Explains why he has declined writing a review for Messrs Appleton.
Showing 61–80 of 2910 items
Explains why he has declined writing a review for Messrs Appleton.
Intends to see Adam Sedgwick.
Arranges to meet AN.
Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].
Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.
CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".
Saw Alfred Newton.
CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,
and on cross- and self-fertilisation.
Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?
Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.
Thanks for copy of part one of EPW’s Spicilegia biologica (Wright 1870).
Fertilisation of barberries.
Passiflora.
Is continuing his experiments on the comparative growth of crossed and self-fertilised plants.
Comments on QdeB’s volume [Charles Darwin et ses précurseurs Français (1870)]. Mentions error concerning his views on Parus and nuthatch.
Discusses Canis magellanicus.
Discusses reception of his views in France and Germany.
Thanks Society for honour of his election as Honorary Member.
Thanks FD for seeds of Canna.
Still thinks it would be worth FD’s while looking at the fertilisation of Lotus; does not think Frank Darwin has exaggerated the novelty of the contrivance.
Thanks AS for his kindness towards himself and his family. Looks back with great satisfaction to his last visit ("as it will probably prove") to Cambridge.
Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.
CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.
Thanks FCD for information.
Hopes that translation of his paper will appear in Dublin Journal.
Notes experience of his son [Leonard Darwin] on engorgement of eyes with blood. Discusses secretion of tears when eye muscles are involuntarily contracted.
Asks to have observations made of a person retching violently, but ejecting nothing from stomach, in order to test relation between spasmodic contraction of orbicular muscles and tears. CD believes tears are caused by matter filling nostrils.
No summary available.
Duchenne [Mécanisme] has arrived. Has been testing the photographs with 20 or 30 persons; when all or nearly all agree with Duchenne, CD trusts him. Not one understood the "contracted pyramidal of the nose". CD does not think the so-called muscle of lasciviousness worth exhibiting.
His MS [of Descent] is so large he may print only what he has, and make a second volume of what he is now writing on expression.
Discusses photographs he would like to have: baby screaming, person in paroxysm of fear.
Orders seeds, ripened in Algiers; imported seed would be of no use. [Forwarded to Algiers by JDH, see 7272.]
In his reply to [7227] CD questions the significance of the supposed likeness of the bee, spider, and fly orchids to their presumed namesakes.
He thinks that the beauty of shells is altogether incidental and of no use to the animals.
Thanks for RAvK’s work [Anatomisch-systematische Beschreibung der Alcyonarien, pt 1, Die Pennatuliden (1870)].
Asks whether muscles to quills of porcupine are striped. Are they homologous to muscles of ordinary hairs? Could unstriped muscles develop into striped?
Asks about birds erecting feathers when enraged or frightened. Interested in examples of expression in birds and animals.
Tells of the sheldrake dancing on tidal sands to make worms come out.
When CD comes to London in ten days, he will "immediately call on you and explain why I cannot at once answer your question".
Asks for figures of embryos by A. Ecker and T. L. W. Bischoff to copy [for Descent, ch. 1].