Showing 41–49 of 49 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.
Pleased ACR likes Origin. Every geological believer is most important. A long, stiff battle is ahead for the new doctrine.
Discusses poultry crosses, "what a hopelessly difficult subject is that of inheritance!" Gives details of some pigeon crosses he made; cannot positively recall which produced the blue bird.
Last sheets of AG’s review of Origin have arrived. CD’s comments and criticisms.
Comments on CL’s reaction to the Origin. Mentions reactions of other scientists.
Discusses fertility of Aspicarpa.
Criticises Herbert Spencer’s views on population.
Applauds JDH’s reply [25 Feb 1860] to W. H. Harvey in Gardeners’ Chronicle.
Asks JDH for some Goodenia.
Suggests Daniel Oliver try to cross Mimosa, noted for sterility.
Believes in the "perfect indefiniteness & frequently the vast length of the interval" between consecutive geological formations. Thus has little respect for arguments against CD based on the absence of transitional forms in the geological record. States that species found through series of beds do vary: some Silurian species have many synonyms which are really varieties of greatly differing ages. CD’s theory accounts for the progressive inprovement, multiplication and increase in complexity that can be seen, but which may often be only relative.
Returns paper by Asa Gray [? "Review of Darwin’s theory", Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 29 (1860): 153–84].
Greatly admires Origin.
Can follow effects of natural selection in Carex, but when CD brings millions of years into play, he is like Church which demands faith. FB cannot believe in divinity of Christ, resurrection, or miracles.
HS put the case of selection strikingly and clearly in his article [Anonymous, "A theory of population, deduced from the general law of animal fertility", Westminster Rev. 57 (1852): 468–501]. Of CD’s numerous private critics only HS has rendered the philosophy fairly: his argument is an hypothesis that explains groups of facts.