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The Charles Darwin Collection
The Darwin Correspondence Project is publishing letters written by and to the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Complete transcripts of letters are being made available through the Project’s website (www.darwinproject.ac.uk) after publication in the ongoing print edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press 1985–). Metadata and summaries of all known letters (c. 15,000) appear in Ɛpsilon, and the full texts of available letters can also be searched, with links to the full texts.
Sends his thanks for a kind letter; he has copied out the last sentence of the Origin.
Glad correspondent’s paper went well.
Poor health and much work forces CD to be brief.
Sends, for identification, specimens of bees and wasps which fertilise orchids. [Notes in FS’s hand on the same sheet identify the specimens.]
Reminds CWC that he offered to give information with respect to his observations on hollyhocks. Wishes he could persuade CWC to undertake experiments on the fertility of some crosses between the most distinct varieties.
Asks DO to give enclosed [letter?] from John Scott to Hooker.
JS’s work on orchid self-sterility; Acropera has 371250 seeds in one capsule.
Wishes something could be done for Scott.
Thanks HBD for his note. The analogy of surnames had not occurred to CD – only that of language generally, as shown so well by Lyell. Fears HBD’s argument about progression would not have much weight.
JL’s review of Huxley ["Lectures to working men", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864)].
[No informatiion about content.]
Asa Gray’s high opinion of ARW as a reviewer [reference to S. Haughton’s paper on bees’ cells, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3d ser. 11 (1863): 415–29, reviewed by ARW in "Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton’s paper", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3d ser. 12 (1863): 303–9].
Has seen that ARW has read a paper to the Linnean Society.
Thinks that Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics (Spencer 1851) would be too deep for him.
CD very ill.
Suspects F. Boott’s widow is illegitimate granddaughter of Erasmus Darwin.
CD, like JDH, has speculated that agrarian weeds have become adapted to cultivated ground. Suggests comparison with country of origin.
Wallace’s praise of Herbert Spencer’s Social statics baffles CD.
[Letter completed by E. A. Darwin.]
CD’s illness.
The difficulty of getting John Scott to publish his work. Has sent Scott’s paper [on Primulaceae] to Linnean Society. CD is sure it is valuable.
CD continues very ill.
His only work is a little on tendrils and climbers. Asks whether all tendrils are modified leaves or whether some are modified stems.
Last number [Jan 1864?] of Natural History Review is best that has appeared.
JS’s Primula paper was read at the Linnean Society and praised warmly by G. Bentham. Hooker was not present.
Compares Clematis and Tropaeolum with respect to touch response. Tropaeolum shows a momentary response and quick recovery. Clematis takes hours to respond, and shows no recovery.
CD can show the gradations between leaves and tendrils, but how a branch passes into a tendril utterly puzzles him.
Bentham so impressed with JS’s paper that he is invited to become Associate Member of Linnean Society.
Sends Hermann Crüger’s paper ["A few notes on the fecundation of orchids and their morphology", J. Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 127–35] for publication.
"Boasts" of confirmation that sexes are separate in Catasetum.
Does not know Scott’s qualifications to be curator at Kew.
Frankland’s theory of glaciers is absurd.
Has JDH heard claim that plants in Northern and Southern Hemispheres turn in opposite directions?
Are there plant families with no twining and climbing plants?
Asks for a Smilax to study movement.
Has not worked for six months due to illness.
Has been looking at climbing plants.
Hermann Crüger’s paper shows that CD was right about Catasetum pollination. Crüger’s account of pollination of Coryanthes "beats everything".