Going to the Gold Coast. Will collect plants for Kew.
Offers his services. Particularly interested in making inquiries for CD about the human race.
Will answer CD’s queries from Africa.
Reports extreme amazement of some natives in Gabon upon seeing a white man for the first time.
Horned rams of Guinea sheep.
CD’s queries about expression are too difficult for him to answer.
Expressions of emotions in Gold Coast tribes.
Differences between males and females in sexual characteristics.
Castrated rams lose horns and manes.
Female members of tribes have no difficulty getting the husbands they want.
Has seen some natives who express surprise by clapping the hand to mouth.
Reports on a tribe that sells its ugliest slaves in order to maintain its uniformly fine appearance.
In America in 1867 Darwinism was a fait accompli. Asa Gray’s religious defence unnecessary after Theodore Parker and Emerson.
Brief observations on expression in Africa.
Alexander Agassiz is a good investigator, who differs with his father on evolution.
The behaviour of women and savages is a little easier to understand than that of civilised men.
Sends insect that carries dead ants, dead leaves, etc., on its back, as protective imitation.
The Negro’s idea of beauty is the same as white man’s.
Believes the Jollops select for blackness.
Native immunity from coast fever is not complete.
Has found stone instruments.
Could not go up the Niger, as trading steamers are trying to keep their trade in the dark.
Has seen several albinos, but no blushing. Thinks blacks do blush.
W. C. Wells’s theory relating black skin-colour and immunity to malaria may be true. Has seen Negroes come down with fever, but these were generally light in colour.
Ideas of female beauty of W. African Negroes are on the whole the same as those of Europeans.
Pleased CD is quoting him in Descent.
CD is correct; his notes are on the Jollof, not the Tollof, tribe.
On sexual selection and the sense of beauty among the W. African Negroes.
Sends quotation about Lycurgus and Spartan exposure of infants who were deemed defective.
Bibliographic references on sense of beauty and morals.
Meeting with CD postponed.
Thinks G. H. Lewes will review Descent in Pall Mall Gazette.
Sir Andrew Smith says Hottentots and Kaffirs laugh till they cry.
Various comments on Descent;
on suicide on Gold Coast;
on mulattoes’ not being prolific.
Praise for gentle but resolute tone of Descent.