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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.
John Scott’s paper [see 4332] read at Linnean Society; praised by George Bentham.
Himalayan pine in Macedonia.
JDH is in a quarrel with H. C. Watson.
JDH explains why he cannot take Scott on at Kew.
John Tyndall cannot answer CD’s questions on glaciers. Edward Frankland’s ignorance. In JDH’s opinion, heaviness of winter snowfall is the greatest element in size of glaciers and this is a function of low mean temperature. Discusses descent of glaciers.
Pleased with news of BAAS meeting
and Scott’s possible position as Thomas Anderson’s curator.
Suggests Wallace is due for a Royal Medal.
Agrees with JDH’s criticism of Lyell’s address [see 4614].
Bentham’s Linnean Society address treats continuity of life in a vague non-natural sense.
Rereading his old MS [Natural selection] CD is impressed with work he had already done.
Writing Variation much harder than Climbing plants.
Encloses request to JDH to propose, or suggest on his behalf, that the Ray Society publish a translation of C. F. von Gärtner’s Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (1849).
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.
CD very ill.
Suspects F. Boott’s widow is illegitimate granddaughter of Erasmus Darwin.
CD, like JDH, has speculated that agrarian weeds have become adapted to cultivated ground. Suggests comparison with country of origin.
Wallace’s praise of Herbert Spencer’s Social statics baffles CD.
[Letter completed by E. A. Darwin.]
JDH’s opinion of Herbert Spencer.
Rejects CD’s view of inheritance of induced modifications.
Huxley grows fat.
CD’s illness.
The difficulty of getting John Scott to publish his work. Has sent Scott’s paper [on Primulaceae] to Linnean Society. CD is sure it is valuable.
CD continues very ill.
His only work is a little on tendrils and climbers. Asks whether all tendrils are modified leaves or whether some are modified stems.
Last number [Jan 1864?] of Natural History Review is best that has appeared.
Bentham proposes John Scott be made an associate of the Linnean Society.
Compares Clematis and Tropaeolum with respect to touch response. Tropaeolum shows a momentary response and quick recovery. Clematis takes hours to respond, and shows no recovery.
CD can show the gradations between leaves and tendrils, but how a branch passes into a tendril utterly puzzles him.
Reception of Scott’s paper.
Difficulty of writing Boott’s obituary.
Critical of Edward Frankland’s glacial theory.
Falconer’s and Ramsay’s views on Himalayan lakes lack support of basic evidence.
Taxonomic distribution of climbing plants.
Huxley picks quarrels with minor figures and thus magnifies them.
CD’s climbing plant experiments make it impossible to deny nerve force in plants.
Has discussed Frankland’s new glacial theory with Lyell.
Bishop Colenso’s trial.
Possibility of Scott’s coming to Kew as a curator.
Does not know Scott’s qualifications to be curator at Kew.
Frankland’s theory of glaciers is absurd.
Has JDH heard claim that plants in Northern and Southern Hemispheres turn in opposite directions?
Are there plant families with no twining and climbing plants?
Sends a Corydalis.
Hermann Crüger’s paper [see 4394] splendid, but he has made a mess of propagating Cinchona in Trinidad.
JDH’s opinion of Germans.
Asks for a Smilax to study movement.
List of four plants sent.
John Scott has left Edinburgh Botanic Garden.
Asks JDH to ask Tyndall whether Frankland exaggerates the effect of snowfall on advance of European glaciers.
Huxley and Falconer squabble too much in public.
John Scott’s career.
Huxley’s vicious attack on anthropologists.
Critique of Joseph Prestwich’s theory of rivers.
Bitter feelings between the Hookers and the Veitch family of nurserymen.
Proposes to support John Scott in research on relative fertility and self-incompatibility of plants. CD would pay him for a year or two but wants JDH to give him research facilities at Kew.
JDH has written to J. H. Balfour for a character reference for John Scott.
