Proof-correcting [of 2d ed. of Coral reefs?].
Showing 1–17 of 17 items
Proof-correcting [of 2d ed. of Coral reefs?].
Thanks her for her excellent criticisms and corrections [for 2d ed. of Coral reefs?].
Has been waiting several months for a microscope objective and would like it without delay.
Writes concerning the land he wishes to purchase from Sir John Lubbock.
CD guessed Carruthers was stirred up by Owen. Disgraceful treatment of Bentham.
Work on Descent and Coral reefs stops his doing anything of real interest.
Asa Gray’s letter. CD has acknowledged the honour [honorary membership in the Boston Soc. Nat. Hist.].
"What a demon on earth Owen is. I do hate him."
On digestive powers of Drosera and those of higher animals.
Comments on expression on two halves of human face.
Responds to TLB’s views of serpent- and fire-worship.
Poison of venomous snakes.
Asks JT to support his nephew, Henry Parker, for election to the Athenaeum.
Asks AN to vote for CD’s nephew, Henry Parker, at the Athenaeum.
Criticises paper by Ziegler [see 9339].
Acid experiments on seeds have failed.
Sends photograph.
Comments on Mme P’s bulldogs.
Cannot answer AN’s questions about Origin; it would take weeks to find the references. Assures AN he stated nothing without an authority he thought good.
Feels sure missel thrushes have increased in number since his youth. Starlings have also increased astonishingly in Kent. "How inexplicable most of these cases are".
In a P.S. remembers his source for statement about increase of missel thrushes in Origin.
Can give no definite information. Believes severe winters are by far the most important check on numbers of birds; the destruction of eggs is of subordinate importance.
Testifies to the trustworthiness of Charles Pearson.
Comments on JS’s lecture on evolution ["Address on evolution", Aberdeen Daily Free Press 24 Feb 1874].
Thanks for information about Hedychium. Hopes wings of Sphinx will be found covered with pollen for that will be a fine bit of prophecy from the structure of a flower to special and new means of fertilisation.
Has been at Descent so hard he has done nothing, not even H. Spencer’s answer.
Has not yet read Croll ["Ocean currents", London Edinburgh & Dublin Philos. Mag. 47 (1874): 94–122, 168–90].
Has heard nothing about Carter and Eozoon. Eozoon, he infers, is done for.
Has read Belt [The naturalist in Nicaragua (1874)]: best of all natural history travel books.
Has written to Fritz Müller about leaf-carrying ants.
Hopes to resume work on Drosera.
Etty [Henrietta Litchfield] is helping with Coral reefs [2d ed.]; will JDH lend her his copy?
FEA has expressed CD’s views on the moral sense with remarkable clearness and correctness; his eulogy is magnificent ["Darwin’s theory of conscience and its relation to scientific ethics", Index 12 Mar 1874]. Cannot give a judgment on the essay because he has had "no practice in following abstract and abstruse reasoning".
CD does not see how morality can be "objective and universal". No one would call the maternal bond in lower animals a "moral obligation". When a social animal "becomes in some slight incipient degree" a moral creature "capable of approving or disapproving of its own conduct" do not such obligations remain of a so-called instinctive nature rather than becoming at once moral obligations?