Sorry to hear of Mrs Hooker’s health and domestic problems. Wishes natural selection had produced neuters who would not flirt or marry.

Will be eager to hear Cameroon results.

Wishes JDH would discuss the "mundane glacial period". Still believes it will be "the turning point of all recent geographical distribution".

Pollen placed for 65 hours on apparent (CD still thinks real) stigma of Leschenaultia has not protruded a vestige of a tube.

"Oliver the omniscient" has produced an article in Botanische Zeitung with accurate account of all CD saw in Viola.

Asa Gray’s "red-hot" praise of Orchids [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 34 (1862): 138–51].

Has been ill (violent skin inflammation).

Has done hardly anything except tend to his experiments. Repeating Primula work has verified former results and very curious facts on sterility of homomorphic seedlings.

Wonders who reviewed Orchids for London Review & Wkly J. Polit..

Asa Gray also infatuated with Orchids.

Remembers JDH’s encouragement when he was "utterly weary of life".

Marvellous about European forms in Fernando Po.

C. V. Naudin will publish a book on hybridity ["Nouvelles recherches sur l’hybridité dans les végétaux", Nouv. Arch. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris 1 (1865): 25–176; part also in Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) (1863)].

CD fears Naudin has underestimated distribution of pollen by insects.

Melastomatous plants are ready for his work on meaning of two sets of anthers.

Very curious about Masdevallia.

George [Darwin] observing orchids.

Adaptation of Herminium beats almost every other orchid.

Illness of his son [Leonard]. Has done no work for weeks.

JDH’s hybrid orchids are interesting; CD is surprised many hybrids are not produced.

George [Darwin] caught a moth sucking Gymnadenia conopsea with a pollen-mass of Habenaria bifolia sticking to it.

Lythrum. Wants to examine fresh flowers of Lythraceae. Lythrum salicaria has interested him very much.

Microscopes.

Asks whether JDH can think of plants that have different coloured anthers or pollen in same flowers (as in Melastoma) or on same and in different plants as in Lythrum. Would be a safe guide to dimorphism.

Observation of action of pollen in Linum grandiflorum.

Has passed the time by dissecting flowers of Cruciferae. Sends results, with diagrams, to JDH.

Thanks for JDH’s letter [3725].

Has become interested in experimenting on Drosera.

Observations on the ovaria of Cruciferae.

Thanks for Haast’s observations. Particularly glad to get geological evidence of glacial action (in Southern Hemisphere).

Thinks Ramsay’s theory to large extent true, but thinks that in a much disturbed country some lakes would have been formed in depressions.

Encloses MS on observations and experiments on Drosera. JDH’s opinion will help him decide whether to pursue subject in some future year.

Thanks for opinion on Drosera. After working for a time on a subject he is absolutely incapable of judging its value.

Has found a case in Lythrum of a necessary triple alliance between three hermaphrodites; the strangest case of propagation recorded among plants or animals.

Asks for L. thymifolia to see how a trimorphic form passes or graduates into dimorphic.

Questions JDH on Linum perenne.

Has found 33 hybrids in one field between Verbascum thapsus and V. lychnitis. The perfect series of varieties would have justified running the species together, but every one of the intermediate forms is sterile.

Thanks for Aldrovanda reference and Cassia.

Has wasted labour on Melastomataceae without getting a glimpse of the meaning of the parts.

Wants seeds, from their native land, of Heterocentron or Monochaetum.

Is beginning to change his view about rarity of natural hybrids.

Masdevallia turns out to be nothing wonderful, "I was merely stupid about it."

Asks for plants for experiments.

Hedysarum and Oxalis sensitiva seeds.

Asks whether Oliver knows of experiments on absorption of poisons by roots.

CD finds he cannot publish this year on Lythrum salicaria; he must make 126 additional crosses!

Asks for odd variations of common potato; he wants to grow a few plants of every variety.

Variation is crawling.

Has had some bad attacks lately.

Requests reference to Jules Planchon’s monograph on Linum [Lond. J. Bot. 6 (1847): 588–603; 7 (1848): 165–86, 473–501, 507–28].

Sends list of seeds, including Oxalis, Boraginaceae especially Alkanna.

Asa Gray says JDH wrote reviews of Orchids in Gardeners’ Chronicle.

His experiments amuse him after dull day’s work on vegetables and fruit-trees.

Leschenaultia formosa has exterior stigma, thus eminently requiring insect aid, and thus ensuring crossing almost inevitably.

Asks whether Samuel Haughton at Dublin who made important medical discovery could be the same who reviewed Origin so hostilely [in Nat. Hist. Rev. 7 (1860): 23–32]; if so, he can sneer at and abuse CD to his heart’s content.

Asa Gray as rabid as ever [on Civil War].

Cannot see how J. W. Dawson can accuse JDH of asserting a subsidence of Arctic America. Much of evidence for subsidence during glacial period will prove false as it largely rests on ice action which is more and more viewed as subaerial.

Dawson is biased against Darwinism.

Suggests Greenland may have been repopulated after glacial period extinguished flora, by migration in sea-currents.

Max Müller’s view of origin of language is weakest part of his book [see 3752].

Would like to examine the rare Cypripedium hirsutissimum.

So JDH did write the Gardeners’ Chronicle review [of Orchids]! CD guessed it from the little slap at R. Brown.

Dawson’s lecture has nothing new. Absurd to assume Greenland under water during whole of glacial period. Suggests absence of certain plants in Greenland due to seeds not surviving in sea-water. Suggests an experiment on vitality in sea-water of plants that might be in Greenland. Is more willing to admit a Norway–Greenland land connection than most other cases.

Urges JDH to warn Tyndall on his glacial theory of valleys in Switzerland.

Is working on cultivated plants.

A German scholar says JDH first applied natural selection to replacement of races of men, the ruder races of Polynesians yielding to civilised Europeans. CD cannot remember reading this.

Warns JDH to take care Welwitschia does not turn into a case of barnacles and consume years instead of months.

In what months do flowers appear in Acropera loddigesia and A. luteola? CD is alarmed by John Scott’s observations on them, which differ from his own. "I am very uneasy."

Sends Asa Gray letter: "nearly as mad as ever in our English eyes".

Bates’s paper is admirable. The act of segregation of varieties into species was never so plainly brought forth.

CD is a little sorry that his present work is leading him to believe rather more in the direct action of physical conditions. Regrets it because it lessens the glory of natural selection and is so confoundedly doubtful.

JDH laid too much stress on importance of crossing with respect to origin of species; but certainly it is important in keeping forms stable.

If only Owen could be excluded from Council of Royal Society Falconer would be good to put in. CD must come down to London to see what he can do.

Falconer’s article in Journal of the Geological Society [18 (1862): 348–69] shows him coming round on permanence of species, but he does not like natural selection.

Sends Lythrum salicaria diagram.

Discusses differences between Asa Gray’s view and his own on crossing. A common effect is the obliteration of incipient varieties. There is heavy evidence against new characters arising from crossing wild forms, "only intermediate races are then produced". Innate vital forces are somehow led to act differently as a result of direct effect of physical conditions. Astonished by JDH’s statement that every difference might have occurred without selection. CD agrees, but JDH’s manner of putting it astonished him. CD says, "think of each of a thousand seeds bringing forth its plant, and then each a thousand … I cannot even grapple with idea". Responds to JDH’s and Lyell’s feeling that he made too much of a deus ex machina out of natural selection. [Letter actually dated 20 Nov but is certainly after 3831.] [wrong field?]

Maintains his view on crossing. Thinks practical breeders would agree with him; doubts that variability and domestication are at all necessarily correlative.

Identical plants in different conditions a heavy argument against "direct action" [of physical conditions].

His 1000-pigeon case is altered if long-beaked are in least degree sterile with short-beaked.

His work on dimorphism inclines him to believe that sterility is at first a selected quality to keep incipient species distinct.

Case of easy modification of Lythrum pollen to favour or prevent crossing.

Monsters.

Has just finished chapter on variations of cultivated plants.

Edinburgh doctors have sent him Diploma of Medical Society.

Thanks for Begonia and Oxalis.

Keeps obstinate about crossing and could argue till doomsday, but will not bother JDH.

Sees that JDH has finished Welwitschia.

Thinks Huxley’s Working Men’s Lectures excellent.

Has finished Linum paper [Collected papers 2: 93–105],

and abstract of Bates’s paper for Natural History Review,

and has begun to arrange concluding chapters [for Variation]. Is paralysed on how to begin.