Reports instances of birds admiring their images in mirrors or on pictures.
Showing 41–60 of 281 items
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.
Reports instances of birds admiring their images in mirrors or on pictures.
Going to Orient as naturalist aboard the Rifleman. Offers CD his services.
Is sending Ophrys plants marked as CD requested as wild or under cultivation. Discusses arrangements for a scheme planned for 1867 and his method for marking his Ophrys specimens.
Regrets that his health prevents their meeting, but offers some suggestions for the expedition to the Malay Archipelago and coast of China: the search of caverns in the Malay Archipelago for fossil bones, deep sea dredging in the tropics, glacial action in any moderately steep mountains, means of geographical distribution, the history of domestic animals in these regions, and gestures and expressions of real savages as compared with our civilised expressions. [See 5008 and 5011.]
Suggests two ways of financing what Susan will owe Catherine’s estate.
Division of Catherine’s estate.
Arrangements for EAD’s will.
Wishes CD would pay him another visit.
Thanks for CD’s suggestions. [From CD’s notes on CC’s previous letter, these were (1) means of distribution; (2) domestic animals; (3) gestures of savages.]
Had Busks and Lyells to dinner.
Examines and criticises evidence for CD’s hypothesis that the glacial period was not one of universal cold. Physicists deny its possibility.
Informs CD third edition of Origin is exhausted. Proposes a new edition. Has CD any changes? Since demand is slowing up, proposes printing only 1250 copies and deferring payment of CD’s share until sales have repaid manufacturing costs.
Sends papers on graft-hybrids ["Sur les hybrides obtenus par la greffe", Bull. Congr. Int. Bot. & Hortic. Amsterdam (1865): 65–80, and "Über Mischlinge, durch Pfropfen entstanden", Sitzungsber. K. Phys.-oekon. Ges. Königsberg 6 (1865): 11–21].
Refers to part of JDH letter on glacial period sent on to Lyell. CD will not yield. Cannot think how JDH attaches so much attention to physicists. Has "come not to care at all for general beliefs without the special facts".
His health is improved but not so good as JDH supposes.
Has received the larva of the batrachian. Outlines its affinities. Problems of batrachian systematics.
William asks what to do about a complication in settling Aunt Catherine’s estate.
As Honorary Secretary of the Botanical Congress he asks that CD’s name be listed as a member of its committee.
Discusses the stinging habits of wasps and bees and whether or not they leave their sting in the wound.
Feels sure that at times the globe must have been superficially cooler. Believes CD will turn out right with regard to migration across the equator via mountain chains, while the tropical heat of certain lowlands was retained.
Thanks RC for photograph and for papers, which are of highest interest to CD. He is not fully convinced about the rose by RC’s graft-hybrid paper [Bull. Congr. Int. Bot. & Hortic. Amsterdam (1865): 65–80]. Still retains faith in his own view that no plant is perpetually self-fertilised.
Reviewing C. V. Naudin’s article ["Nouvelles recherches sur l’hybridité dans les végétaux", Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) 4th ser. 19 (1863): 180–203] for Popular Science Review [5 (1866): 304–13]. Requests references.
Proposes to visit Down on Easter weekend.
Thanks for references for his Naudin–hybridism paper [see 5029].
Asks, on behalf of his father, whether he might publish a new German translation of the Origin, believing Bronn’s to be inadequate.