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.
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.
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.
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.
CD is grateful to CL for his help in arranging with Murray for publication [of Origin]. Sorry Murray objects to term "abstract" in title, but will defer to him and CL.
CD has heard from Lyell that JM is inclined to publish his work on the origin of species. Will send some chapters as soon as copyist has finished. Sends list of 12 chapters. It will be a popular abstract of more than 20 years’ work. It ought to be popular with scientific and semi-scientific readers.