Responds to CD’s comments and criticism of Geographical distribution.
Showing 101–120 of 188 items
Responds to CD’s comments and criticism of Geographical distribution.
Responds to CD’s new work [Cross and self-fertilisation]. Suggests results might have been more convincing if CD had measured weights instead of heights. The fact that infertile hybrids have not been produced means that the "one great objection" has not been got rid of: the physiological characteristic of species. Suggests an experiment to produce "sterile mongrels" which would remove objection.
Thanks for new edition of Orchids.
The remarkable papers of Mott on Ernst Haeckel ["On Haeckel’s history of creation", Proc. Lit. & Philos. Soc. Liverpool 31 (1876–7): 41–89].
The part played by carbon in geological changes.
Thanks CD for Forms of flowers.
Further objections to "voluntary" sexual selection. Believes that he can explain all the phenomena of sexual ornaments and colours by laws of development aided by simple natural selection.
Excited by Thomas Belt’s "oceanic glacier river-damming" hypothesis. The last paper, "Glacial period in the Southern Hemisphere" in the Quarterly Journal of Science is particularly fine.
Sexual selection, he thinks, must be left to others to settle. "Conscious" will be substituted for "voluntary" selection. Sound- and scent-producing organs attributed to "natural", not "conscious", selection.
Requests support for his appointment as Superintendent of Epping Forest.
Working on a book [Australasia. Stanford’s compendium of geography and travel, edited and extended by A. R. Wallace (1879)].
Thanks for CD’s support for [Epping Forest] appointment. Doubts about the proposed management.
Gratified by CD’s praise.
Describes plan of his new book [Island life (1880)].
Efforts to secure a post.
Indicates portions of Island life that will interest CD. Explanation of the geological climate is the foundation stone of the book.
Hooker’s approval of the theory of Australian and New Zealand floras.
Response to CD’s notes [on Island life]:
1. On relation of paucity of fossils to coldness of water;
2. Cessation of the glacial period;
3. Rate of deposit and geological time;
4. The importance of preoccupation (by plants) in relation to plants arriving later.
Charge of speculative explanations is just.
Defends plausibility of migration of plants from mountain to mountain.
Thanks for book [Movement in plants].
ARW’s view of migration of plants from mountain to mountain gains support from case described in Nature [23 (1880): 125–6] by J. G. Baker. Identical species of alpine plants found in African mountains and Madagascar.
Appreciation of CD’s efforts in recommending him for pension. Asks about proprieties of thanking Gladstone and the signers of the memorial.
Further information about the pension with particular thanks to CD for his role.
Enthusiasm for Henry George’s Progress and poverty. Considers it to rank with Adam Smith’s work. His own work on the land question [Land nationalisation (1882)].
Thanks for book [Earthworms]. Asks whether leaf-mould is not formed by decay as well as by the agency of worms.
Refers to CD’s letter of "May last". ARW’s views on order of succession of species are in accordance with CD’s.
Disappointed that his paper ["On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 2d ser. 16 (1855): 184–96] elicited no discussion; now ARW is trying to prove it. Paper merely states the theory.
On black jaguars breeding inter se: ARW has never heard of a parti-coloured one.
Gives an extract from L. von Buch on the flora of the Canaries [Physikalische Beschreibung der Canarische Inseln (1825)].
Natural selection does not explain why animals of different groups in the same place often resemble each other.
No summary available.
Cannot accept invitation at present.
Is sending a wild honeycomb from Timor.