Showing 101–120 of 4783 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.
Discusses meaning of various English scientific terms.
Is much pleased that translation [of Origin, 1st German ed.] will be ready by May.
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.
Has been ill with pleurisy.
Sends more corrections and additions for American edition of Origin.
CD’s list of fifteen converts. His opinions on opponents and supporters.
Orders J. B. Jukes’s Student’s manual of geology [1857] and Macmillan’s Magazine (Dec 1859).
Discusses the direction of WED’s studies.
Tells of the response to the Origin and the impact that it has made in England and abroad.
Gardeners’ Chronicle has reprinted THH’s Times review.
W. H. Harvey made weak attack on Origin [Gard. Chron. (1860): 145–6], to which Hooker made admirable rejoinder [Gard. Chron. (1860): 170–1].
Thanks for a shell of an edible mollusc and also specimens of blind cave animals, which he will present in FW’s name to the British Museum.
Responds to JL’s comments on effect of natural selection on grouse or reindeer.
Asks if dirt adheres to feet of water-birds.
Reports on the snakes he collected in the Galapagos.
Orders first part of vol. 3 of Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire naturelle générale des règnes organiques [3 vols. (1854–62)].
Will be glad to have SPW’s criticisms of Origin.
Discusses his use of terms, "typical" and "specialisation".
Emphasises large body of facts explained by his theory of species.
Further additions and corrections for American Origin.
Views of Owen, G. H. K. Thwaites, and W. H. Harvey on CD’s theories.
Reports catching a landrail on board ship.
Encloses drawings of insects caught at sea.
Lyell and CD would urge JDH to make his essays into a book, but see he has embarked on a huge project with G. Bentham [Genera plantarum, 3 vols. (1862–83)].
Discusses the intellectual development of the ancient Greeks as an objection to evolution and gives his reply.