Summary

Benjamin D. Jackson will edit new Steudel’s Nomenclator.

JDH’s impressions of Lyell’s Life and letters, edited by Mrs K. M. Lyell [1881].

Summary

Thanks CD for his endowment of new Steudel’s Nomenclator [later to become Index Kewensis].

K. White’s gruesome ballad "Gondoline" frightened JDH as a child.

Summary

B. D. Jackson’s plan for new Steudel Nomenclator approved. JDH asks for CD’s cheque.

Summary

Politics at Kew led to a letter of thanks to CD from the First Commissioner for his gift.

Summary

Falconer’s misbehaviour.

Geology of Khashia [Khasi] mountains. Speculations on mountain building and origin of Himalayas.

Summary

Wants catalogue of small islands that contain peculiar plants. Thinks complete floras of islands in various stages of depression [subsidence] would provide good data.

Summary

James Wilson reports case of salmon hybrids.

Herrings inhabit freshwater lake in Scotland during winter.

JDH will edit juror reports for the Great Exhibition.

Summary

Flora of New Zealand.

Reconsidering variability of insular species.

Becoming convinced of the probability that the southern flora is a fragmentary one – all that remains of a great southern continent.

Summary

Royal Society votes its Royal Medal for 1853 to CD. JDH reports the debate and vote at the Royal Society Council.

Honoured for Coral reefs

and Cirripedia.

Summary

List of most anomalous Leguminosae [from George Bentham].

Summary

Is relieved his book [Himalayan journals] has been well received and glad he has successfully completed it.

Summary

JDH summarises letter from Humboldt.

JDH answers CD’s questions on glacial action in Himalayas.

Summary

Birth of JDH’s second child.

Asks CD’s view of "highness" and "lowness" in animals. Gives his own for plants; extent of deviation from type, e.g., floral parts deviating from leaf.

Reading B. C. Brodie’s Psychological inquiries [1854].

Summary

JDH on "highness" of Coniferae: they are genuine Dicotyledons, not a link to cryptogams; that is a geologists’ fallacy. Thus they are highest plants in Carboniferous.

Does not agree with CD’s "elastic" species theory. Long correspondence with Lyell on this.

Summary

JDH and F. W. Binney identify Calamites specimens as pith casts. They are cryptogams related to, but higher than, Lycopodiaceae and contradict progression.

Insects found in coal.

Lyell says Stonesfield slate marsupials are actually placentals.

JDH reading Alexander Braun on individuality ["Das Individuum der Pflanze in seinem Verhältniss zur Species", Abh. K. Akad. Wiss. Berlin (Phys. Kl.) (1853): 19–122].

Summary

Fossil leaves from Disko Island.

JDH to begin working out the botanical geography of the polar sea.

Has not forgotten CD’s request on aberrant species.

Has taken a house on Richmond Hill.

Summary

George Bentham’s list of aberrant plant genera. JDH appended the number of species in each genus according to E. G. Steudel’s catalogue [Nomenclator botanicus (1840–1)] and according to JDH and Bentham.

JDH speculates on effect of splitting Australia longitudinally on distribution; it becomes an argument for new creations.

Summary

Bentham’s list of aberrant genera: CD’s worry that he eliminated large genera a priori is half right. He eliminated those large, anomalous genera that virtually constitute natural orders. JDH criticises CD’s tabulations of aberrants.

Difficulty of distinguishing affinity and analogy in plants.

Summary

JDH not happy with CD’s explanation of the absence of north temperate forms in the Southern Hemisphere, given his explanation for the spread of sub-arctic forms to the south. [CD’s note is in response to JDH’s criticism.]

Summary

JDH’s contempt for R. I. Murchison.

There is a Cyperus species and a Pteris species endemic to hot volcanoes of Ischia. Why are there no other migrators?