Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.
A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.
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Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.
A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.
Does not give much for botanical results of Round Island, but the zoology is wonderful.
Lyell’s new book [The student’s elements of geology (1870)]. Urges Lyell to make it Elementary principles.
Grove is disgusted with CD for being disquieted by William Thomson: "Take another dose of Huxley’s penultimate address to Geol. Soc." [Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 25 (1869): 28–53].
Would like to see JDH become Sir J. H. Does not think JDH owes his position in science to his father.
Sends questions on Round Island – if JDH should write [to Henry Barkly?].
Has he read Federico Delpino on Marantaceae [Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 1 (1869): 293–206]?
No summary available.
No summary available.
JDH writes that he is glad to hear of Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer's [WTTD's] appointment to the Dublin chair [of the Royal College of Science for Ireland, Dublin]. Has seen Dr [Edward Percival] Wright who is happy for WTTD to have access to, & make use of, the T[rinity] C[ollege] Herbarium. However, Wright wishes WTTD to wait a little before taking a more prominent position than himself so that 'matters will arrange themselves'. Wright is talking of getting leave for 2 years & going abroad, leaving WTTD in charge. JDH says that the vegetable products museum should be attached to the Botanic Garden, along with a Herbarium & Library, without which the garden will be useless. JDH cannot supply structural specimens of plants from the RBG Kew museum as all duplicates are sent to places which give things in return. Will be happy to give advice about Cape Flora & thinks it is a worthy endeavour to finish it. Notes that WTTD will probably not be ready to embark on the descriptive part of the flora, & therefore need the herbarium, before Wright leaves anyway.
No summary available.
Willy is back from New Zealand. JDH perturbed by what to do with him.
J. W. Dawson’s Bakerian lecture for Royal Society is full of errors, and JDH is forced to recommend that it not be published. [An abstract of the lecture was published: "On the pre-Carboniferous floras of north-eastern America", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 18 (1869–70): 333–5.]
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.
Sends enclosure [a letter from Lady Lyell?]. He is choking with vanity.
Is going to send Willy to Mr La Touche in Salop; he brought up young Colenso and Frank Lyell. Some of his friends will think he is sending his son into a nest of young adders!
Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.
CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.
Orders seeds, ripened in Algiers; imported seed would be of no use. [Forwarded to Algiers by JDH, see 7272.]
No summary available.
Asks whether JDH can send seeds of Hibiscus africanus and of Nolana prostrata raised at Kew.
Hibiscus and Nolana seeds not harvested at Kew. Sends list of the best plants of Lilium he can give.
Asks CD for name of work on orchids mentioned in his supplementary paper ["Fertilization of orchids", Collected papers 2: 138–56].
Thanks JDH for offer of lilies.
The paper on orchids is by Hermann Müller [Verh. Naturhist. Ver. Preuss. Rheinlande & Westphalens 25 (1868): 1–62], on Platanthera and Epipactis.
Cites another work by P. Rohrbach [Über den Blüthenbau (1866)].
MS [of Descent] ready for printer.
Has read Bentham’s last Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1870): lxxiv–xciv] with great interest.
Has CD read E. Claparède ["Remarques à propos de l’ouvrage de M. Alfred Russel Wallace sur la théorie de la sélection naturelle", Arch. Sci. Phys. & Nat. n.s. 38 (1870): 160–89]? Is it worth translating?
CD and J.-F. de Brandt are "en lutte for Ac. of Sc. [France]. What a farce it is".
His work on Nepenthes supports Miquel’s and Wallace’s view of the zoology of Borneo and Sumatra.
Brian Hodgson on dogs.
H. C. Bastian’s book [The modes of origin of lowest organisms (1871)] unsatisfactory.
Lyell does not share CD’s view of Bentham’s address.
Thinks well of Claparède’s criticism; worth publishing as an answer to Wallace. Bates thinks Wallace’s heterodox views have done mischief to the cause of evolution. Wallace thinks Claparède’s article very weak, CD concludes, because Claparède has arrived at an unpleasant judgment very much like Lyell’s about Bentham’s address.
CD would wager Lyell lately has said something about European Proteaceae.
Does not remember anyone before Wallace on Sumatra and Java.
CD does not think he has a chance against Brandt in French Academy election.
Sends seeds from R. L. Playfair in Algiers.
F. Delpino writes asking where M. A. Curtis has published physiological observations on Dionaea ["Enumeration of plants growing spontaneously around Wilmington, North Carolina", Boston J. Nat. Hist. 1 (1834–7): 82–140; see Insectivorous plants, p. 301 n.].
Talk with Duke of Argyll on CD’s and Wallace’s views on man.
Has not heard of Curtis on Dionaea.
Duke of Argyll is clever, but it is a sin to speak of a real old Duke as a "little beggar".
"My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design."
On spontaneous generation and Bastian.