Lindley suggests Gongora may be female Acropera.
CD’s orchid book nearly ready for press.
Discovers trimorphism in Lythrum is in H. Lecoq [Études sur la géographie botanique de l’Europe (1854–8)].
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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.
Lindley suggests Gongora may be female Acropera.
CD’s orchid book nearly ready for press.
Discovers trimorphism in Lythrum is in H. Lecoq [Études sur la géographie botanique de l’Europe (1854–8)].
Seeks information on heating hothouses night and day.
Gongora cannot be female of Acropera; it may itself be a male.
Hopes Daniel Oliver will "sink Atlantis" in his Royal Institution lecture.
Sends plant specimens. William Borrer will be glad to send seeds.
Asks CD whether he hears from Asa Gray. JDH’s opinion of the crisis [Trent case, Nov 1861] and the American Civil War.
Julius von Haast alludes to glacial drift in Middle Island of New Zealand.
Backwardness of JDH’s son, Willy.
Encloses a reference from Daniel Oliver which may be useful.
Glad CD has given up on Acropera ovules.
Doubts phanerogams less different in extreme forms [than Crustacea].
No systematic parallelism between plants and animals.
Offers list of Arctic plants with their colours. Asks CD whether it is useful to add colour to [descriptions of] plants.
Entire family down with influenza. Has done nothing for three weeks.
Asks for Haast reference on New Zealand glacial deposits.
CD’s view of the North since Trent case. Can no longer write with sympathy to Asa Gray.
Encourages JDH about his son, Willy.
Problem of relation of colour to external conditions. Hopes JDH will undertake the investigation.
Will send an Arethusa; offers other specimens.
Dimorphism.
Falconer contradicts Sumatra and Ceylon elephant story.
Lyell as rabid as ever about America.
JDH castigates the Americans after the Trent affair. The value of an aristocracy. How will CD answer Asa Gray’s letter?
His "remarkable plant" [Welwitschia mirabilis] exhibited at Linnean Society.
Genera plantarum is in press.
His answer to Asa Gray.
On JDH’s view of aristocracy. Primogeniture is dreadfully opposed to selection.
Orchid book proofs ready soon – has no idea whether it is worth publishing.
Huxley on Owen.
Feeble letter from J. H. Balfour against Huxley’s lectures ["Relation of man to lower animals", pt 2 of Man’s place in nature (1863)].
Has received the "astounding" Angraecum sesquipedale with nectary 1ft long: "what insect could suck it?"
Is JDH sure it is a Bletia, just received? Its pollen very different from any Epidendreæ he has seen. If it is Bletia, Lindley’s grand divisions are fanciful.
Accepts JDH’s offer to collect cases of dimorphism.
James Bateman has sent a lot of orchids with Angraecum sesquipedale. What a proboscis the moth that sucks its 11½ inch nectary must have!
Asks for the address of C. W. Crocker.
Sends C. W. Crocker’s address.
Doubts CWC can help with Mormodes.
Will see CD at Lubbock’s.
Wrote a "frightful screed" about aristocracy’s being a necessary consequence of natural selection, and then burnt it.
H. W. Bates is the only man "thinking out" natural selection to any purpose. "I think I have driven Bates back to Nat. Sel. as the only way of solving his difficulties."
HWB’s mimetic butterflies.
JDH wishes he had time to do the same thing with plants.
Owen and Huxley involved in a "contemptible" squabble in the Edinburgh newspapers.
Maximovitch reports Stellaria bulbifera is a Siberian form which never ripens its seeds.
Sends dried specimens of Melastomataceae.
Thanks JDH for box of melastomes
and a very valuable reference from Daniel Oliver.
Is crossing Monochaetum which he thinks is dimorphic.
Is "sometimes half tempted to give up species & stick to experiments".
Pollen of Bletia hyacinthina is quite unlike other Bletia species but exactly the same as Epipactis.
Box of Melastomataceae has arrived.
Talked with [Duke of] Argyll about Origin. He is between stools: Owen and Lyell.
Admires JDH’s paper on Arctic plants ["Distribution of Arctic plants", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 251–348]. Such papers compel people to reflect on modification of species;
JDH will be driven to a cooled globe.
Serious erratum in paper.
New and original evidence in case of Greenland. Its flora requires accidental means of transport by ice and currents.
Pleased at CD’s opinion of his Arctic plants paper. CD has caught great blunder.
Lack of Arctic–Asiatic species in mountains of tropical Asia does not trouble him. Species seem to indicate some "current of migration" from Europe and W. Asia southeastward to Ceylon – an awful staggerer to bridge migrations.
Had it not been for CD, JDH would never have written such papers as his one on Arctic flora. The "evulgation" of CD’s views is the purest pleasure he derives from them.
He too is staggered that Greenland ought to have been depopulated during the glacial period. Absence of Caltha is fatal to its re-population by chance migration.