Comments on [MS of] CD’s paper ["Elevation on the coast of Chili" (4 Jan 1837), Collected papers 1: 41–3].

Invites CD to dinner. "Don’t accept any official scientific place, if you can avoid it".

"I could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral reefs, but of the top of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter youself that you will be believed, till you are growing bald, like me, with hard work & vexation at the incredulity in the world."

Syenitic granite from Norway carried as far as Osnabruck.

Has met warm reception in Germany.

Leopold von Buch mistaken in believing that granite overlies transition rock in Norway. Granite sends veins into transition and gneiss.

Has been examining fossil shells of Crag with Heinrich Beck. Beck admits some shells are of species still living.

CL still believes Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene are satisfactory divisions of Tertiary epoch.

Express their concern that the offer for sale to the British Museum, by G. A. Mantell and Thomas Hawkins, of two valuable collections, has been declined.

Would like to talk over Salisbury Craigs with CD.

CL’s father enthusiastic over Journal of researches.

Comments on Élie de Beaumont’s theory of mountain elevation.

Asks about parallel lines of upheaval and depression in the Pacific.

Glad CD likes Athenaeum Club.

Comments on methods of work.

Invites CD to visit Kinnordy.

Defends BAAS: "in this country no importance is attached to any body of men who do not make occasional demonstrations of their strength in public meetings".

With respect to Glen Roy, notes existence of deposits destitute of shells.

Regrets not seeing CD before leaving on trip [to the U. S.]. CD’s move from London will be a privation for CL.

Returns charts on coral reefs.

Spoke to Henry Warburton, W. H. Fitton, and E. B. Greenough on CD’s idea of a Government grant for publication [not identified].

Will read at next meeting his paper on erect Nova Scotia fossil trees [Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond. 4 (1843–5): 176–8].

E. P. Halstead reports on shores rising off Burma and Bay of Bengal.

Unpacking his U. S. fossils.

Phillips looked at beds below coal in Pennsylvania. Result is the usual different species found but with complete representation of forms.

CD’s criticism of his book [Travels in North America (1845)].

Compares invertebrate animals of Tasmania and England.

Mentions views of C. J. F. Bunbury on climate of the Carboniferous period.

Robert Brown says Australian flora has the widest range.

Ask JR to advise the Queen to issue Her Royal Commission of Inquiry into the best methods of securing the improvement of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

CL would like to put Joachim Barrande on the Royal Society’s foreign list. Of French geologists and palaeontologists, he is the man who has made the greatest sacrifices and produced the greatest results.

Urges CD to publish his theory with small part of data.

Corrects names of land shells on list of shells picked up at Down.

Discusses transport of Ancylus from one river-bed to another by water-beetle.

"I hear that when you & Hooker & Huxley & Wollaston got together you made light of all Species & grew more & more unorthodox."

Mentions discussion of old Atlantis by Oswald Heer.

Comments on Helix and Nanina.

Mentions beetle discovered with small bag of eggs of water-spider under wing.

Madeira evidence favours single species birth-place theory.

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?

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.

Enumerates fossil mammals known in Secondary strata.

Lack of angiosperm plants in rocks older than Chalk is no reason to anticipate rarity of warm-blooded quadrupeds.

Communicate papers by CD and A. R. Wallace on "The Laws which affect the Production of Varieties, Races, and Species". Explain that CD and Wallace have, independently and unknown to each other, arrived at the same theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of specific forms, and that neither has yet published, although CD first sketched his theory in 1839. Give their reasons for arranging the joint presentation.

Extended discussion of their respective difficulties with the definition and status of species and with the extent to which the theory of transmutation may be applied.

Has rediscovered S. S. Haldeman’s 1844 paper defending the transmutation theory with great skill.

Asks for reference to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s first enunciation of the progressive development and transmutation theory.

Praises the Origin: a "splendid case of close reasoning".

Objects to CD’s having ignored Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

Thinks CD should omit mentioning problem of explaining the eye at the beginning of chapter 14. Suggests rewording several passages.

Thinks want of peculiar birds in Madeira a difficulty, considering presence of them in Galapagos.

Has always felt that the case of man and his races is one and the same with animals and plants.

Response to Origin. Praise for summary of chapter 10 and chapter 11.

The dissimilarity of African and American species is ‘necessary result of “Creation” adapting new species to the pre-existing ones. Granting this unknown & if you please miraculous power acting’.

C. T. Gaudin writes of Oswald Heer’s finding many species common between Miocene floras of Iceland and Switzerland. Interesting for CD’s migration theory.

Wishes CD would enlarge on the doctrines of [Pyotr Simon] Pallas about the various races of dogs having come from several distinct wild species or sub-species.

Suggests organisms have a latent principle of improvement which is brought out by selection or breeding.

Since dogs have same gestation period as the wolf it is likely that the wolf is the ancestral wild species, if it is just one species.

CD’s belief that domestic dogs are descended from several distinct aboriginal species seems to contradict views on sterility of hybrids and variation in Origin. If domestic varieties came from hybrids of wild species it will be impossible to trace ancestry. Opponents will exploit these problems.