MS of a paper called "Comments on Mr Darwin’s grand theory", which generally supports CD but proposes that present flightless birds are primitive. Paper supplemented by a diagram showing the phylogeny of birds.
Examples of animals that dwell in dark places, some of which are blind, some not. Asks: where causes are the same, why is not the effect? Does not think disuse is the answer, but arrested development.
Comments also on the absence of a ligament in four mammals and asks how natural selection accounts for this.
Responds to CD’s queries concerning faults; is sending sections of the kind he wants. The Merionethshire fault with a downthrow of 12000ft. [See Origin, p. 285.]
Will secure information on indigenous and naturalised bees as CD requests.
Believes Mexican and Jamaican Melipona are different.
Relieved by Wallace’s letter.
At work on introductory essay to Flora Tasmaniae.
European plants naturalised in Australia are almost all adapted to invading disturbed ground.
JDH supports Asa Gray against Alphonse de Candolle as foreign member of Royal Society.
Hooker is “relieved and pleased” by the letters from ARW that Darwin had forwarded regarding ARW’s reaction to the joint reading of their papers at the Linnean Society in 1858. He discusses his progress on his Australian article. [Hooker, J. D. 1859. On The Flora of Australia: Its Origin, Affinities, and Distribution. In: Botany of the Antarctic Expedition. Part 3: Flora of Tasmania, vol. 1. London: Lovell Reeve.] He discusses potential candidates for the Royal Society’s new Foreign Fellow.
Is sorry to hear of bad health of CD and his daughter.
Discusses, with an example, the difficulty of explaining structural differences between closely allied species.
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.
HW has confirmed the report in the Times of a shower of fish (minnows and sticklebacks) that fell on the Wedgwood colliery.
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.
On the strength of CD’s details about his work on species and his knowledge of CD’s former publications, JM offers to publish [Origin] without seeing the MS.
Lyell has been strongly urging John Murray to publish CD’s book [Origin]. JDH feels Lyell overestimates the public interest in such works.
Gives examples of plants showing most marked varieties on the edge of their range.
Reports his observations on the habits of slave-making ants (Formica sanguinea).
Provides requested information about certain railway shares.
No doubt about worm-holes in the Long Mynd, and they are certainly lower than J. Barrande’s primordial zone. Fossils in Laurentian gneiss.
Suggests giving Marcus Huish permission to shoot over CD’s Beesby estate, but not to revoke JH’s occasional privilege to take a visitor shooting there.
Wonders whether CD would be interested in a book by Dr Bucknell [J. C. Bucknill?] on psychology.
Praises the Origin: a "splendid case of close reasoning".
Objects to CD’s having ignored Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
Thinks CD should omit mentioning problem of explaining the eye at the beginning of chapter 14. Suggests rewording several passages.
Thinks want of peculiar birds in Madeira a difficulty, considering presence of them in Galapagos.
Has always felt that the case of man and his races is one and the same with animals and plants.
Response to Origin. Praise for summary of chapter 10 and chapter 11.
The dissimilarity of African and American species is ‘necessary result of “Creation” adapting new species to the pre-existing ones. Granting this unknown & if you please miraculous power acting’.
C. T. Gaudin writes of Oswald Heer’s finding many species common between Miocene floras of Iceland and Switzerland. Interesting for CD’s migration theory.