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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.
Baby [Charles Waring Darwin] died of scarlet fever on 28 June. "Fear has almost driven away grief."
Believes that, in Dicentra, Fumaria and Corydalis, flower structures are related directly to visits from bees. Flower stigmas generally are placed in the path of bees.
Has received paper from Wallace on natural selection; has sent abstract of his notions, with Wallace’s paper, to Linnean Society.
Death in family [Charles Waring Darwin]. Illness of children forces him to leave home and interrupt work on pigeons.
Thanks JDH for his report on the reading of the Wallace and Darwin papers at the Linnean Society [read 1 July 1858; Collected papers 2: 3–19]. Considers how to publish his work. Offers to forward a note from JDH to Wallace.
The crisis is abating – no further scarlet fever in the family.
JDH’s letter to Wallace perfect. CD’s feelings about priority. Without Lyell’s and JDH’s intervention CD would have given up all claims to Wallace. Now planning 30-page abstract for a journal.
Observations on floral structure
and slave-making ants.
Sends proofs [of "On the tendency of species to form varieties … ", read 1 July 1858, Collected papers 2: 3–19]. CD could publish his abstract [later the Origin] as a separate supplemental number of [Journal of the Linnean Society].
JDH has studied in detail CD’s manuscript on variable species in large and small genera and concurs with its consequences. Discusses methodological idiosyncrasies of systematists, e.g., Bentham, Robert Brown, and C. C. Babington, which complicate CD’s tabulations.
Discusses the absence of a native bee in New Zealand and the insects which probably performed its fertilising function [see "Agency of bees in fertilization", Collected papers 2: 21]. Describes the success of the naturalised hive-bee and also the rapid spread of introduced members of the Fabaceae.
Regards from Isle of Wight.
Thanks for abstract of Etna paper [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 148 (1858): 703–86]. Never expected to see Élie de Beaumont’s theory ["craters of elevation"] so completely upset. "He must have picked out favourable cases for measurement."
More than satisfied by what was done at Linnean Society [joint reading of CD’s and Wallace’s papers: "Tendency of species to form varieties", Collected papers 2: 3–19]. Intends to prepare longer abstract.
After all, CD is now beginning to prepare an abstract of his species theory. Recounts the events leading to joint paper with A. R. Wallace at Linnean Society. Lyell and Hooker urge strongly that he publish a fuller abstract. It is impossible to do justice to subject in an abstract.
His sister, Marianne Parker, has died.
Correcting proof for CD–Wallace paper. Has begun abstract.
Large and small genera.
Six children have died of scarlet fever in Down village.
Writing abstract is amusing and improving work. Thanks JDH and Lyell for setting him to it.
Thanks WJH for an extract on seed transport by sea. [Letter sent with 2314.]
The CD–Wallace paper has gone to press.
JDH’s tabulation of variable species from Bentham was done in haste.
