Sends plant specimens. William Borrer will be glad to send seeds.
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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.
Sends plant specimens. William Borrer will be glad to send seeds.
Will send an Arethusa; offers other specimens.
Dimorphism.
Falconer contradicts Sumatra and Ceylon elephant story.
Lyell as rabid as ever about America.
JDH castigates the Americans after the Trent affair. The value of an aristocracy. How will CD answer Asa Gray’s letter?
His "remarkable plant" [Welwitschia mirabilis] exhibited at Linnean Society.
Genera plantarum is in press.
Sends C. W. Crocker’s address.
Doubts CWC can help with Mormodes.
Will see CD at Lubbock’s.
Wrote a "frightful screed" about aristocracy’s being a necessary consequence of natural selection, and then burnt it.
H. W. Bates is the only man "thinking out" natural selection to any purpose. "I think I have driven Bates back to Nat. Sel. as the only way of solving his difficulties."
HWB’s mimetic butterflies.
JDH wishes he had time to do the same thing with plants.
Owen and Huxley involved in a "contemptible" squabble in the Edinburgh newspapers.
Maximovitch reports Stellaria bulbifera is a Siberian form which never ripens its seeds.
Sends dried specimens of Melastomataceae.
Box of Melastomataceae has arrived.
Talked with [Duke of] Argyll about Origin. He is between stools: Owen and Lyell.
Pleased at CD’s opinion of his Arctic plants paper. CD has caught great blunder.
Lack of Arctic–Asiatic species in mountains of tropical Asia does not trouble him. Species seem to indicate some "current of migration" from Europe and W. Asia southeastward to Ceylon – an awful staggerer to bridge migrations.
Had it not been for CD, JDH would never have written such papers as his one on Arctic flora. The "evulgation" of CD’s views is the purest pleasure he derives from them.
He too is staggered that Greenland ought to have been depopulated during the glacial period. Absence of Caltha is fatal to its re-population by chance migration.
Returns Asa Gray’s letter. Disappointed with Gray. Comments on America. British–American relations.
JDH has probably influenced Bates by pointing out applicability of CD’s views to his cases.
Is greatly puzzled by difference in effect of external conditions on individual animals and plants. Cannot conceive that climate could affect even such a single character as a hooked seed.
Does not think Huxley is right about "saltus".
Lighthearted thoughts on "the development of an Aristocracy" after a visit to Walcot Hall, Shropshire.
On CD’s point about the effect of changed conditions on the reproductive organs, JDH does not see why this is not "itself a variation, not necessarily induced by domestication, but accompanying some variety artificially selected".
Identifies Calanthe masuca.
Asa Gray would not quarrel with them – "snubbing from us may have done him more good than our sympathy".
If CD means the old Vaucher, he was considered a very accurate, acute, able observer.
Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.
In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".
Will hope to be able to send Vanilla flowers in a day or two.
How is CD after his tremendous effect on the placid Linneans? ["Sexual forms of Catasetum", Collected papers 2: 63–70; read 3 Apr 1862.]
Is it convenient for him and Willy to come to Down from Thursday to Sunday?
Discusses Leschenaultia, finds no stigmatic surface in the indusium.
Gives information on where to obtain paper for drying plants and where to obtain a microscope.
Has dissected Leschenaultia biloba flowers. Finds no stigmatic surface in the indusium. Describes what is the apparent stigma but has found no pollen-tubes to confirm it as the real one.
Household problems – stolen silver, maids. His house for some months has had reputation for being not a little disreputable.
On Cameroon plants.
Does not know Rhododendron boothii; is sending Rhododendron keysii, a remarkable form. Will send Melastomataceae anon.