Is pleased to support SPW’s application for a position in the fossil department at the British Museum.
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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.
Is pleased to support SPW’s application for a position in the fossil department at the British Museum.
Thanks SPW for his history of Aptychus, which makes A. D. d’Orbigny’s view [that it is a cirripede] improbable. [See Fossil Cirripedia 1: 3.]
Specimens SPW sent are very useful and interesting.
Thanks JWF and G. R. Waterhouse for cirripede specimens.
Cirripede fossil specimens returned.
Asks for reference to article by Kölliker, ["Some observations on the structure of two new species of Hectocotyle", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 22 (1851): 9–22]. Asks for information.
CD expresses his inability to accept the view that the Hippuritidae are in any way a connecting link between the oysters and the barnacles.
Thanks for Supplement to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [1851–6]. Praises SPW’s work. "What an amount of labour is condensed in your little volume! … I fully believe & hope that you will reap the only reward worth having, the consciousness that you have done good service to the cause of Science."
Thanks for answer to query. "I see … that there is no hope of comparing the same genus at two different periods, and seeing whether the tendency to vary is greater at one period in such genus than at another period."
Inclined to dispute SPW’s doctrine that islands are generally ancient. Doubts that they are remnants of continents.
Comments on SPW’s book [Manual of Mollusca (1851–6)].
Mentions questions he has for SPW [see 1890].
Queries from CD on the distribution of molluscan genera referring to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [pt 3 (1856)], with SPW’s answers.
Thanks for information about variability in shells.
Comments on Harvey’s Seaside book [1849].
"I am growing as bad as the worst about species and hardly have a vestige of belief in the permanence of species left in me".
Regrets he cannot answer SPW’s questions.
Discusses antiquity of subaerial volcanoes.
Disagrees "entirely & absolutely" with L. von Buch’s "elevation-crater-theory".
Will be glad to have SPW’s criticisms of Origin.
Discusses his use of terms, "typical" and "specialisation".
Emphasises large body of facts explained by his theory of species.
Gives directions to Down. Would be happy to see SPW but regrets they "have no attractions".
Agrees about colonisation of Arctic region.
CD thought that his St Helena land shells had quite recently become embedded; his specimens are at the Geological Society.
Can SPW ask A. Günther for any references to Silurus escaping from the Danube?
Says he will call tomorrow to examine indicated specimens and books at Geological Society.
Asks SPW to have obsidian specimens and book [Dieudonné de Gratet de Dolomieu, Voyage aux îles de Lipari (1783)] ready when he comes.
Note on cases of representative shells that are not clearly either varieties or species.
Proportion of molluscan species to genera in various periods. The difficulty of determining species increases with the number of species per genus. Identifying species within a genus is most difficult in that period in which the genus shows its greatest development.
SPW and Waterhouse agree on island faunas; gives Australia and Tasmania as examples. The "stream of migration" from Asia to Tasmania.
Looks forward eagerly to the publication of CD’s "specific" researches.
Invites CD to send his memoranda [on Manual of Mollusca].
Has reduced 20 Cyrena species to geographical varieties of one species, Cyrena fluminalis. Hooker is reducing Indian flora at the rate of 19 to 1.
Recommends W. H. Harvey’s Seaside book [1849] and Charles Pickering’s Races of man [1850].