Seeds: worried they will turn into another barnacle job.
Studies plants colonising abandoned field.
Experiment on plant sleep movements.
CD objects to "Atlantis" because no evidence; does not affect species theory.
Showing 41–60 of 102 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.
Seeds: worried they will turn into another barnacle job.
Studies plants colonising abandoned field.
Experiment on plant sleep movements.
CD objects to "Atlantis" because no evidence; does not affect species theory.
Finds Forbes’s continental theories, migration, and double creation are all unsatisfactory explanations of geographical distribution of plants.
Is currently working on problems of sea transport of plant species.
European plants on Australian Alps only explicable by double creations.
Detailed response to JDH’s critique of sea transport and continental connection theories. JDH’s claim that low plants are widely distributed fits both theories.
Species theory does not touch origin of life.
Thanks for Hedysarum.
Pleasure in identifying field plants.
On the transport of fish eggs by the water-beetle Dytiscus marginalis.
Has used borrowing rights at Linnean Society Library arranged for him by JDH.
Discusses hybrid plants he has raised, particularly hybrids between Geum urbanum and G. rivale, which are very fertile and exhibit great variability. [See Natural selection, p. 102.]
Asks whether JSH considers Lychnis diurna and L. vespertina species or varieties.
Asks for help with his work on hybrids.
Would like JSH to go over London catalogue of British plants, marking "close species", i.e., those he considers real species but which are very closely allied. Withholds his motive as it might influence the result.
Has found Agrostis with worms in every germen and no stamens on stigma.
Now has 46 kinds of peas all growing together.
Red and white campions: JSH regards them as races, not species; a flesh-coloured intermediate exists.
Sends a list of "close" species from his Manual of botany.
Hopes Hooker or CD will write an essay on species. Discusses some of the difficulties of defining botanical species.
Sends a list of plants with stamps to pay the Hitcham girls who will collect seeds for him.
Describes his work with seeds in salt water.
For his experiments he would like seeds collected from plants that grow both near Hitcham and in the Azores.
Explains again what JSH should do in marking "close species".
Answers queries on Azores fauna and flora.
Has named 35 species of grasses.
Seed-salting continues.
Thanks JSH for seeds.
Clarifies his request about marking [London] catalogue [of British plants] – JSH is to mark those he thinks really are species, but which are very closely allied to some other species.
Australian Leguminosae problem: of 900 species not ten are common to southwest and southeast. No migration; hence either creation or variation.
Himalayan thistles: graded intermediates between large and small English species, "shakes species to their foundations". Similarity of CD’s and his views on species.
Asks for advice on establishing a control group in his experiments to produce sports and varieties of Lychnis diurna.
Seeks seeds of wild Dianthus for hybridising and producing varieties.
CD experiments: sowing seeds in fields; "breaking" seeds’ constitution with coloured light; plant hybridisation. Compiling works on hybridism.
Respect for W. B. Carpenter.
Note on "nectar secreting" to Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 258–9].
Sends a list of 22 plants that grow at Hitcham and in the Azores and are, according to H. C. Watson, least likely to have been imported [by man]. Will pay the little girls of Hitcham liberally to collect the seeds for his experiments.
Has read a paper, presumably by JDH, using the Madeiran flora to argue against Forbes’s doctrine.
JDH asked how far CD will go in attributing common descent; he intends to show "the facts & arguments for & against the common descent of species of same genus; & then show how far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more & more widely different".
Congratulations to JL on finding musk-ox fossil.