From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury
Date:
12 [June 1856]
Source of text:
DAR 263: 3 (EH 88206450)
Summary:
Smallpox in the village. Death of Joseph Parslow’s son.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Edward William Vernon Harcourt
Date:
12 June [1856]
Source of text:
Bodleian Libraries, Oxford (MS. Harcourt dep. adds. 346, fols. 252–4)
Summary:
Would like to compare the length of the wings of non-migratory and migratory swallows.
Wonders if EWVH could show him skins of Columba livia.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
William Darwin Fox
Date:
14 June [1856]
Source of text:
Christ’s College Library, Cambridge (MS 53 Fox 98)
Summary:
Does not intend to work systematically on cats. Their origin is in doubt and they have been crossed too many ways.
It would be valuable to know whether half-bred ducks are fertile inter se or with a third breed. Is investigating this with pigeons.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
Date:
16 [June 1856]
Source of text:
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.131)
Summary:
Condemns theory of Edward Forbes and others that many islands were formerly connected to South America by now submerged continents.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
John Stevens Henslow
Date:
16 June [1856]
Source of text:
DAR 93: A110–11
Summary:
Sends a cultivated specimen of Myosotis (first generation) grown from seed sent by JSH. Asks for a tuft of flower.
Hopes JSH will publish a book on teaching botany, because he has no idea how to begin with his children.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
17–18 [June 1856]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 170
Summary:
Comments on Huxley–Falconer dispute [see "On the method of palaeontology", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 18 (1856): 43–54].
Wollaston’s On the variation of species [1856].
Has exploded to Lyell against the extension of continents.
Plants common to Europe and NW. America as result of temperate climate.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
17 June 1856
Source of text:
DAR 146: 475
Summary:
CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".
CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".
Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Robert Everest
Date:
18 June [1856]
Source of text:
Barbara and Robert Pincus (private collection)
Summary:
Seeks to verify whether bulldogs have degenerated in India [see Variation 1: 37–8].
CD has "sometimes gone so far as to doubt whether climate has any influence even on colour".
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Hewett Cottrell Watson
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
20 June 1856
Source of text:
DAR 181: 34
Summary:
Conveys [? J. T. I. Boswell-]Syme’s opinion of variability of agrarian weeds and ranges of species common to U. S. and W. Europe. The Hispano-Hibernian connection.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Date:
22 June [1856]
Source of text:
DAR 114: 165
Summary:
CD sends reference for "Laburnum case", with comment on his own credulity.
Wants to quote JDH on plants endemic to NW. America.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
William Bernhard Tegetmeier
Date:
24 June [1856]
Source of text:
Archives of the New York Botanical Garden (Charles Finney Cox Collection)
Summary:
Now has 89 pigeons. The laughing pigeons are safe at Down. Can WBT spare a pair of Mr Gulliver’s runts?
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Edward William Vernon Harcourt
Date:
24 June [1856]
Source of text:
Bodleian Libraries, Oxford (MS. Harcourt dep. adds. 346, fols. 255–7)
Summary:
Thanks EWVH for his offer but he is not likely to go to London soon to visit John Leadbeater, the bird dealer; he could take a rock pigeon for comparison, but other skins he would have compare at the British Museum.
Would be obliged if EWVH could investigate domestic species in Egypt, especially a type of dog depicted in ancient monuments; and he is particularly interested in tumbler pigeons.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
Date:
25 June [1856]
Source of text:
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.132)
Summary:
Criticises at length the concept of submerged continents attaching islands to the mainland in the recent period. Notes drastic alteration of geography required, the dissimilar species on opposite shores of continents, and differences between volcanic islands and mountains of mainland areas. Admits sea-bed subsidence, but not enough to engulf continents. Denies that theory can explain island flora and fauna.
Considers Edward Forbes’s idea a check on study of dissemination of species.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[26 June or 3 July] 1856
Source of text:
DAR 104: 197
Summary:
Can no longer make out story of NW. American plants; consulting Asa Gray.
Questionable validity of seed-salting experiments.
Aristolochia and Viscum seem to shed pollen before flower opens.
Ray Society should only do translations.
Thomas Thomson in India has rediscovered Aldrovanda, a rare relative of Drosera.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Thomas Vernon Wollaston
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[27 June 1856]
Source of text:
DAR 181: 137
Summary:
Madeiran insects. Regards the "Atlantic province" as a centre of the Coleoptera.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Thomas Vernon Wollaston
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[c. 27 June 1856]
Source of text:
DAR 205.3: 300
Summary:
On the relationship of the loss of the powers of flight [in Coleoptera] to increase of bulk.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
William Bernhard Tegetmeier
Date:
[July 1856]
Source of text:
Archives of the New York Botanical Garden (Charles Finney Cox Collection)
Summary:
His laughers are well, and he has heard them emit an odd note.
Thinks there is an extra vertebra in the neck of the Scandaroon, but is not certain and may have blundered.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Thomas Henry Huxley
Date:
1 July [1856]
Source of text:
Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 175, 37–9)
Summary:
Asks for information on geographical distribution of ascidians; are any closely allied species or genera found in north and south temperate zones that do not have representatives in the tropics?
Answers some questions on [cirripede] antennae.
If THH ever sees a tree washed ashore, will he observe whether any earth is embedded between roots?
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
John Edward Gray
Date:
1 July [1856]
Source of text:
Natural History Museum, Library and Archives (General Special Collections MSS DAR 69)
Summary:
Requests information on ranges of echinoderms for his essay on variation [Natural selection]. Are there genera with representative species in northern and southern seas, but none in tropics?
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[1 July 1856]
Source of text:
The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/2: 132–6)
Summary:
To cast doubt on CD’s view that volcanic action is associated with elevation of land, CL suggests that local oscillations in strata underlying volcanoes could also explain how active volcanoes have uplifted fossil deposits of marine shells. Overall he is more inclined to believe that recent volcanoes belong to areas of subsidence rather than of elevation.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project