From:
Thomas Bridges
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[Oct 1860 or later]
Source of text:
DAR 85: 39
Summary:
Answers to queries on expression with respect to Fuegians.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[after 3 Oct 1860]
Source of text:
DAR 205.9: 397
Summary:
CD would have carried the public more if he had explained adaptations by multiple causes, some unknown and some well known, i.e., natural selection.
Discusses Hooker’s views of extinction on St Helena.
Work on antiquity of man suspended.
Stopped by 11th edition of Principles of geology [1872].
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
6 Oct 1860
Source of text:
The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/7: 22)
Summary:
Wonders why the coracoid bone in the flightless Apteryx is so large when the clavicles are reduced. The clavicles are even separate in the ostrich. The large coracoid in reptiles is explained by the connection to the forelimbs.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
James Drummond
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
8 Oct 1860
Source of text:
DAR 162.2: 242
Summary:
Observations of Brunonia and a case of a malvaceous flower, which never opened and was self-fertilised.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
William Henry Harvey
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
8 Oct 1860
Source of text:
DAR 98 (ser. 2): 54–7
Summary:
Thanks CD for his patience and good-nature; does not want a controversial correspondence but wishes to reply to matters in CD’s letter, and does.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Heinrich Georg Bronn
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[13 or 15] Oct 1860
Source of text:
DAR 160.3: 317
Summary:
Does not remember his criticisms of CD’s theory. Can CD locate them in book?
Criticises analogy between knowledge of electricity and knowledge of origin of life.
Explains A. E. Brehm’s concept of subspecies. Discusses subspecies of Certhia.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Daniel Oliver
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[15–16 Oct 1860]
Source of text:
DAR 58.2: 53
Summary:
Extracts from botanical literature dealing with Dionaea, intercrossing, and sensitivity. [Bot. Ztg. (1833): 96; Thomas Nuttall, Genera of N. American plants (1818)].
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Robert Patterson
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
18 Oct 1860
Source of text:
DAR 46.1: 89–90
Summary:
Sends an account of the destruction of wild rabbits by rats introduced from a wrecked ship.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Daniel Oliver
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[before 23 Oct 1860]
Source of text:
DAR 58.2: 55
Summary:
Quotes note by Julius Milde on Drosera rotundifolia from Botanische Zeitung (1852): 540.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Benjamin Silliman, Jr
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
27 Oct 1860
Source of text:
Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL (bound with Silliman 1851)
Summary:
On the suggestion of Jeffries Wyman, he writes about the rats that he captured in Mammoth Cave in 1850. They were indeed blind. Reginald Mantell studied them and learned that with long exposure to graduated light, they became somewhat sensitised. Sends copy of an abstract which he wrote as a letter to A. H. Guyot ["On the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky", Am. Journal of Sci. and Arts 2d ser. 11 (1851)]. [See 3007.]
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Edward Cresy, Jr
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
30 Oct 1860
Source of text:
DAR 58.1: 6, 58.2: 49–52
Summary:
Sends CD passages from A. S. Taylor’s book [On poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence and medicine, 2d ed. (1859)], citing smallest portions of poisons that are chemically detectable. "Drosera beats the chemists hollow."
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
John Medows Rodwell
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
31 Oct 1860
Source of text:
DAR 47: 167–8
Summary:
Observations on his white blue-eyed cat. There is no sign of deafness.
Apropos of ch. 5 of Origin, tells of blind rats found when a Roman bridge was excavated.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
