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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.
Asa Gray will try to get HWB’s paper reviewed.
Also mentions that he (CD) wrote a short review of it for Natural History Review [Collected papers 2: 87–92].
Asks whether bees or Lepidoptera visit flowers of Melastomataceae.
Sorry CD considers Horace Darwin unfit for school.
Acquired characteristics.
Huxley’s lectures: good on induction, bad on sterility, obscure on geology.
Asa Gray on slavery.
Falconer’s partial conversion.
Alphonse de Candolle on Origin.
Asks for account of sales of Geology of "Beagle". Willing to consider offer for remaining stock in order to close account.
Health.
Is sending information about Timor fossils to be forwarded to Hugh Falconer.
Thanks for a gift of £20.
Thanks AdeC for his memoir ["Étude sur l’espèce", Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) 4th ser. 18 (1862): 59–110].
CD astonished at the amount of variability in the oaks.
CD differs from most contemporaries in thinking that the vast continental extensions of Forbes, Heer, and others are not only advanced without sufficient evidence but are opposed to much weighty evidence.
AdeC’s comment on CD’s work [Origin] is generous.
CD is satisfied at the length AdeC goes with him and is not surprised at his prudent reservations. He remembers how many years it took him to change his old beliefs. The great point is to give up immutability. So long as species are thought immutable there can be no progress in "epiontology" [see ML 1: 234 n.]. CD is sure to be proved wrong in many points but the subject will have "a grand future".
Particularly interested in TR’s information about peaches. Accepts offer of double-flowering peach-trees.
Will build a small hothouse for experiments.
JDH on Asa Gray’s sanguine view of the Civil War and slavery.
Wishes to discuss variation with CD, a subject that Huxley does not understand.
CD’s paper [on Linum] is announced for reading at the Linnean Society on 5 February.
Experiments to cut Laelia stigma from rostellum and then to fertilise rostellum are baffled by "a latent instinctive power". Somehow the pollen-tubes find their way to the style.
Suggests CD study variation in ferns.
Can TR distinguish generally, always, or never, a nectarine-tree from a peach-tree before it flowers or before it fruits? He wants to quote TR’s answer.
His work on Mexico has some geology, which might interest CD.
He is currently at work on the "filiation des genres des espèces et des moeurs des guepes [hornets]".
Has sent copy of his paper to Asa Gray.
Melastomad flowers are strikingly neglected by pollinators.
Murray has ordered many illustrations for HWB’s Naturalist on the river Amazons.
Jaw with teeth found associated with Archaeopteryx fossil. Waterhouse pronounces it a fish’s jaw.
Comments on his own review of Bates’s butterfly paper [Collected papers 2: 87–92].
Thanks AG for information on Platanthera.
Has been wasting more time with Melastomataceae; can find no nectar in Monochaetum; is there any in Rhexia?
Hopes Lincoln’s "fiat against Slavery" will have some effect.
If jaw belongs to Archaeopteryx, it will show great peculiarity. A German author has advanced the case as argument for Origin.
Sends some trees to CD.
Would be pleased to receive the copy of Origin offered by CD as gift.
Will give CD any tree or shrub he may want.
Refers to curious strawberry hybrids noticed in Journal of Horticulture [I. Anderson-Henry, "Crossing strawberries", J. Hortic. n.s. 4 (1863): 45–6].
Urges JS to publish on orchid pollen-tubes.
Suggests comparing stigmatic tissue of sterile hybrids and fertile parent; he would expect hybrid plant’s cell contents not to be coagulated after 24 hours in spirits of wine.
Suggests JS coat orchid stigmas with plaster of Paris for his work on rostellar germination.
Asks for list of "bud-variation" cases; CD has devoted a chapter to the subject.
Inquiries about I. Anderson-Henry’s observational competence.
Thanks JvH for his address [to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury], his Geological Report [Topographical and geological exploration of the western districts of the Nelson province, New Zealand (1861)],
and for the "honourable" notice of Origin.
CD especially interested in JvH’s facts on the old glacial period.
Asks about fossil remains [of supposed living mammalia] which CD thinks may be like "the Solenhofen bird-creature" [Archaeopteryx].
Urges the recording of rate and manner of spreading of European weeds and plants and observation on which native plants "most fail".