Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.
A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.
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Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.
A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.
Would like to see JDH become Sir J. H. Does not think JDH owes his position in science to his father.
Sends questions on Round Island – if JDH should write [to Henry Barkly?].
Has he read Federico Delpino on Marantaceae [Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 1 (1869): 293–206]?
Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].
Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.
CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".
Saw Alfred Newton.
CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,
and on cross- and self-fertilisation.
Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?
Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.
Orders seeds, ripened in Algiers; imported seed would be of no use. [Forwarded to Algiers by JDH, see 7272.]
Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.
CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.
Asks whether JDH can send seeds of Hibiscus africanus and of Nolana prostrata raised at Kew.
Thanks JDH for offer of lilies.
The paper on orchids is by Hermann Müller [Verh. Naturhist. Ver. Preuss. Rheinlande & Westphalens 25 (1868): 1–62], on Platanthera and Epipactis.
Cites another work by P. Rohrbach [Über den Blüthenbau (1866)].
MS [of Descent] ready for printer.
Has read Bentham’s last Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1870): lxxiv–xciv] with great interest.
Thinks well of Claparède’s criticism; worth publishing as an answer to Wallace. Bates thinks Wallace’s heterodox views have done mischief to the cause of evolution. Wallace thinks Claparède’s article very weak, CD concludes, because Claparède has arrived at an unpleasant judgment very much like Lyell’s about Bentham’s address.
CD would wager Lyell lately has said something about European Proteaceae.
Does not remember anyone before Wallace on Sumatra and Java.
CD does not think he has a chance against Brandt in French Academy election.
Has not heard of Curtis on Dionaea.
Duke of Argyll is clever, but it is a sin to speak of a real old Duke as a "little beggar".
"My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design."
On spontaneous generation and Bastian.
Discusses germination of charlock after a long interval.
Comments on JDH’s report of Liverpool meeting.
Huxley’s address.
Sir Roderick [Murchison]’s "apotheosis".
Tyndall’s lecture is "grand" except for egotistical beginning. Some Frenchmen have pitched into CD for using the "as if" reasoning, which Tyndall shows is justified.
Has just read George Rolleston’s address in Nature.
Anton Dohrn says German public have high opinion of Lyell.
Does not think so poorly of Nature as JDH does, by any means; fears Popular Science Review is rather ephemeral but more durable than Nature.
The case of the charlock.
Does not give much for botanical results of Round Island, but the zoology is wonderful.
Lyell’s new book [The student’s elements of geology (1870)]. Urges Lyell to make it Elementary principles.
Grove is disgusted with CD for being disquieted by William Thomson: "Take another dose of Huxley’s penultimate address to Geol. Soc." [Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 25 (1869): 28–53].
Sends enclosure [a letter from Lady Lyell?]. He is choking with vanity.
Is going to send Willy to Mr La Touche in Salop; he brought up young Colenso and Frank Lyell. Some of his friends will think he is sending his son into a nest of young adders!
Willy is back from New Zealand. JDH perturbed by what to do with him.
J. W. Dawson’s Bakerian lecture for Royal Society is full of errors, and JDH is forced to recommend that it not be published. [An abstract of the lecture was published: "On the pre-Carboniferous floras of north-eastern America", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 18 (1869–70): 333–5.]
Hibiscus and Nolana seeds not harvested at Kew. Sends list of the best plants of Lilium he can give.
Asks CD for name of work on orchids mentioned in his supplementary paper ["Fertilization of orchids", Collected papers 2: 138–56].
Has CD read E. Claparède ["Remarques à propos de l’ouvrage de M. Alfred Russel Wallace sur la théorie de la sélection naturelle", Arch. Sci. Phys. & Nat. n.s. 38 (1870): 160–89]? Is it worth translating?
CD and J.-F. de Brandt are "en lutte for Ac. of Sc. [France]. What a farce it is".
His work on Nepenthes supports Miquel’s and Wallace’s view of the zoology of Borneo and Sumatra.
Brian Hodgson on dogs.
H. C. Bastian’s book [The modes of origin of lowest organisms (1871)] unsatisfactory.
Lyell does not share CD’s view of Bentham’s address.
Sends seeds from R. L. Playfair in Algiers.
F. Delpino writes asking where M. A. Curtis has published physiological observations on Dionaea ["Enumeration of plants growing spontaneously around Wilmington, North Carolina", Boston J. Nat. Hist. 1 (1834–7): 82–140; see Insectivorous plants, p. 301 n.].
Talk with Duke of Argyll on CD’s and Wallace’s views on man.
Reports on the 1870 BAAS meeting at Liverpool. Huxley’s address was over the heads of the laymen.
Tyndall’s was eloquent to listen to, disappointing to read.
George Rolleston’s "Rococo" address [Nature 2 (1870): 423–7, 442–6].
Murchison.
Lyell.
Has done an immense lot of work.
Regrets CD has not kept the simple title "Origin of man" [for Descent].
Bentham has translated Miquel’s Sumatran supplement to his Flora van Nederlandsch Indie. It should be published. What does CD think is best vehicle? Nature is wretched and too ephemeral. What about Popular Science Review?