CD’s observations on curved styles read well. JDH seeks morphological rationale of curvature in the position of nectaries.
He has avoided lecturing to Royal Family’s children at Buckingham Palace.
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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.
CD’s observations on curved styles read well. JDH seeks morphological rationale of curvature in the position of nectaries.
He has avoided lecturing to Royal Family’s children at Buckingham Palace.
Has examined Leschenaultia and concludes the external viscid surfaces have nothing to do with the stigmatic surface. Agrees with CD’s style and nectary conclusions; accounts for their form and position in irregular flowers by describing floral development.
[Enclosed are some queries by CD with answers by JDH. Gives information on seed setting by Mucuna
and an opinion on the abruptness of N. and S. limits of plant ranges.]
CD’s divergent series explains those anomalous plants that hover between what would otherwise be two species in a genus.
Inclined to see conifers as a sub-series of dicotyledons that developed in parallel to monocotyledons, but retained cryptogamic characters.
Mentions H. C. Watson’s view of variations.
Man has destroyed more species than he has created varieties.
Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.
In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".
Glad to hear good news of Etty [Henrietta Darwin].
CD’s observations on Scaevola are capital. The indusium collects the pollen and is the homologue of the pollen-collecting hairs of Campanula. A boat-shaped organ forms a second indusium, the inside base of which forms the stigmatic surface. The latter later protrudes as horns, forming the stigma.
Describes W. H. Harvey’s scientific career and thinks his letter interesting. Agrees with Harvey that the primary agency of natural selection is as great a mystery as ever. [Response to 2823.]
JDH reports on the debate on the Origin at Oxford [BAAS] meeting.
Encourages CD’s work in vegetable physiology.
Ascending the Lebanon JDH noted limits of plant distribution as CD requested: lower limits of a genus sharper than upper. Sharpness of boundaries related to a plant’s moisture requirement.
Impressed by "sporadic" distribution at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
JDH’s page-by-page criticisms on Origin, first edition, as requested by CD for preparation of the third edition.
CD’s article worth publishing in Gardeners’ Chronicle. JDH interprets CD’s observation in terms of selection. Has observed similar phenomenon in Cruciferae, where it can be taxonomically important.
List of Australian plants that have become naturalised in the Nilgiris [India] and are turning out the native trees.
Asks CD whether he hears from Asa Gray. JDH’s opinion of the crisis [Trent case, Nov 1861] and the American Civil War.
Julius von Haast alludes to glacial drift in Middle Island of New Zealand.
Backwardness of JDH’s son, Willy.
Encloses a reference from Daniel Oliver which may be useful.
Glad CD has given up on Acropera ovules.
Doubts phanerogams less different in extreme forms [than Crustacea].
No systematic parallelism between plants and animals.
Offers list of Arctic plants with their colours. Asks CD whether it is useful to add colour to [descriptions of] plants.
Sends plant specimens. William Borrer will be glad to send seeds.
JDH castigates the Americans after the Trent affair. The value of an aristocracy. How will CD answer Asa Gray’s letter?
His "remarkable plant" [Welwitschia mirabilis] exhibited at Linnean Society.
Genera plantarum is in press.
Will send an Arethusa; offers other specimens.
Dimorphism.
Falconer contradicts Sumatra and Ceylon elephant story.
Lyell as rabid as ever about America.
Wrote a "frightful screed" about aristocracy’s being a necessary consequence of natural selection, and then burnt it.
H. W. Bates is the only man "thinking out" natural selection to any purpose. "I think I have driven Bates back to Nat. Sel. as the only way of solving his difficulties."
HWB’s mimetic butterflies.
JDH wishes he had time to do the same thing with plants.
Owen and Huxley involved in a "contemptible" squabble in the Edinburgh newspapers.
Maximovitch reports Stellaria bulbifera is a Siberian form which never ripens its seeds.
Sends dried specimens of Melastomataceae.
Sends C. W. Crocker’s address.
Doubts CWC can help with Mormodes.
Will see CD at Lubbock’s.
Box of Melastomataceae has arrived.
Talked with [Duke of] Argyll about Origin. He is between stools: Owen and Lyell.
Pleased at CD’s opinion of his Arctic plants paper. CD has caught great blunder.
Lack of Arctic–Asiatic species in mountains of tropical Asia does not trouble him. Species seem to indicate some "current of migration" from Europe and W. Asia southeastward to Ceylon – an awful staggerer to bridge migrations.
Had it not been for CD, JDH would never have written such papers as his one on Arctic flora. The "evulgation" of CD’s views is the purest pleasure he derives from them.
He too is staggered that Greenland ought to have been depopulated during the glacial period. Absence of Caltha is fatal to its re-population by chance migration.