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Lyell, Charles in correspondent 
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From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
3 Oct 1859
Source of text:
DAR 98: B1–6
Summary:

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.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
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From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
4 Oct 1859
Source of text:
DAR 170: 81; The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Notebook 241, pp. 75–90)
Summary:

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.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
Date:
11 Oct [1859]
Source of text:
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.172)
Summary:

CL’s comments on Origin. Mentions corrections to last chapter suggested by CL.

Comments on lack of peculiar bird species on Madeira and Bermuda. Emphasises importance of American types in Galapagos.

Denies necessity of continued creation of primitive "Monads".

Denies need for new powers and any principle of improvement.

Discusses gradations of intellectual powers.

Adaptive inferiority and extinction of groups of species and genera.

Asserts that climate is less important than the struggle with other organisms.

Suggests an experiment involving primroses and cowslips.

The chapter on hybridisation.

Rudimentary organs.

Gives opinion of Lamarck’s work.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
[22 Nov 1859]
Source of text:
DAR 205.11: 139
Summary:

Comments on pp. 201, 211, and 218 [of Origin].

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
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