Has finished geographical distribution chapter and asks JDH to read it.
Is it just to say embryological characters are of high importance in plant classification?
Much concerned by death of JBI’s mother.
Will read JDH’s printers’ slips on variation.
CD has been so ill, he wonders whether he will get his book done, though so nearly completed.
Sends payment for poultry received.
Sends THH questions about "serial homologies" and "vegetative repetition" in Mollusca and Radiata.
Abstract volume [Origin] nearly completed.
Wants examples of insects (especially Diptera) in which embryo resembles adult, to show that the metamorphic stages may be lost.
Serial homologies in the Mollusca. Gives instances of repetition of homological parts in Radiata.
Outlines the basic categories of phanerogams.
Places Gymnospermae in the dicotyledons.
Evaluates the variable utility of embryological characters in plant classification.
Sends MS [of Origin] on geographical distribution. Wants JDH to correct facts and say what he most vehemently objects to.
Has received JDH’s note on plant embryology.
HW has confirmed the report in the Times of a shower of fish (minnows and sticklebacks) that fell on the Wedgwood colliery.
Thanks for THH’s examples of serially modified and homologous parts in Radiata. Cannot understand how he forgot such cases.
Agassiz’s Essay on classification [1859] utterly impracticable rubbish.
Writes of events at Down: mostly of playing billiards on their new table.
Will finish last chapter (except recapitulation) tomorrow.
Pleased with JDH’s response to geographical distribution chapter;
CD disagrees with Lyell’s view that glacial epoch is connected with position of continents.
Embryology of Diptera. Development of insects; metamorphosis. JL feels all insects go through metamorphosis but that in some of them, part takes place before birth.
Wants JL’s opinion on paper by L. J. M. Dufour ["Études anatomiques sur les insectes diptères de la famille des pupipares", C. R. Hebd. Acad. Sci. 19 (1844): 1345–55].
Development of aphids; apparent absence of vermiform stage.
Is correcting chapters [of Origin] for press.
Health has been wretched of late.
He values fame to a certain extent, but "if I know myself, I work from a sort of instinct to try to make out truth".
Has heard that CL has spoken to John Murray about publication [of Origin]. Encloses prospective title-page. Asks whether he ought to tell John Murray about unorthodoxy of the book.
Requests receipt for payments to Society in 1858–9.
Hopes Murray will publish after seeing MS [of Origin].
Demurs at JDH’s saying that CD changes climate to account for migration of bugs, flies, etc. "We do nothing of the sort; for we rest on scored rocks, old moraines, arctic shells, and mammifers." Has given up the Lyellian doctrine as insufficient to explain all changes in climate; CD has no theory about the cause of the cold.
