Sends Nepenthes laevis.
Wallace for the Royal Medal is a good thought.
W. H. Harvey is at Kew and JDH has asked him about desert climbers.
Showing 121–140 of 252 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.
Sends Nepenthes laevis.
Wallace for the Royal Medal is a good thought.
W. H. Harvey is at Kew and JDH has asked him about desert climbers.
Morphological differences only partly define species; physiological differences, e.g., incompatibility results in Primula, are far more interesting.
T. Thomson’s review of Agardh’s muddled book ["Agardh’s classification of plants", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1864): 536–51].
Comments at length on Ramsay’s glacial paper ["On the erosion of valleys and lakes", Philos. Mag. 4th ser. 28 (1864): 293–311]. Prefers it to Tyndall, but unconvinced about sea action and unwilling to grant that ice power sculptures the totality of landscape.
Unwilling to support Wallace for Royal Medal.
Herbert Spencer’s noisy vacuity.
Garden varieties that are constant and infertile with parent deserve to be called species.
Scott ineligible to be Linnean Society associate because he is not in England.
George Busk’s incoherent talk on Gibraltar cave fossils.
JDH’s "shock" that CD was awarded the Copley Medal.
Oliver, Thomson and JDH independently concur mature tendrils of Dicentra are foliar, though JDH remembers they were axial in the spring. Expects he and CD were fooled, but will have to look again next spring.
Praises CD’s Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31].
JDH completing F. Boott’s work on Carex [Illustrations of the genus Carex].
JDH now does suspect Mrs Boott is illegitimate daughter of Dr Erasmus Darwin [see 4389].
JDH is making inquiries for CD on temperate climbing plants.
Discusses politics of Royal Society Council in awarding CD the Copley Medal.
Recounts row at the Royal Society over exclusion of mention of Origin from Sabine’s address awarding Copley Medal to CD.
Encloses two letters to JDH from James Hector in New Zealand.
Sabine’s address, printed in the Reader [4 (1864): 708–9], is good on the whole. Sends Huxley’s account of the row.
Praises John Ruskin’s eloquent reply to Jukes.
Forwards H. T. Stainton letter for reply.
Finds many Cucurbita have tendrils with sticking ends.
The "potentiality of so many organs in plants to play so many parts is one of the most wonderful of your discoveries . . . one day it will itself play a prodigious part in the interpretation of both morphological and physiological facts".
Is disgusted with Sabine’s address [see 4708] because of its mutilation of what JDH wrote.
THH’s slashing leader in Reader ["Science and ""Church policy"" ", 4 (1864): 821] – as usual he destroys all in his path.
Encloses letter from G. H. K. Thwaites with a message for CD [see encl].
Bentham wants "Climbing plants" for Journal of the Linnean Society, however long [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 9 (1865): 1–118]. Publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society restricts correspondence.
Reader much improved.
Tyndall did write piece on spiritualism ["Science and the spirits", Reader 4 (1864): 725–6].
"Suppressed gout" annoys him as a term cloaking ignorance.
Cannot come until week from Saturday.
Worked to death by Genera plantarum.
John Scott has arrived in Calcutta and has been given an appointment by Thomas Anderson.
Falconer’s illness and suffering. His great ability and knowledge.
CD’s paper ["Climbing plants"] went extremely well [at Linnean Society]. M. T. Masters and Bentham commented.
Why botanists will not subscribe to Falconer’s bust with enthusiasm.
Scott has been offered curatorship at Calcutta Botanic Garden.
Will arrive Saturday [4 Mar] on afternoon train.
Thomas Thomson has gone over Scott’s paper; encloses his conclusions. Not fit for publication in present form. His experiments should have been repeated to resolve his disagreement with Gärtner.
Reforms at Kew.
X Club Dinner. H. B. Wilson and J. W. Colenso as guests.
Troubled by Lubbock’s going into Parliament – loss to science.
Has written to Busk.
Sending Botanische Zeitung.
W. J. Hooker is unwell.
Bentham wrote on Planchon ["The ancient and modern floras of Montpellier", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1865): 202–25],
T. Thomson on subspecies ["Species and subspecies", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1865): 226–42]
and Greene of York on ["The Linnean Society’s transactions", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1865): 189–202].
JDH did the leader in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1865): 267–8, 291–2].
Delighted with CD’s calm opinion of Origin. Has same view of some of his own papers.
Pleased at CD’s opinion of Thomson’s article.
Non-reading is great fault of the best school of English scientific men.
Opposed to Lubbock’s going into Parliament.
W. J. Burchell’s collections are coming to Kew.
On FitzRoy’s suicide.
The Lyell–Ramsay disagreement [on formation of lakes?].
All overworked at Kew.
Burchell collections enormous.
Lyell has sent MS of Principles p. 111 on changes of temperature. JDH thinks Lyell blunders and is out of his depth.
Charmed with E. B. Tylor’s book on man [Early history of mankind (1865)],
disappointed in Lubbock’s [Prehistoric times (1865)].