than his. What a new idea that struggle for existence is necessary to try to purge a government! Probably true. Slavery draws him one way one day, another the next. Yankees are "detestable toward us". Tocqueville.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 24 Dec [1862] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 177 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3875 |
letter | (150) |
bibliography | (3) |
Darwin, C. R. | (94) |
Hooker, J. D. | (11) |
Gray, Asa | (3) |
Lyell, Charles | (3) |
Müller, Fritz | (3) |
Darwin, C. R. | (147) |
Hooker, J. D. | (18) |
Gray, Asa | (7) |
Wallace, A. R. | (6) |
Lyell, Charles | (5) |
illness in Commentary
Darwin in letters,1866: Survival of the fittest
Summary
The year 1866 began well for Charles Darwin, as his health, after several years of illness, was now considerably improved. In February, Darwin received a request from his publisher, John Murray, for a new edition of Origin. Darwin got the fourth…
Matches: 1 hits
- … The year 1866 began well for Charles Darwin, as his health, after several years of illness, was …