Royal Society votes its Royal Medal for 1853 to CD. JDH reports the debate and vote at the Royal Society Council.
Honoured for Coral reefs
and Cirripedia.
Showing 1–20 of 517 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.
Royal Society votes its Royal Medal for 1853 to CD. JDH reports the debate and vote at the Royal Society Council.
Honoured for Coral reefs
and Cirripedia.
List of most anomalous Leguminosae [from George Bentham].
Is relieved his book [Himalayan journals] has been well received and glad he has successfully completed it.
JDH summarises letter from Humboldt.
JDH answers CD’s questions on glacial action in Himalayas.
Birth of JDH’s second child.
Asks CD’s view of "highness" and "lowness" in animals. Gives his own for plants; extent of deviation from type, e.g., floral parts deviating from leaf.
Reading B. C. Brodie’s Psychological inquiries [1854].
JDH on "highness" of Coniferae: they are genuine Dicotyledons, not a link to cryptogams; that is a geologists’ fallacy. Thus they are highest plants in Carboniferous.
Does not agree with CD’s "elastic" species theory. Long correspondence with Lyell on this.
JDH and F. W. Binney identify Calamites specimens as pith casts. They are cryptogams related to, but higher than, Lycopodiaceae and contradict progression.
Insects found in coal.
Lyell says Stonesfield slate marsupials are actually placentals.
JDH reading Alexander Braun on individuality ["Das Individuum der Pflanze in seinem Verhältniss zur Species", Abh. K. Akad. Wiss. Berlin (Phys. Kl.) (1853): 19–122].
Fossil leaves from Disko Island.
JDH to begin working out the botanical geography of the polar sea.
Has not forgotten CD’s request on aberrant species.
Has taken a house on Richmond Hill.
George Bentham’s list of aberrant plant genera. JDH appended the number of species in each genus according to E. G. Steudel’s catalogue [Nomenclator botanicus (1840–1)] and according to JDH and Bentham.
JDH speculates on effect of splitting Australia longitudinally on distribution; it becomes an argument for new creations.
Bentham’s list of aberrant genera: CD’s worry that he eliminated large genera a priori is half right. He eliminated those large, anomalous genera that virtually constitute natural orders. JDH criticises CD’s tabulations of aberrants.
Difficulty of distinguishing affinity and analogy in plants.
JDH not happy with CD’s explanation of the absence of north temperate forms in the Southern Hemisphere, given his explanation for the spread of sub-arctic forms to the south. [CD’s note is in response to JDH’s criticism.]
JDH’s contempt for R. I. Murchison.
There is a Cyperus species and a Pteris species endemic to hot volcanoes of Ischia. Why are there no other migrators?
CD’s tabulation of colonists curious but explicable.
Working on Tasmanian flora; contemplating general essay on Australian distribution: Tasmania and Australia same alpine species; Swan River flora very peculiar and quite distinct from New South Wales.
Trying to establish new journal at Linnean.
JDH criticises C. J. F. Bunbury’s paper on Madeira [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 1 (1857): 1–35].
Absence of Ophrys on Madeira suggests to JDH a sequence in creation of groups.
Why are flightless insects common in desert?
Australian endemism.
Finds Forbes’s continental theories, migration, and double creation are all unsatisfactory explanations of geographical distribution of plants.
Is currently working on problems of sea transport of plant species.
European plants on Australian Alps only explicable by double creations.
Australian Leguminosae problem: of 900 species not ten are common to southwest and southeast. No migration; hence either creation or variation.
Himalayan thistles: graded intermediates between large and small English species, "shakes species to their foundations". Similarity of CD’s and his views on species.
Non-endemic Ascension Island plants brought by man, not wind-transported.
Bentham has found intermediates between oxlip and cowslip in Herefordshire.
JDH finds quantity of albumen in seeds is not variable within a species.
Can no longer make out story of NW. American plants; consulting Asa Gray.
Questionable validity of seed-salting experiments.
Aristolochia and Viscum seem to shed pollen before flower opens.
Ray Society should only do translations.
Thomas Thomson in India has rediscovered Aldrovanda, a rare relative of Drosera.
[T. Bell Salter’s?] "hybrid" Epilobium a false claim.
Admires Huxley’s response to Falconer [see 1904].
Tristan da Cunha plant list, requested by CD, supports JDH’s position [on continental extension?].
Chilean plants not exceptional.
JDH considers parallels between Australian Alps and European plants strong evidence for multiple creations.
JDH’s arguments against transmutation: 1. Plants do not show the confusion he would expect; 2. Under clearly similar physical conditions we do not find same species.
JDH’s argument against migration: commonality of alpine species. Believes migration opposes facts of botanical distribution in Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand; prefers continental extension theory.