CD sends reference for "Laburnum case", with comment on his own credulity.
Wants to quote JDH on plants endemic to NW. America.
Showing 61–80 of 197 items
CD sends reference for "Laburnum case", with comment on his own credulity.
Wants to quote JDH on plants endemic to NW. America.
Can no longer make out story of NW. American plants; consulting Asa Gray.
Questionable validity of seed-salting experiments.
Aristolochia and Viscum seem to shed pollen before flower opens.
Ray Society should only do translations.
Thomas Thomson in India has rediscovered Aldrovanda, a rare relative of Drosera.
Madeiran insects. Regards the "Atlantic province" as a centre of the Coleoptera.
On the relationship of the loss of the powers of flight [in Coleoptera] to increase of bulk.
Hybrids of Phasianus versicolor breed freely between themselves as well as with common pheasants. Has been assured that hybrids between mallards and pintails are sometimes fertile inter se.
CD cannot swallow continental extensions. Has written to Lyell giving a lengthy criticism of the concept [see 1910] and has asked Lyell to forward the letter to JDH.
Perhaps Aristolochia and Viscum are protandrous.
Troubled by JDH’s connection between Antarctic island flora and Fuegia, which CD sees as part of a general relation to southern circumpolar flora. Encloses list [not found] of plants from Tristan d’Acunha.
CD writing species sketch; must cite cases favouring multiple creations.
Requests details on species JDH listed as common to Chile and New Zealand. Notes their genera are mundane.
[T. Bell Salter’s?] "hybrid" Epilobium a false claim.
Admires Huxley’s response to Falconer [see 1904].
Tristan da Cunha plant list, requested by CD, supports JDH’s position [on continental extension?].
Chilean plants not exceptional.
JDH considers parallels between Australian Alps and European plants strong evidence for multiple creations.
Has found no case of Huxley’s eternal hermaphrodites.
Cruelty and waste in nature.
CD does not believe in hybrids.
One proven case of multiple creations would smash CD’s theory.
Asks JDH to read MS on alpine and Arctic distribution.
Lyell’s "conversion" to mutability.
Has reduced 20 Cyrena species to geographical varieties of one species, Cyrena fluminalis. Hooker is reducing Indian flora at the rate of 19 to 1.
Recommends W. H. Harvey’s Seaside book [1849] and Charles Pickering’s Races of man [1850].
Lists Lusitanian shells with wide ranges beyond that geographical province.
Antiquity and elevation of land mass is more important than latitude for the distribution of shells.
Responds to CD’s questions about the geographical distribution of freshwater fishes.
Thanks for information about variability in shells.
Comments on Harvey’s Seaside book [1849].
"I am growing as bad as the worst about species and hardly have a vestige of belief in the permanence of species left in me".
Multiple creations.
Necessity for crossing in plants and animals: JDH to take up the subject; explains separate sexes in trees.
Continental extensions.
CD’s predicament with continental extensions: they would remove argument for multiple creations, yet he opposes the doctrine. Lyell will not express an opinion on this.
Lyell fears mutability would lead to more specific names.
Encloses copy of letters to Lyell [1910 and 1917].
Believes intermediate varieties are generally less numerous in individuals than the two states that they connect.
Discusses the difficulties of deciding what is the typical form of a species
and gives some opinions on the variability of introduced species compared with indigenous species.
One plant in self-sown patch of Aegilops has assumed a triticoidal character; JSH feels it may be an example of Aegilops passing to wheat.
JDH’s arguments against transmutation: 1. Plants do not show the confusion he would expect; 2. Under clearly similar physical conditions we do not find same species.
JDH’s argument against migration: commonality of alpine species. Believes migration opposes facts of botanical distribution in Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand; prefers continental extension theory.
Agrees that Lyell’s letters shed no new light on extensions issue. Continental extensions: opposes their being hypothesised all over world.
Commonality of alpine plants damns both extension and migration.