Showing 21–40 of 3816 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.
Asked C. E. Bessey whether Lithospermum longiflorum was dimorphic like its relatives. Encloses CEB’s reply.
Pleased that a Grace has been submitted to confer on CD an honorary LL.D.; hopes his health will permit him to attend the ceremony.
Thanks RLT for his work, Diseases of women.
CD is also interested by RLT’s letter reporting a cat rearing chickens. "What a wonderful instinct is the maternal one."
Sends "worm journal" – observations of earthworm activity at Abinger.
Pleased the Senate has passed Grace conferring his LL.D.
AG’s review of Joseph Cook ["Lectures on biology", New Englander 37: 100–13].
Encourages CD to work at heliotropism.
Thinks Thomas Meehan is as "rattle-brained" as Joseph Cook.
[A damaged fragment cut from this letter is pinned to 11051.]
James Caird does not think Torbitt’s success justifies application to Government. Torbitt has four acres planted with seedlings. Has sent back CD’s £100. Shall CD insist that he keep it?
Has been investigating nutational movements of climbing plants; comments on the opinions of Julius von Wiesner and Julius Sachs. Remarks on the sleep movements of certain plants and the mechanism of tendril curvature. Is experimenting with Porlieria.
Has visited K. G. Semper’s laboratory.
Notes Julius Sachs’s opinion on the heliotropism of moulds: he can see no use in the response.
C. E. Stahl is working on swarm spores which can be made both helio- and apheliotropic.
Sachs has told him that some ferns sleep, and he suspects that some grasses may move.
Sachs also feels they may be working at bloom from a wrong point of view and suggests leaves may need to keep dry in order to keep their stomata open.
Oxalis seeds incorrectly named. H. N. Moseley says pigeons in Malaya eject seeds fit for germination.
There is a hyacinth growing upside down in Hankinson’s garden. Sends picture of it. Leslie Stephen knows of no worthwhile sources of information on Dr Erasmus Darwin.
Sends an enclosure [a statement of CD’s finances and estimate of the inheritance his children may expect] for HD and Ida to read; CD very pleased to be able to leave his children comfortably provided for.
CD would like questions on consanguineous marriages inserted in the Census to ascertain effects, if any, on fertility.
His beard is darker than his hair, an exception to CD’s rule in Descent [2: 319]. Encloses sample of his hair, beard, and whiskers.
Recounts case of parrot whose talking seems to show "power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas" [see Descent, 2d ed., p. 85 n.].
Has not seen CD’s daughter yet. Hopes the fine weather will continue while she is there [in Bournemouth].
Comments on WRG’s MS on ratio of the sexes at birth.
Offers to send J. M. A. Thury’s paper ["Loi de production des sexes", Arch. Sci. Phys. & Nat. 18 (1863): 91–8].
Encloses a letter [7617] to be forwarded to the author of the review of Descent in Pall Mall Gazette.
Questions CD’s attribution of a sense of beauty to animals and his use of natural selection to explain phenomena JM feels it more appropriate to describe as social selection.
On some errata in Descent.
Sends extracts from a statistical study giving proportion of sexes in [population of] Netherlands.
Comments on Descent.
Reports a case of protective coloration of bugs on Tilia
and observations on frogs fighting [see Descent, 2d ed., pp. 281, 350].
Encloses drawings of chicken feet.