Thanks GdeS for his Recherches sur les végétaux fossiles [1876].

Hopes GdeS will publish on subjects discussed in his letter [10587]. CD had noted similar persistence of variation in fossil shells.

Calls his attention to Nägeli’s work on Hieracium.

Expresses skepticism about O. Heer’s view that dicotyledonous plants developed suddenly. Believes they must have developed slowly in some part of the globe completely isolated from other regions.

Thanks GdeS for communicating his discovery. It is especially important at a time when several naturalists have declared that development occurs quite suddenly at intervals. Joseph Le Conte in N. America urges that even new families and orders are developed within an extremely short period.

Such honours as proposal for election to Institut affect CD very little.

GdeS’s idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed until sucking insects evolved is a splendid one. The suggestion that fertilisation of the surviving members of the most ancient dicotyledons should be studied is a good one. CD hopes GdeS will keep it in mind.

Has sent GdeS’s drawing to Hooker. He, Oliver, and Thiselton-Dyer have been perplexed by it.

L. Lesquereux’s discoveries in the Cincinnati Lower Silurian beds.

The Permian fossil sent by GdeS has stirred up the Kew botanists. Hooker suggests it was a Ceratopteris.

It would be false to pretend he cares very much about his election to the Institut.

Glad to hear GdeS plans to publish a work on the more ancient fossil plants. Hopes he will report also on the more recent Tertiary forms because the close gradation of such forms is "a fact of paramount importance for the principle of evolution".

Thanks for GdeS’s Le monde des plantes [1879].

CD has just read "Végétation polaire" [C. R. Congr. Int. Sci. Geogr. 1 (1878): 197–242] with interest. Hooker gave it conspicuous place in his Royal Society Address (1878).

Thanks GdeS for his photograph; sends his own. Glad to hear GdeS’s work [Le monde des plantes (1879)] is popular in France.

Responds to GdeS’s comments on Descent [see 8246]. Cannot give up belief in close relationship of man to higher Simiae.

Thanks GdeS for his "Études sur la végétation" [Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) 5th ser. 15 (1872): 277–315]. "Nothing can be more important … than your evidence of the extremely slow and gradual manner in which specific forms change."

Hopes GdeS will shed light on whether polymorphic forms like Rubus and Hieracium are generating new species at present; CD doubts this.

Claims to have proved the great antiquity of several plant races. But this does not contradict the tendency to vary. Insists that heredity can make permanent varieties of sufficient duration to occur as fossils.

He has heard CD is about to be elected to the Académie des Sciences.

Cross and self-fertilisation, with its emphasis on insect pollination, helps explain the problem he has worked on for so long: i.e., the rapid diversification of angiosperms in the fossil record occurs in conjunction with the diversification of insects.

Discusses the difficulty of reconstructing angiosperm phylogeny.

Discovery of polar fossil plants helps explain migrations.

Hooker has identification of GdeS’s Permian fossil.

Congratulations on election to the French Academy of Sciences, Botany Section.

Sends his photograph; asks for CD’s.

CD insists too strongly, in Descent, on man’s origin from a simian ancestor, rather than some other primate.