Troubled by JDH’s connection between Antarctic island flora and Fuegia, which CD sees as part of a general relation to southern circumpolar flora. Encloses list [not found] of plants from Tristan d’Acunha.
CD writing species sketch; must cite cases favouring multiple creations.
Requests details on species JDH listed as common to Chile and New Zealand. Notes their genera are mundane.
Has found no case of Huxley’s eternal hermaphrodites.
Cruelty and waste in nature.
CD does not believe in hybrids.
One proven case of multiple creations would smash CD’s theory.
Asks JDH to read MS on alpine and Arctic distribution.
Lyell’s "conversion" to mutability.
Multiple creations.
Necessity for crossing in plants and animals: JDH to take up the subject; explains separate sexes in trees.
Continental extensions.
Tristan da Cunha flora.
Aquatic plants.
Density and diversity of plants in small plots in Kent, Keeling Islands, and Himalayas.
CD’s predicament with continental extensions: they would remove argument for multiple creations, yet he opposes the doctrine. Lyell will not express an opinion on this.
Lyell fears mutability would lead to more specific names.
Encloses copy of letters to Lyell [1910 and 1917].
Agrees that Lyell’s letters shed no new light on extensions issue. Continental extensions: opposes their being hypothesised all over world.
Commonality of alpine plants damns both extension and migration.
Antarctic plants most difficult to account for on any theory. Lyell’s iceberg transportal of seeds.
Are there more representative species of American origin in Tristan da Cunha than in Kerguelen land?
Whether or not there should be movement of particles according to Tyndall’s theory of glacial action ["Observations on glaciers", Not. Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 2: 54–8, 441–3].
CD subscribes to H. C. Sorby’s view of gneiss [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 55 (1853): 137–50].
Seed-salting.
Pigeons.
Significant differences in skeletons of domesticated rabbits.
Will send MS on one point of geographical distribution. It is "of infinite importance" that JDH see it, for CD has never felt such difficulty in deciding what to do.
Wants capsules of aquatic plants, to float in sea-water.
Agrees with JDH that Cytisus report [presumably of a large change] not sound. CD pleased because, if true, species would change too quickly.
CD coming to London.
Read JDH’s review [Hooker’s Kew J. Bot. 8 (1856): 54–64 et seq.] of Alphonse de Candolle’s Géographie botanique raisonnée [1855] long ago.
Note accompanying MS of part of chapter 11 ["Geographical distribution"] of Natural selection [1975].
CD sorry he had to leave the Hookers abruptly to catch his train.
CD relieved by JDH’s positive response to his MS.
CD continues observations on means of transport.
JDH’s Raoul Island paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 22 (1857): 133–41], showing continuity of vegetation with New Zealand, best evidence yet of continental extension.
CD finds JDH’s objections to a mundane cold period significant, and he endeavours to show how they do not rule out mutability.
He is writing on crossing.
CD encloses letter from Asa Gray, although it is critical of JDH.
Role of struggle in forming species in retreat from advancing glaciers.
CD, attempting to clarify debate, states more of his position. External conditions cause "mere variability". Formation of species due to selection. Relation of an organism to its associates far more important than external conditions.
Sends JDH part of MS for chapter 3 of Natural selection ["Possibility of all organic beings crossing"] to be corrected and returned.
JDH’s report of Podostemon flowering cleistogamously under water in Bengal.
[Copious revision by JDH.]
Questions JDH on separation of sexes in trees in New Zealand flora.
