Returns "excellent" MS in which CD favours hybrid origin of domestic dog, which CL believes strengthens case for common progenitor of wild species.

Doubts CD’s authorities for antiquity of dingo.

Variation will raise many points for investigation.

"Leporine" hare–rabbit hybrid should be investigated.

Has re-read passages in Origin that CD suggested.

Annals of Natural History would probably reprint Gray’s review of Origin at their own expense.

CD’s thought that modern reptiles could not develop into existing Mammalia but only into another high form is a "grand notion" compatible with "the infinite capacity of the creative power".

Comments on New Guinea marsupials.

Still thinks that the Australian genera and species are so well fitted for extraordinary droughts that they would get the better of the dingo.

Suggests that once there were more races of man, though from common stock. Competition and then hybridity checked divergence.

Falconer’s views on elephant classification. CL attaches little value to Falconer’s objection that mastodons and elephants do not come in chronologically, as they should in CD’s view.

Fears that multiple origin of the domestic dog will be extended to mammals or man. Believes, with Hooker, that whatever occurs in domestication is possible in nature.

Expects lack of diversification of immigrant mammals on long isolated islands will come to show slowness of selective change.

Asks whether CD has speculated on turtles becoming terrestrial on remote islands.

Perhaps non-diversification on islands is explained by tiny proportion of variable species. Those that vary on continent may not do so on island.

A. Gray is afraid of objections to Origin from imperfection of fossil record.

His argument with Falconer over the hypothesis of limited modifiability.

Are the bird-like characters of the Apteryx parts not yet suppressed or nascent organs?

Extinctions of ammonites, belemnites, and hippurites are striking. Perhaps ammonites made way for higher cuttle-fish.

Believes hybrid origin of domestic dog would weaken objections to treating white man and negro as species. Are there not many reputed species among the Mammalia more closely related than these races?

Objects not to the term "selection" but to what CD assigns to it. It should not be confused with the "Creative power" behind variation and the "capacity of ascending in the scale of being".

CD would have carried the public more if he had explained adaptations by multiple causes, some unknown and some well known, i.e., natural selection.

Discusses Hooker’s views of extinction on St Helena.

Work on antiquity of man suspended.

Stopped by 11th edition of Principles of geology [1872].

Wonders why the coracoid bone in the flightless Apteryx is so large when the clavicles are reduced. The clavicles are even separate in the ostrich. The large coracoid in reptiles is explained by the connection to the forelimbs.

CL has calculated that elevation and subsidence of certain formations in Sweden and Norway take place at the rate of 2 1/2 feet per century. He now proposes to estimate the age of a bed by including a conjecture that pauses occur in the oscillations in the ratio of 4 periods of stasis to one of movement. Applying this formula to Scotland, the last subsidence and re-elevation would be 590,000 years and the age of the beds with human implements would be 20,000 years.

Satisfied that CD finds his conjectured rate of elevation and long periods of stasis reasonable, even if these periods cannot be estimated. Explaining upheaval by subterranean lava flow makes these pauses plausible. Suspects that mountainous areas move more than lowland and coastal areas. General upheavals or subsidence in Europe in glacial period are unlikely. Believes with Jamieson that there was glacial action in Scotland before its submergence and that it was equally mountainous then. Subterranean upheaval visits different countries by turn. Horizontal Silurian strata must have been submerged and upheaved. Rest has always been the general surface character. Believes, however, that the quantity of late Tertiary movement is against CD’s belief in the constancy of continents and oceans: perhaps since the Miocene period, but not since the Cretaceous.

Response to Origin. Praise for summary of chapter 10 and chapter 11.

The dissimilarity of African and American species is ‘necessary result of “Creation” adapting new species to the pre-existing ones. Granting this unknown & if you please miraculous power acting’.

C. T. Gaudin writes of Oswald Heer’s finding many species common between Miocene floras of Iceland and Switzerland. Interesting for CD’s migration theory.

Asks for copy of CD’s paper ["Ancient glaciers of Caernarvonshire", Collected papers 1: 163–71]. Gathers that drift of Moel Tryfan is glacial.

Believes Glen Roy roads formed later than submergence of Scotland.

Asks CD’s opinion concerning relative chronology of various glacial deposits, particularly a flint tool find in the Ouse River near Bedford.

Ice could not have formed the blockages in Lochaber unless in every case the water escaped over some col into a contiguous valley on the same watershed, or into the eastern watershed. Supposes that the cols were not land-straits, but the places where the lakes were drained when forced to flow the wrong way.

Comments on [MS of] CD’s paper ["Elevation on the coast of Chili" (4 Jan 1837), Collected papers 1: 41–3].

Invites CD to dinner. "Don’t accept any official scientific place, if you can avoid it".

"I could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral reefs, but of the top of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter youself that you will be believed, till you are growing bald, like me, with hard work & vexation at the incredulity in the world."

Suggests that the height of the water which formed the shelves in Glen Roy was determined not by the height of the blocking glacier but by the height of a col. Notes problems in the idea.

Jamieson has revisited Glen Roy and confirmed his theory of glacier lakes.

A. G. More considers CD the most profound of reasoners.

Syenitic granite from Norway carried as far as Osnabruck.

Has met warm reception in Germany.

Leopold von Buch mistaken in believing that granite overlies transition rock in Norway. Granite sends veins into transition and gneiss.

Has been examining fossil shells of Crag with Heinrich Beck. Beck admits some shells are of species still living.

CL still believes Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene are satisfactory divisions of Tertiary epoch.

Defends position he takes on species [in Antiquity of man]. CD overestimates CL’s capacity to influence public. Will not dogmatise on descent of man; prepared to accept it, but it "takes away much of the charm from my speculations on the past". Cannot go to Huxley’s length with regard to natural selection. Responds to CD’s comments on Antiquity of man.

Lyell has received compliments for letting readers draw own inferences [on species question]. Now feels he earlier did Lamarck injustice. [CD’s] substitution of variety-making power for volition [as in Lamarck] in some respects only a change of names.

Thinks Huxley taking on too many responsibilities.

Has been to Osborne on the Isle of Wight to visit Queen Victoria, who had lots of questions about CD.

Would like to talk over Salisbury Craigs with CD.

CL’s father enthusiastic over Journal of researches.

Comments on Élie de Beaumont’s theory of mountain elevation.

Asks about parallel lines of upheaval and depression in the Pacific.

Glad CD likes Athenaeum Club.

Comments on methods of work.

Invites CD to visit Kinnordy.

Defends BAAS: "in this country no importance is attached to any body of men who do not make occasional demonstrations of their strength in public meetings".

With respect to Glen Roy, notes existence of deposits destitute of shells.

Delighted to hear that CD was awarded Copley Medal. Important because award by chartered institution acts on outsiders and helps increase stock of moral courage.