Arrangements to dine at JDH’s club.
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The Charles Darwin Collection
The Darwin Correspondence Project is publishing letters written by and to the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Complete transcripts of letters are being made available through the Project’s website (www.darwinproject.ac.uk) after publication in the ongoing print edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press 1985–). Metadata and summaries of all known letters (c. 15,000) appear in Ɛpsilon, and the full texts of available letters can also be searched, with links to the full texts.
Arrangements to dine at JDH’s club.
HCW’s criticisms of CD’s theory.
Thanks for plant names.
H. C. Watson a renegade about natural selection. Discusses HCW’s views.
F. Müller’s letter enclosed.
Friedrich Hildebrand’s experiments are splendid for Pangenesis [Die Geschlechter-Vertheilung bei den Pflanzen (1867)].
Sends a pamphlet by W. R. Greg [Malthus: re-examined by the light of physiology (1868)].
Many Cucurbitaceae have smaller male than female flowers.
Has written to H. C. Watson on the counterbalance [to variation] of crossing and uniform conditions. Watson has forgotten the argument.
Has written to F. Müller on abnormal Solanum.
Does not understand Hildebrand on potatoes.
Discusses Balanophora with conspicuous male flowers and absent female perianth.
T. V. Wollaston’s financial misfortunes.
CD’s son George’s success [at Cambridge].
Grieved by Wollaston’s troubles. Offers contribution of £100. "How foolish men are in their investments."
Delight about George’s success.
Wollaston’s situation hopeless; he must go to Boulogne or Jersey to live. A friend will keep his collection and books together.
JDH’s opinion of Wollaston’s Coleoptera Hesperidum [1867].
Cannot read Duke of Argyll.
CD’s view of Asa Gray as foreign member of Royal Society; compares him to Candolle.
Royal Society Council would feel bound to vote for Candolle, but privately would twenty times rather see Asa Gray elected.
Asks for title of Wollaston’s Cape Verde book [Coleoptera Hesperidum (1867)].
Supposes JDH has received his letter in answer to Gray.
Has been writing two long papers for Linnean Society [reprinted in Forms of flowers].
Amazed that Hugo von Mohl and E. M. Fries are not foreign members of Royal Society; Thomson going over the whole matter.
Candolle’s contribution to botany.
Lubbock shocked about Wollaston.
CD’s answer to Greg was capital.
Comments on Variation.
Charles Murchison’s work on Falconer’s Memoirs [Palaeontological memoirs and notes of the late Hugh Falconer (1868)] and JDH on Falconer.
Comments on Wollaston’s troubles
and his book [Coleoptera Hesperidum (1867)].
Mohl’s claim to foreign membership in Royal Society very strong.
Has been in despair about Variation – not worth a fifth part of the labour it cost him.
Is reading F. A. W. Miquel’s Flora du Japon [Prolusio florae Japonicae (1866–7)]; wonders whether A. Murray could be correct in his view that an area of the sea prevented Asiatico-Japan flora colonising western N. America.
Comments on A. Murray’s book [Geographical distribution of mammals (1866)].
Has heard that Variation sold the whole edition of 1500 copies in a week [see 5844]. Has done him a world of good. Pall Mall Gazette has review which pleased him exceedingly [see 5874].
Rejoices over news of Variation sales.
Pall Mall Gazette review [7 (1868): 555, 636, 652] is undoubtedly by G. H. Lewes [see 5951].
Dinner at Lyells’.
Dean Stanley favours a monument to Faraday in Westminster Abbey.
Perceval Wright is back from Seychelles and reports on plants he collected.
Review in Athenæum full of contempt. Is sure Owen wrote it [see 5931].
Gardeners’ Chronicle review [(1868): 184] favourable.
Fears Pangenesis is still-born. Cites Bates, Spencer, Lubbock, and Sir Henry Holland. Is sure Pangenesis will sometime reappear. Questions that are connected and answered by Pangenesis.
Could not believe Owen to be so demoniacal as to write the Athenæum review [of Variation].
Gardeners’ Chronicle review [see 5918] is weak. CD’s ideas on causes of variation may be as hazy as the reviewer’s.
Huxley’s clever remark on Pangenesis. JDH’s view of Pangenesis as fundamental to development doctrines, but nothing is gained by formulation in terms of germs or gemmules.
Tries to answer question on last page of CD’s letter anent sexuality.
Does not understand JDH on Pangenesis: on last page he appears to admit all that he regards as mere words on previous pages.
Wallace admires chapter on Pangenesis.
Pangenesis is a comfort. CD gains no idea from words like "potentiality" or "diffusing an influence"; atoms and cells give a distinct idea.
A. Newton told George that Berthold Seemann wrote the Athenæum review
and that Lewis [Lewes] did not write the Pall Mall Gazette review [see 5874].
Now quite understands Pangenesis. Satisfaction given by it, as CD says, may depend on one’s mental constitution. In all cases of descent JDH has always thought "all the properties of the parents are transmitted in the one cell and were diffused to every part of the future offspring".
Tyndall believes he feels atoms as firmly as St Paul believed he saw Christ.
He and Lizzie [Elizabeth Darwin] will come to Kew on Saturday.
Defers visit [to Kew] because of ill health.
Asks for [John?] Smith’s exact count of seeds of the crossed and self-fertilised Victoria water-lily. Similar question on Euryale seed and seedlings.
JDH’s coming [BAAS] Presidential Address.