Showing 41–60 of 528 items
The Charles Darwin Collection
The Darwin Correspondence Project is publishing letters written by and to the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Complete transcripts of letters are being made available through the Project’s website (www.darwinproject.ac.uk) after publication in the ongoing print edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press 1985–). Metadata and summaries of all known letters (c. 15,000) appear in Ɛpsilon, and the full texts of available letters can also be searched, with links to the full texts.
Physical description of Sikkim mountains.
Travelling through Kinchin snows.
Transported boulders.
Continues prior letter of this date. Has received CD’s [1202]. Thanks CD for saving his correspondence.
Sent "a yarn about species" in October mail.
Some "puerile" JDH letters printed in Athenæum.
Requests CD extract anything valuable from his letters to CD and Lyell for Athenæum.
CD’s complemental males in barnacles wonderful.
Warns CD to drop his battle about perpetuity of names in species descriptions.
Pleasure at receiving CD’s scientific letters to JDH and Hodgson.
The H. Wedgwoods’ pecuniary loss.
Condolences at CD’s father’s death.
Rajah harasses JDH’s work. Lack of supplies, rain, malarial valleys, and landslips make going difficult. Cannot get into Tibet.
"Twenty species [of plants] here [Camp Sikkim] to one there [Tierra del Fuego?] always are asking me the vexed question, ""where do we come from?""."
From observation of terraces descending to steppes and plains of India, he thinks that the Himalayas were once a grand fiord coast.
Has information CD requested on Yangsma valley. JDH’s detailed hypothesis of origin of dam there. Does not agree with CD’s interpretation.
CD partly right. JDH was calling "stratification" what CD calls "foliation". Answers CD’s question on cleavage foliation in Himalayas. Glacial action.
Charmed by CD’s Admiralty instructions on geology [in Manual of scientific enquiry (1849), Collected papers 1: 227–50], but complains he does not give prices of books and instruments he recommends.
Spoke too harshly about CD’s involvement in nomenclatural reform.
JDH used to think CD "too prone to theoretical considerations about species", hence was pleased CD took up a difficult group like barnacles. CD’s theories have progressed but JDH not converted. Sikkim has not cleared up his doubts about CD’s doctrines.
Argument with Falconer.
Falconer’s misbehaviour.
Geology of Khashia [Khasi] mountains. Speculations on mountain building and origin of Himalayas.
Wants catalogue of small islands that contain peculiar plants. Thinks complete floras of islands in various stages of depression [subsidence] would provide good data.
James Wilson reports case of salmon hybrids.
Herrings inhabit freshwater lake in Scotland during winter.
JDH will edit juror reports for the Great Exhibition.
Flora of New Zealand.
Reconsidering variability of insular species.
Becoming convinced of the probability that the southern flora is a fragmentary one – all that remains of a great southern continent.
Royal Society votes its Royal Medal for 1853 to CD. JDH reports the debate and vote at the Royal Society Council.
Honoured for Coral reefs
and Cirripedia.
Is relieved his book [Himalayan journals] has been well received and glad he has successfully completed it.
JDH summarises letter from Humboldt.
JDH answers CD’s questions on glacial action in Himalayas.
Birth of JDH’s second child.
Asks CD’s view of "highness" and "lowness" in animals. Gives his own for plants; extent of deviation from type, e.g., floral parts deviating from leaf.
Reading B. C. Brodie’s Psychological inquiries [1854].
JDH on "highness" of Coniferae: they are genuine Dicotyledons, not a link to cryptogams; that is a geologists’ fallacy. Thus they are highest plants in Carboniferous.
Does not agree with CD’s "elastic" species theory. Long correspondence with Lyell on this.
JDH and F. W. Binney identify Calamites specimens as pith casts. They are cryptogams related to, but higher than, Lycopodiaceae and contradict progression.
Insects found in coal.
Lyell says Stonesfield slate marsupials are actually placentals.
JDH reading Alexander Braun on individuality ["Das Individuum der Pflanze in seinem Verhältniss zur Species", Abh. K. Akad. Wiss. Berlin (Phys. Kl.) (1853): 19–122].
JDH’s contempt for R. I. Murchison.
There is a Cyperus species and a Pteris species endemic to hot volcanoes of Ischia. Why are there no other migrators?
Fossil leaves from Disko Island.
JDH to begin working out the botanical geography of the polar sea.
Has not forgotten CD’s request on aberrant species.
Has taken a house on Richmond Hill.
George Bentham’s list of aberrant plant genera. JDH appended the number of species in each genus according to E. G. Steudel’s catalogue [Nomenclator botanicus (1840–1)] and according to JDH and Bentham.
JDH speculates on effect of splitting Australia longitudinally on distribution; it becomes an argument for new creations.
Bentham’s list of aberrant genera: CD’s worry that he eliminated large genera a priori is half right. He eliminated those large, anomalous genera that virtually constitute natural orders. JDH criticises CD’s tabulations of aberrants.
Difficulty of distinguishing affinity and analogy in plants.
List of most anomalous Leguminosae [from George Bentham].
