Summary

Murray has sold out Origin; wants a new edition immediately.

Asks THH to check whether Geoffroy de St Hilaire is correct [form of name].

Would be grateful for THH’s impressions on the truth of natural selection.

Summary

Henry Holland and others have attacked his reasoning from analogy to one primordial created form – by which CD means only that we know nothing of how life originated. The reasoning seems probable to him, so he has kept it in.

Summary

Encloses letter from Adam Sedgwick [2548].

Mentions conversion of A. C. Ramsay.

Summary

Thanks for THH’s examples of serially modified and homologous parts in Radiata. Cannot understand how he forgot such cases.

Agassiz’s Essay on classification [1859] utterly impracticable rubbish.

Summary

Asks that a copy of Origin [1860] be sent to R. A. von Kölliker.

A venomous review "manifestly by Owen" has appeared in Edinburgh Review.

Sedgwick has been fierce in Spectator, but fair and open.

Summary

Rejoices over THH’s lecture ["On species and races, and their origin", 10 Feb 1860, Not. Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 3 (1858–62): 195–200] to be given at Royal Institution. Offers pigeon illustrations.

Adam Sedgwick has sent a "slashing" letter [2548] about Origin.

Summary

Though many facts of palaeontology may be against his theory, CD begs JP to consider whether a theory wholly false could explain several classes of facts – which CD enumerates.

Summary

Thanks for THH’s review of Origin in Macmillan’s Magazine ["Time and life: Mr Darwin’s Origin of Species", 1 (1859–60): 142–8]. Reception of natural selection will depend on whether it explains the recognised laws in the several fields of natural history.

Domestic variation.

Summary

Congratulates JDH on finishing his introductory essay [to Flora Tasmaniae].

Lyell’s position on mutability appears more positive in his letters to JDH than in those to CD. Considers JDH a convert.

Summary

CD hopes Woodward was not the Athenæum reviewer. "The manner in which he drags in immortality, & sets the Priests at me … is base".

JDH has made CD feel he can "face a score of savage reviewers".

H. C. Watson has written to him in tremendous praise of the Origin.

Summary

Invites THH to join Hooker at Down on 5 April.

Summary

Sends THH questions about "serial homologies" and "vegetative repetition" in Mollusca and Radiata.

Abstract volume [Origin] nearly completed.

Summary

Galton agrees with GJR about rudimentary organs.

GJR’s note referred to possibility of selection acting on organic types as distinguished from individuals.

Thinks Grant Allen has not made out his point [in Physiological aesthetics (1877)], but his fundamental principle probably has much truth.

Summary

Sends MS on pigeons for THH’s lecture at Royal Institution.

Summary

Sends anecdotes and drawings of pigeons for Royal Institution lecture. Offers parts on hybridisation and pigeons from his MS (if THH has patience to read them).

Has heard George Busk is converted.

Summary

Describes some cases of geographical distribution of butterflies. Raises the perplexing question of the distribution of Pyrameis atalanta in Europe and P. calliroe in the Canaries.

Summary

Serial homologies in the Mollusca. Gives instances of repetition of homological parts in Radiata.

Summary

CD is "as ignorant of mechanics as a pig", but glaciers have interested him greatly. Hopes to hear that JT’s experiments with ice will explain the freezing together of ice below the freezing point.

Summary

THH’s letter about the Origin makes CD feel like a Catholic who has received extreme unction. Can now sing nunc dimittis. Had determined to abide by judgment of Lyell, Hooker, and THH.

Problem of how variations arise at all troubles him also.

Summary

Sends copy of 2d ed. of Origin, with list of corrections.

Is at work on "fuller work" [Variation].