Showing 1–9 of 9 items
CD (and Emma) had a good laugh over JDH’s mortified response to a misinterpretation (in print) concerning his position on multiple creation.
Queries from CD on the distribution of molluscan genera referring to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [pt 3 (1856)], with SPW’s answers.
Wishes to borrow fly pincers for his son George.
Discusses T. V. Wollaston’s book on insect variation [On the variation of species (1856)].
Do the plants that are common to Europe and North America nearly all live north of the Arctic Circle? CD bases his question on HCW’s "capital" comparison between relations of Europe to North America and Europe to E. Asia if the intervening land had been submerged. CD has been led to speculate that in the mid-Pliocene the organisms now living in middle Europe and northern U. S. lived within the Arctic Circle. Subsequent movements of this flora with advance and retreat of glaciers would explain present distribution better than Forbes’s vast submergences.
Smallpox in the village. Death of Joseph Parslow’s son.
Sends a cultivated specimen of Myosotis (first generation) grown from seed sent by JSH. Asks for a tuft of flower.
Hopes JSH will publish a book on teaching botany, because he has no idea how to begin with his children.
Comments on Huxley–Falconer dispute [see "On the method of palaeontology", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 18 (1856): 43–54].
Wollaston’s On the variation of species [1856].
Has exploded to Lyell against the extension of continents.
Plants common to Europe and NW. America as result of temperate climate.
CD sends reference for "Laburnum case", with comment on his own credulity.
Wants to quote JDH on plants endemic to NW. America.
Criticises at length the concept of submerged continents attaching islands to the mainland in the recent period. Notes drastic alteration of geography required, the dissimilar species on opposite shores of continents, and differences between volcanic islands and mountains of mainland areas. Admits sea-bed subsidence, but not enough to engulf continents. Denies that theory can explain island flora and fauna.
Considers Edward Forbes’s idea a check on study of dissemination of species.