[Queries in CD’s hand answered on same pages by WBT.] Sexual selection of fowls; role of beauty in cocks.
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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.
[Queries in CD’s hand answered on same pages by WBT.] Sexual selection of fowls; role of beauty in cocks.
Sexual behaviour of fowls.
Describes her compassion for all his sufferings and writes of her wish that his gratitude could be offered to heaven as well as to herself. To her, the only relief is to try to believe that suffering and illness are from God’s hand "to help us to exalt our minds & to look forward with hope to a future state".
Will look for botanical specimens CD requested.
Tells of a kestrel with a broken leg which apparently was forced to change its diet to worms and snails because of the injury.
On his father’s crossing experiments with cacti, in which hybrids were found quite fertile.
On his breeding of guinea-pigs.
Sends Miss E. Watts’s message about crested fowls and Brahmas.
Offers CD a live Proteus anguinus from Adelsberg cave. In his hands it will have a fair chance of developing into "some type of Columbidae (say a pouter or tumbler)".
The Origin is universally praised in Italy and Germany, even by those who disagree with it.
Notes observations on the spread of bees in New Zealand and their importance as pollinators of clover and other introduced plants.
Sends his article ["Quelques nouvelles espèces de poissons fossiles", Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen, Haarlem 2d ser. 14 (1861)]
and Dutch translation of the Origin.
Distribution of varieties and subspecies.
George Maw’s review of the Origin [Zoologist 19 (1861): 7577–611].
Evidence of glacial action in Australia. [See Origin, 4th ed., p. 443.]
CD awarded honorary doctorate of medicine and surgery by the University of Breslau. [See 3194a.]
Thanks CD for his letter about GM’s review of the Origin.
Sends instances of correlative organisation and functions which he finds difficult to believe could have accumulated by gradual modifications.
[Letter erroneously dated 1862 by GM.]
Mention of Volucella.
The embryology of the vertebrate nervous system may be an exception to the law of inheritance at corresponding ages.
Gives some observations on the sensitivity of Drosera species and comments on cases of "dioecio-dimorphism".
Observations from a fortnight in Lochaber. Found the entrance to Loch Treig to present the clearest evidence of intense glacial action. States, in contradiction of David Milne-Home, that there is glacial scoring in Glen Spean, as Louis Agassiz described, and moraine around the mouth of Loch Treig. There is little sign of water erosion on the rocks crossed by the lines in Glen Roy. Believes the smoothed rocks at the eastern end of Loch Laggan are due to flow from the lake and not tidal action. The lines in Glen Roy are too neat for a lake shore subject to tides. Given the glacial scoring sweeping round from Glen Spean into Glen Treig, and all the boulders, TFJ is astonished that anyone could deny that there had been glaciers there. [See 3247.]
The Primula experiments of J. Sidebotham; HCW’s distrust of the results [see J. Sidebotham, "Specific identity of the cowslip and the primrose", Phytologist 3 (1849): 703–5].
Offers to publish Orchids, giving CD one-half of the profits of each edition.
Has found the reference to Charles Morren’s paper, "On the agency of insects in causing sterility in flowers" [Proc. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. 1 (1836): xliv–xlv].
Common white butterflies remove pollen-masses with their tarsi from plants of the Asclepiadaceae.
List of Australian plants that have become naturalised in the Nilgiris [India] and are turning out the native trees.