Comments on MS of JL’s [1881] BAAS Presidential Address. Suggests that more attention be given to parthenogenesis.
Obliged for the shrub "Australian Sheep" [Raoulia eximia] and pleased to have seen MN’s Australian pictures. Can still recall scenes from various countries with vividness.
CD wants to see TLB before he leaves London. Much obliged for his aid.
Reports on a luncheon of scientific savants at which the Crown Prince of Germany [and Prince of Wales?] were present.
Acknowledges receipt of parcel of colours and chemical reagents.
Thanks him for his letter. "I am not a quick thinker or a good talker and you would learn nothing from me on the many important subjects you have discussed."
Suggests meeting in London in lieu of a visit to Down.
CD does not lend money, but he encloses a cheque as a present.
Responds to JDH’s outline history of plant geography.
Considers Humboldt the "greatest scientific traveller who ever lived".
Discusses the origin and rapid radiation of angiosperms in Cretaceous period.
Comments on importance of work of Alphonse de Candolle, Saporta, Axel Blytt.
Asks the printers that the table of contents [for Earthworms] be done in the same fashion used in his other books. Requests another proof.
Encloses notice about Wilhelm Roux’s book [see 13118].
Comments on John Collier’s portrait.
AD’s case is a "curious one"; it seems impossible to explain as accidental coincidence.
[Letter sent in error to Raphael Meldola and apparently never forwarded to AD.]
Requests name of the publishers of RM’s translation of Weismann’s Studien.
Apologises for the trouble he has caused RM. Encloses letter [13280] which has been returned to CD [by August Dupré, to whom CD had sent it in error].
Thanks EBA for his book [see 13283]. Has no objection to people differing from him or carrying his arguments further than he would consider safe.
Responds to JDH on history of plant geography.
Opinion of Humboldt.
Origin of higher phanerogams.
Importance of the occurrence of south temperate forms in the Northern Hemisphere.
Sends his autograph.
Returns an invoice for a book he has not received and does not remember ordering.
The author sent him a copy a few weeks ago.
Fly adheres to ceiling by viscid matter on feet. Refers correspondent to B. T. Lowne, Anatomy and physiology of the blow-fly (1870).
Darwin remarks that "As far as I know no one ever discussed the meaning of the relation between representative species before I did & as I suppose Wallace did in his paper before the Linn. Soc. [1858].".
No one could have thought about evolution and not about representative species; yet no one discussed it fully until Origin, including von Baer.
Did not know of Leopold von Buch’s Description physique des îles Canaries [1836] when Origin was published.
"As far as I know no one ever discussed the meaning of the relation between representative species before I did & as I suppose Wallace did in his paper before the Linn. Soc. [1858]."
