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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.
MS of a paper called "Comments on Mr Darwin’s grand theory", which generally supports CD but proposes that present flightless birds are primitive. Paper supplemented by a diagram showing the phylogeny of birds.
HW has confirmed the report in the Times of a shower of fish (minnows and sticklebacks) that fell on the Wedgwood colliery.
Responds to CD’s queries concerning faults; is sending sections of the kind he wants. The Merionethshire fault with a downthrow of 12000ft. [See Origin, p. 285.]
Will secure information on indigenous and naturalised bees as CD requests.
Believes Mexican and Jamaican Melipona are different.
Relieved by Wallace’s letter.
At work on introductory essay to Flora Tasmaniae.
European plants naturalised in Australia are almost all adapted to invading disturbed ground.
JDH supports Asa Gray against Alphonse de Candolle as foreign member of Royal Society.
Is sorry to hear of bad health of CD and his daughter.
Discusses, with an example, the difficulty of explaining structural differences between closely allied species.
Serial homologies in the Mollusca. Gives instances of repetition of homological parts in Radiata.
Outlines the basic categories of phanerogams.
Places Gymnospermae in the dicotyledons.
Evaluates the variable utility of embryological characters in plant classification.
Embryology of Diptera. Development of insects; metamorphosis. JL feels all insects go through metamorphosis but that in some of them, part takes place before birth.
On the strength of CD’s details about his work on species and his knowledge of CD’s former publications, JM offers to publish [Origin] without seeing the MS.
Lyell has been strongly urging John Murray to publish CD’s book [Origin]. JDH feels Lyell overestimates the public interest in such works.
Gives examples of plants showing most marked varieties on the edge of their range.
Reports his observations on the habits of slave-making ants (Formica sanguinea).
Provides requested information about certain railway shares.
Suggests giving Marcus Huish permission to shoot over CD’s Beesby estate, but not to revoke JH’s occasional privilege to take a visitor shooting there.
Praises the Origin: a "splendid case of close reasoning".
Objects to CD’s having ignored Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
Thinks CD should omit mentioning problem of explaining the eye at the beginning of chapter 14. Suggests rewording several passages.
Thinks want of peculiar birds in Madeira a difficulty, considering presence of them in Galapagos.
Has always felt that the case of man and his races is one and the same with animals and plants.
Wishes CD would enlarge on the doctrines of [Pyotr Simon] Pallas about the various races of dogs having come from several distinct wild species or sub-species.
Suggests organisms have a latent principle of improvement which is brought out by selection or breeding.
The antlers of 800 deer of the glacial period have been found in a cave. They show great variety of form, but gradation from one to the other can be traced when all are laid out. Suggests CD study changes that have taken place in the species since glacial period.
Has ordered the wicked book [Origin] CD has been so long a-hatching.
Since dogs have same gestation period as the wolf it is likely that the wolf is the ancestral wild species, if it is just one species.
CD’s belief that domestic dogs are descended from several distinct aboriginal species seems to contradict views on sterility of hybrids and variation in Origin. If domestic varieties came from hybrids of wild species it will be impossible to trace ancestry. Opponents will exploit these problems.
By this post he sends for approval specimen copy of CD’s book [Origin of species]. At 14 s., 1250 copies will yield £240, two-thirds of which will go to author. Arrangements for early copies.
Will welcome CD’s work [Origin] with a "close & continuous perusal".
Believes in the "operation of existing influences or causes in the ordained becoming and incoming of living species" and so could not regard CD’s attempt to demonstrate the nature of such influences as "heterodox".