Criticisms and comments on JDH’s "Insular floras" in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1867): 6].
Criticisms and comments on JDH’s "Insular floras" in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1867): 6].
CD should not be discouraged by the bulk of Variation. CD’s suggestion to print technical details in small type is good.
Murray has sent MS to a "man of letters and good information" as an experiment to test its effect. Has no intention of throwing up publication.
Sends paper on new species of Bonatea, to which he has given the name Darwinii.
Has now an extensive collection of insects.
Has discovered moths whose larva cases resemble perfectly the thorns of the Acacia horrida.
Has asked for the head of a Bushman murderer. Difficult to convince authorities of interest of science.
Relieved by JM’s note and by his agreement on type size. Is alarmed by what the verdict [on Variation] of JM’s friend will be. He is not a man of science. An unscientific reader would have condemned the Origin. An eminent semi-scientific man thought the Journal of researches not worth publishing.
Has given CD’s queries about expression to W. H. Stirling. Thomas Bridges, the catechist, had previously answered some questions incompletely [see 2643]; BJS forwards them [see Expression].
BJS answers CD’s query about when some calves show their adult colour.
Responds to CD’s criticisms. JDH is sometimes confused as to what he has borrowed from CD.
MS essay "On esculent fruits" [apparently enclosed in a missing letter].
Will introduce Charles Kingsley to CD.
More comments on "Insular floras": community of peculiar genera in the Atlantic islands descended from European plants now extinct.
Requests information about rudimentary muscles and organs in man. Asks about marrow of os coccyx, and about testes and ovaria in early embryos of both sexes.
Approves of type [for Variation]. Pleased to hear from Hooker that he is not surprised that MS is big.
Comments on MS on seed distribution sent by TB.
Thanks BJS for W. H. Stirling’s answers [to queries about expression]
and for information on cattle and breeding of dogs.
JL’s brother-in-law [Robert Birkbeck] would like a note of introduction to John Murray.
Encloses note of introduction to Murray.
Asks CD questions relating to the revised translation of Origin.
Seeks explanation of the case of the Rhynchaea, of which the female is more beautiful than the male, with the young resembling the latter. Wallace has told CD that at Nottingham AN explained this by the male being the incubator.
Does the male black Australian swan, or the black and white S. American swan, differ from the female in colour of plumage?
His view of CD’s hypothesis that Atlantic island genera are descended from extinct European plants.
On recent instalment of "Insular floras" in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1867): 50]. Approves of JDH’s abstract of argument for transport of species [i.e., migration, as opposed to continental extension hypothesis].
Suggests that, in some birds, plumage of males is less colourful than that of females; the reason is that the males perform the duties of incubation [see Descent 2: 204 n.].