To understand Leschenaultia pollination CD requires field observations in the native country.
Has observed two forms of cowslips, which he calls male and female. The same two forms are found in primroses.
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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.
To understand Leschenaultia pollination CD requires field observations in the native country.
Has observed two forms of cowslips, which he calls male and female. The same two forms are found in primroses.
Dissection of Leschenaultia convinces CD insect agency necessary for self-fertilisation in this case.
Primroses and cowslips seem universally to occur in two forms. Very curious to see which plants set seed.
J. S. Henslow’s defence of CD;
[Thomas?] Thomson’s opposition to Origin.
Instructs JDH on how to pollinate Leschenaultia.
Evidence of Leschenaultia and the dioecious condition of cowslips and Auricula is making necessity of insect pollination "clear and clearer".
Lyell, de facto, first to stress importance of geological changes for geographical distribution.
Asa Gray has given CD too much credit for theories of geographical distribution.
Reaction to hostile criticism
and debt to Lyell, Huxley, JDH, and W. B. Carpenter.
Gives references to experiments on cowslip for W. H. Harvey.
Suggests possible sources of error in results. Feels evidence is overwhelming that cowslip and primrose are varieties.
Has received laudatory verses on the Origin from some botanist; suspects Francis Boott.
Floral anatomy.
Wallace’s capital response on reading Origin.
E. W. Binney has published on coal-plants living in marine waters ["On the origin of coal", Mem. Lit. & Philos. Soc. Manchester 2d ser. 8 (1848): 148–94], an old CD idea.
Waste of pollen in horse chestnut will make a good case against perfection.
Convinced selection is the efficient cause. Less convinced of physical causes than JDH because he sees adaptation everywhere and that must be due to selection.
Harvey’s letter to JDH more accepting of natural selection than CD expected.
Battle over Origin is raging in the United States.
Weary of hostile reviews.
Doubts about going to Oxford [for BAAS meeting].