Identified two flies as species of Empis that suck flowers, but the females also feed on small Diptera.
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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.
Identified two flies as species of Empis that suck flowers, but the females also feed on small Diptera.
Sad that CD is quitting his studies of orchids.
Found 27 flowers of Orchis latifolia and in 16 of them were dead flies of one particular kind.
Discusses heterostyly in Houstonia.
Sends orchids.
Discusses publication of second German edition of Origin [1863] and German edition of Orchids [1862].
Oliver has written able paper on dimorphism for Natural History Review [n.s. 2 (1862): 235–43].
CD’s account of Viola is novel and interesting.
Has finished Cameroon mountain plants.
Jury work at exhibition.
Domestic problems – wife is ill, no cook, etc.
Offers rare Irish orchid (Spiranthes).
Leonard Darwin has scarlet fever so GHD has said he should be sent home and has asked E. A. Williams to call at Down.
Has read the Origin several times. His position is like Asa Gray’s: he wishes to believe in descent, but proofs of natural selection are lacking.
Looks forward to CD’s promised large book.
Thanks for Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Did CD sow the seeds of his crosses? One would like to know whether the two forms reappear at random.
Sorry he did not meet CD in London.
Discusses investment in land as compared with railway shares.
Sends answer to Wedgwood’s query
and is sorry to hear CD is again unwell.
His book is progressing very slowly.
Asks that CD not make use of any of the facts about generative organs in beetles for he finds "such a chaos of statements" that facts are not to be depended upon.
WED’s travel plans; an insect he has observed on Orchis maculata.
Has broken up school a few days early to avoid danger. Hopes CD’s son is nearly recovered.
Household problems: wife’s health, visitors to Kew.
Will go to sale of J. C. Ross’s effects looking for glacial and Kerguelen Land works not at British Museum.
Asks CD to help Thomas Carlyle find and borrow a book.
Has received Australian government grant to collect and publish on fossils. Has collected thousands of fossils.
Yesterday found hundreds of [Ophrys] apifera and [Ophrys] arachnites in bloom in the same area. The two species grow in clumps and do not mix with each other.
L. C. Treviranus inclined to translate Orchids, but "unfortunately" HGB has already done it. Book’s discussion of plant sexuality important for zoology as well as botany.
Origin is in press. Attaches a list of "quelques petites difficultées" encountered in his translation.
Thanks for Orchids.
Plans to publish soon on hybrids.