Reports safe arrival of rabbit sent by WBT.
SPW and Waterhouse agree on island faunas; gives Australia and Tasmania as examples. The "stream of migration" from Asia to Tasmania.
Looks forward eagerly to the publication of CD’s "specific" researches.
Invites CD to send his memoranda [on Manual of Mollusca].
Queries from CD on the distribution of molluscan genera referring to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [pt 3 (1856)], with SPW’s answers.
Answers CD’s questions about plants common to U. S. and Britain and their distribution in Europe.
Variability of agrarian weeds.
Thanks WBDM for the particulars on the iceberg.
Will look up the barnacle specimen to which he refers at British Museum.
WBDM should remember when he returns to New Zealand that aboriginal rat and frog are "great desiderata in Natural History".
Comments on TVW’s book [On the variation of species with special reference to the Insecta (1856)].
On TVW’s Unitarianism. Predicts TVW will fall further away from Christianity.
[Letter sent by TVW to Charles Lyell.]
Admires ELL’s plan to visit Madagascar.
Asks about fertility of hybrid cats, crosses among dogs in Africa, and appearance of feral pigeons at Ascension. Doubts existence of N. African greyhound.
Asks for specimens of pigeons and ducks from the Cape of Good Hope.
The responses to his queries on domestic variations are coming in from all over; believes he will make an interesting collection. At present concerned with rabbits and ducks.
Has told Lyell of his views on species and CL urges CD to publish a preliminary essay. Has begun to work on it, with fear and trembling at its inadequacies.
Wishes to borrow fly pincers for his son George.
Discusses T. V. Wollaston’s book on insect variation [On the variation of species (1856)].
Preference of stallions for hybrid mares.
Evidence relevant to E. Forbes’s land-bridge theory.
Do the plants that are common to Europe and North America nearly all live north of the Arctic Circle? CD bases his question on HCW’s "capital" comparison between relations of Europe to North America and Europe to E. Asia if the intervening land had been submerged. CD has been led to speculate that in the mid-Pliocene the organisms now living in middle Europe and northern U. S. lived within the Arctic Circle. Subsequent movements of this flora with advance and retreat of glaciers would explain present distribution better than Forbes’s vast submergences.
Smallpox in the village. Death of Joseph Parslow’s son.
Would like to compare the length of the wings of non-migratory and migratory swallows.
Wonders if EWVH could show him skins of Columba livia.
Does not intend to work systematically on cats. Their origin is in doubt and they have been crossed too many ways.
It would be valuable to know whether half-bred ducks are fertile inter se or with a third breed. Is investigating this with pigeons.
Condemns theory of Edward Forbes and others that many islands were formerly connected to South America by now submerged continents.
Sends a cultivated specimen of Myosotis (first generation) grown from seed sent by JSH. Asks for a tuft of flower.
Hopes JSH will publish a book on teaching botany, because he has no idea how to begin with his children.
Comments on Huxley–Falconer dispute [see "On the method of palaeontology", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 18 (1856): 43–54].
Wollaston’s On the variation of species [1856].
Has exploded to Lyell against the extension of continents.
Plants common to Europe and NW. America as result of temperate climate.
CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".
CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".
Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?
Seeks to verify whether bulldogs have degenerated in India [see Variation 1: 37–8].
CD has "sometimes gone so far as to doubt whether climate has any influence even on colour".