Showing 1–20 of 47 items
Relates anecdote concerning the blind Henry Fawcett and the Bishop of Oxford; Fawcett proclaimed, within the other’s hearing, that the Bishop had not read the Origin.
Announces great ally for CD: K. E. von Baer "worth all the Owens & Bishops that ever were pupped". Quotes Baer: "J’ai énoncé les mêmes idées que M. Darwin", but based only on zoological geography.
Invites Mrs Huxley and the children to spend a fortnight at Down.
MS of Chauncey Wright’s review has not yet arrived.
[P.S. missing from original.]
Against all predictions his Edinburgh lecture was well received [Evidence as to man’s place in nature (1863)].
Took his old line about problem of infertility of hybrids as a test of CD’s views.
Report [from a newspaper] not quite right about what he said, but they have not refuted his statement that some form of progressive development theory is certainly true, nor that man and the apes come from same stock. Owen has gone in for progressive development in second edition of the Palaeontology [1861].
The Witness attacks THH’s lecture.
Assures CD he spoke more favourably of his doctrines than the reports show.
Agrees with CD’s arguments on sterility of hybrids and predicts physiological experiments will produce physiological species sterile inter se. Has come even closer to CD’s view especially since Primula paper. Will soon be more Darwinian than CD.
Returns a letter, which, when it is published, he believes will make readers take up THH’s lectures in a more impartial spirit.
Glad to receive CD’s pat on back for address.
Wants to know what CD thinks of the argument on geological contemporaneity.
On his poor health.
The BAAS meeting at Cambridge was exhausting.
Owen came to attack him but was beaten; his paper fell flat.
A "society for propagation of common honesty in all parts of the world" was established at Cambridge [THH’s "Thorough Club"?].
Thanks for a contribution ["On the so-called ""auditory-sac"" of cirripedes", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 115–16; Collected papers 2: 85–7]. Is sending a proof.
This year’s lecture to working men to be devoted to CD’s book.
Sends first three of his Lectures to working men [on our knowledge of the phenomena of organic nature (1863)]. Does not intend them to be widely circulated.
On THH’s Lectures to working men.
Work by Ferdinand J. Cohn on the contractile tissue of plants ["Über contractile Gewebe im Pflanzenreich" Abh. Schlesischen Ges. Vaterl. Cult. 1 (1861)] seems important. CD has come to the conclusion that there must be some substance in plants analogous to the supposed diffused nervous matter in lower animals.
[Part of P.S. missing from original.]
Has not answered CD’s former letters. Has been ill. Will look up fish business as soon as he is square again.
Pleads guilty to both criticisms of "Miss Henrietta Minor Rhadamanthus Darwin" [see 3896] of points in his Lectures [to working men].
Too busy to examine specimen. Will ask W. H. Flower to do it. Long catalogue of what keeps him busy and concerned.
C. Carter Blake, "a jackal of Owen’s", is the reviewer in Edinburgh Review and Anthropological Review [see 4223]. Has sent back his diploma of Hon. Fellowship to Anthropological Society.
Asks CD to sign certificate nominating Flower for Royal Society.
No doubt that Owen wrote "Oken" and the archetype book, which appeared in its second edition in French.
Pressures of work and family.
Surprised at Kölliker’s misunderstanding; of Flourens he could have believed anything.
Family news.
His pleasure at Royal Society Copley Medal for CD. Recounts meeting of Royal Society Council.
Sabine’s Royal Society address [awarding the Copley Medal to CD], in referring to the Origin, did not contain the words "expressly excluded". The actual words were "expressly omitted from the grounds of our award". This was not meant to place the Origin on a sort of index expurgatorium, but was a simple statement of fact.
Wishes to correct an expression in his last letter which is "perhaps not rigorously exact": he should not have said "declining to honour it [the Origin] with the Copley Medal" but simply "not honouring it with the Copley medal". "Declining implies having been asked and there was no asking in the present case."
