Glad the house and cottage are completed. Hopes there is a good-sized garden with the cottage.
Please remember himself and CD to FH’s father, John Higgins.
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.
Glad the house and cottage are completed. Hopes there is a good-sized garden with the cottage.
Please remember himself and CD to FH’s father, John Higgins.
Sends date of his mother’s death – 7 Apr 1859.
Was completely mystified by conjuring performance of [John Nevil] Maskelyne.
Writes about London plays; wishes CD had been of the party.
Proposes a dry place for the apparatus for their laboratory and draws a plan for CD’s criticism.
Price has found black sediment in his tea, which was attracted to a magnet.
CD’s father has given him £200 to settle his debts.
He is delighted by a magnificent anonymous gift of a microscope.
Sees a good deal of the Henslows who are expecting a child soon.
CD still talks of the "Canary scheme"; he is learning Spanish.
Discusses enclosed MS of CD’s review [of G. R. Waterhouse, A natural history of the Mammalia, vol. 1 (1846); Collected papers 1: 214–17].
Comments on WM’s paper about ostrich feathers.
Asks whether enclosure [missing] has the correct title of Insectivorous plants.
Hearty thanks for the two bottles of pure water.
Wants seeds of Nesaea verticillata for crossing experiments to see whether seedlings from "illegitimate unions" are sterile like true hybrids.
Thanks for the seventh of CVR’s Annual reports on the noxious, beneficial and other insects in the state of Missouri (Riley 1869–77).
AD is aware of revolutionary character of his pamphlet [Ursprung der Wirbelthiere]. Authorities will not agree with him. Carl Gegenbaur and Ernst Haeckel are opposed. Younger biologists are disposed to accept his views. All he can expect is to put a stop to "the Amphioxus–Ascidian affair, and to open a road for speculation and for investigation on the side of the Annelid-homology".
Asks permission to republish his climbing plants paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 9 (1867): 1–118] in a corrected form [Climbing plants].
Interested to hear about the peas.
Discusses feather as case of evolutionary atavism.
Will soon publish on siliceous sponges
and the skin of caterpillars.
Paralysis of the nervous system of Dionaea. Uses of tails of mice.
Returns corrected proofs [of Insectivorous plants].
Thanks for the diploma conferring on him an honorary doctorate of medicine from Leiden University.
Intends to set up a biological periodical called “Darwinia” to spread and popularise Darwin’s theories; hopes CD may contribute a few words to the opening issue.
CD’s observations on the power of movement and transmission of motor impulses in plants. If RLT succeeds with the tails of mice, it will be "a beautiful little discovery"; CD will enjoy it the more "because some German sneered at natural selection and instanced the tail of the mouse" [see 10013].