Thinks CD’s case of twins with crooked fingers may be one from his twin study.
Thinks CD’s case of twins with crooked fingers may be one from his twin study.
Agrees to write to William Ogle [about twins with crooked fingers].
Describes growth of sweetpeas for experiment.
Asks whether the twins WO reported to CD [see 5470] were named Macrae. F. Galton has told him of a similar case with twins so named who inherited crooked little fingers from the maternal side [see Variation, 2d ed., 2: 240]. [The twins referred to by WO were actually his sisters, see 10170.]
Reports the death of Chauncey Wright: "a great blow … to the interests of sound thought and scientific inquiry throughout the country".
Asks whether CD has observed that bees limit their visits to a single kind of flower on each journey from the hive, as Aristotle has said they do. What advantage would such a limitation be to the insects?
Encloses a photograph and [?].
Will propose GJR for membership in Linnean Society.
Discusses GJR’s grafting experiments.
Sends a lecture CD wished to see
and corrects himself about the twins.
Thinks JGFR should send report of coloured spots on infants’ buttocks to some ethnological society.
CD’s note to Stokes [see 940] has been forwarded to George Grey; CD fears he may be offended. Asks how it could have happened.
Thanks FG for issues of Revue [Scientifique vol. 7, containing lectures by Claude Bernard].
Ogle says twins [with crooked fingers] are his sisters.
Recommends book by M. A. Puvis [De la dégénération des variétés de végétaux (1837)].
From Galton’s "twin study" he suspects that some progenitor of WO’s had the peculiarities in question.
Has collected cases of signs of assent for a revised edition of Expression.
Suggests bees visit same species because they know how far to insert proboscis and thus save time.
Sends CD the 2d part of his travels into the Tien-shan mountains [Erforschung des Thian-Schan Gebirgs-Systems (1875)].
Has written a paper on the ranges and systematics of wild sheep and on modifications probably resulting from competition with domestic sheep, which he wishes to translate into English and would like to see appended to Variation.
Discusses sexual selection in thrushes; it apparently modifies one species into another.
Observations on insectivorous plants.
Reports on Schrankia aculeata in which pinna and pinnule are sensitive, but, unlike Mimosa pudica, rachis does not move.
Comments on Insectivorous plants.
Describes his own work on fossil flora of Eastern Siberia.
Discusses genus Ginkgo.
Sends specimens of grafted potatoes. Describes grafting experiments designed to prove possibility of graft-hybrids, and thus, Pangenesis.
CD obliged about the Schrankia
and thanks WTT-D for details of last number of Gardeners’ Chronicle.
Thanks him for his kind review of Insectivorous plants in the Spectator. Disputes Tait’s report of a Nepenthes that trapped a fly but did not digest it.
Sends proofs of Variation [2d ed.] for FD to look over.