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.
Showing 61–80 of 175 items
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.
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.
Finished the last proofs of Descent a few days ago. "I shall be well abused."
St George Mivart’s Genesis [of species]: very good, unfortunately theological. Will tell heavily against natural selection but not against evolution, and this is "infinitely more important".
Returns pamphlets.
B. T. Lowne’s observation [Mon. Microsc. J. 4 (1870): 326–30] that boiling does not kill certain moulds is curious, but then how account for absence of all living things in Pasteur’s experiment?
Always delighted to see a word in favour of Pangenesis.
Thiselton-Dyer’s paper ["On spontaneous generation and evolution", Q. J. Microsc. Sci. 10 (1870): 333–54] is Spencerian.
The chemical conditions for first production of life are said to exist at present, but in some warm little pond today such matter would be absorbed or devoured, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.
Asks name of an Abutilon from Fritz Müller.
Questions about Drosophyllum for experiments;
the meaning of "Sirdar".
Wonderful success of Descent. Astonished by liberality of public. No abuse yet.
Marvels at JDH’s plans for a trip to Morocco. Asks him to look for alpine insects.
Sends Hibiscus
and enclosure [Queries about expression?] on chance of "any point being observed" in Morocco.
Murray informs him edition of Descent will probably be 6500 copies.
Delighted to hear from Lyell of JDH’s return from successful ascent of the Atlas Mts.
Fears JDH found no Madeira or Canary types, but CD is pleased at his moraine discovery.
Thinks Lyell’s health is serious.
Lady Lyell’s anxiety over Lyell’s health.
Preparing new edition of Origin.
Asks whether anything was observed [in Morocco] on expressions.
Did JDH notice whether pollen-masses in Ophrys apifera in N. Africa fall on the stigma, as in England?
Honoured by Abutilon name; describes observations on its fertilisation.
Henrietta’s marriage a great loss to him.
Latest Quarterly Review has article, "evidently by Mivart", that cuts CD into mincemeat.
Asks for name of species of mouse J. S. Henslow used to keep [see 598].
Thanks for information about Henslow’s mouse.