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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.
Has had some misgivings about the memorial but now thinks his fears were vain and cowardly. Regrets R. I. Murchison was not told in advance. His low opinion of the Government and B. Disraeli.
Examining JDH’s list. CD struck by how many plants are common to Europe, S. America, and Australia.
Sends receipt for £250 6s. 2d.
Approves of WED’s moving into CD’s old rooms [at Christ’s College]. Gives fatherly advice on Cambridge’s temptation to idleness. Christmas plans.
Health poor of late.
Thanks WE for an oriental treatise on pigeons, a paper on poultry, and specimens.
Asks about stripes on shoulders and legs of horses and donkeys.
K. E. von Baer’s view of the air bladder of fishes.
Asks JP to remember him if anything occurs to him "in regard to inheritance at corresponding or rather earlier ages". Sends JP a few examples for his "Chronometry of life". CD is sure he often met with striking facts but he disregarded them. "Deviations alone would have struck me."
Effects of different climates on breeding periods.
Would appreciate loan of CD’s chapter on transmigration across tropics, which may help with the difficulties of Australian distribution.
Still regards plant types as older than animal types.
The Cape of Good Hope and Australian temperate floras cannot be connected by the highlands of Abyssinia.
Wide-ranging species more "improved" than relics in small areas because they exist in large numbers and thus are subject to intense competition.
His abstract is 330 folio pages long so far.
Thanks for some poultry breeds.
JDH cannot abide CD’s connection of wide-ranging species and "highness". Australian flora contradicts this in many ways.
Responds to CD’s queries about the thickness of various geological formations. [See Origin, p. 284.]
Replies at length to JDH’s worried reaction to his comments on lowness of Australian plants. CD distinguishes between "competitive highness", i.e., which fauna would be exterminated and which survive if two faunas were placed in competition, and ordinary "highness" of classification.
