To understand Leschenaultia pollination CD requires field observations in the native country.
Has observed two forms of cowslips, which he calls male and female. The same two forms are found in primroses.
To understand Leschenaultia pollination CD requires field observations in the native country.
Has observed two forms of cowslips, which he calls male and female. The same two forms are found in primroses.
Describes Sedgwick’s attack on CD’s views [at Cambridge Philosophical Society] and his own defence, though he believes CD has pressed his hypothesis too far.
Dissection of Leschenaultia convinces CD insect agency necessary for self-fertilisation in this case.
Primroses and cowslips seem universally to occur in two forms. Very curious to see which plants set seed.
J. S. Henslow’s defence of CD;
[Thomas?] Thomson’s opposition to Origin.
Instructs JDH on how to pollinate Leschenaultia.
Evidence of Leschenaultia and the dioecious condition of cowslips and Auricula is making necessity of insect pollination "clear and clearer".
Lyell, de facto, first to stress importance of geological changes for geographical distribution.
Asa Gray has given CD too much credit for theories of geographical distribution.
Reaction to hostile criticism
and debt to Lyell, Huxley, JDH, and W. B. Carpenter.
Gives references to experiments on cowslip for W. H. Harvey.
Suggests possible sources of error in results. Feels evidence is overwhelming that cowslip and primrose are varieties.
Has received laudatory verses on the Origin from some botanist; suspects Francis Boott.
Floral anatomy.
Wallace’s capital response on reading Origin.
E. W. Binney has published on coal-plants living in marine waters ["On the origin of coal", Mem. Lit. & Philos. Soc. Manchester 2d ser. 8 (1848): 148–94], an old CD idea.
Waste of pollen in horse chestnut will make a good case against perfection.
Convinced selection is the efficient cause. Less convinced of physical causes than JDH because he sees adaptation everywhere and that must be due to selection.
Harvey’s letter to JDH more accepting of natural selection than CD expected.
Battle over Origin is raging in the United States.
Weary of hostile reviews.
Doubts about going to Oxford [for BAAS meeting].
CD’s divergent series explains those anomalous plants that hover between what would otherwise be two species in a genus.
Inclined to see conifers as a sub-series of dicotyledons that developed in parallel to monocotyledons, but retained cryptogamic characters.
Mentions H. C. Watson’s view of variations.
Man has destroyed more species than he has created varieties.
Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.
In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
Darwin references a "capital" letter he has received from ARW following ARW's reading of On the Origin of Species.