Sends drawings of atypical Geranium and honeysuckle pollen-grains. Would they produce variation in seedlings?
Showing 1–20 of 22 items
Sends drawings of atypical Geranium and honeysuckle pollen-grains. Would they produce variation in seedlings?
The illness and death of his daughter have delayed his answers to CD’s queries. He has, however, worked on the circulation of the eye and has almost finished a paper on it, which he will send to CD. In general, the views of Charles Bell are confirmed.
As for CD’s second query, he doubts that the relationship exists, but will answer fully in next letter.
Sends his "Charles Darwin, eine biographische Skizze" [Das Ausland 2 Apr 1870].
About the insertion of a column on marriage of cousins in the census form.
Good news: one little rabbit has a white forefoot.
Answers to CD’s queries on expression; observations on the facial expressions of the insane.
Comments on WP’s biographical article on CD. Asks him to thank O. F. Peschel for his present of the publication [Das Ausland 2 Apr 1870].
On death of his wife. Botany a solace.
Asks CD to review Wallace’s recent book of essays [Natural selection (1870)], particularly the new essay, which questions the applicability of natural selection to man.
Announces CD’s election as Honorary Member of the Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou.
Responds to CD’s request for Canna seeds.
Studying dichogamy in Lotus. Describes mechanism that pumps pollen on to a visiting bee. Corrects Axell on Lotus.
Concern over Wallace’s book [Contributions to the theory of natural selection (1870)] and its apparent backsliding from Darwinian theory. HWB suggests that only CD is capable of criticising the book.
HWB hopes not too much was made over his few comments on man in M. F. Somerville’s book [Physical geography, revised ed. (1870)].
Willy is back from New Zealand. JDH perturbed by what to do with him.
J. W. Dawson’s Bakerian lecture for Royal Society is full of errors, and JDH is forced to recommend that it not be published. [An abstract of the lecture was published: "On the pre-Carboniferous floras of north-eastern America", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 18 (1869–70): 333–5.]
Intends to see Adam Sedgwick.
Arranges to meet AN.
Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].
Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.
CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".
Saw Alfred Newton.
CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,
and on cross- and self-fertilisation.
Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?
Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.
Behaviour of ants.
Not discouraged by F. Müller’s Passiflora.
Observations on insects visiting barberries.
Has finished the article [on the action of the eyelids in Ned. Arch. Geneeskd. & Natuurkd. 5 (1870), also see 7238]; summarises: the occlusion of the eyelids protects the vessels, and the eye itself, against the danger of pressure caused by excessive expiratory action. The weakness of the conclusion is that the extent of the danger caused by the pressure to the normal state of the eye is not precisely known.
A detailed description of the physiological and anatomical processes related to the prolonged involuntary contraction of the orbicular muscles and the secretion of tears (as in retching, violent coughing, or laughing). [See Expression, p. 160.].
Writes of CD’s recent visit to Cambridge and the joy it gave him.