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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.
Representative species may complicate tabulation of varieties.
Questions for Mr Anderson about horse colouring in Norway.
Has been writing an "audacious little discussion" to show that "organic beings are not perfect, only perfect enough to struggle with their competitors".
C. F. Ledebour [Flora rossica (1842–53)] particularly useful for variety tabulation. Results generally favourable.
Additions to Down House.
Last two chapters of MS took six months to write.
Returns some of the systematics books borrowed from JDH. Will now take on A. P. and Alphonse de Candolle [Prodromus].
Arrangements for a visit.
Return of books.
JDH coming to Down.
Rule that species vary most in larger genera seems universal.
Response to Gardeners’ Chronicle note on "Bees and kidney beans" [Collected papers 1: 275–7].
Mrs J. S. Henslow’s illness.
Inquiries on effect of dry heat on temperate plants for glacial chapter.
Survey of species with well-marked varieties: JDH’s Labiatae case a "great blow", but result is very generally consistent.
Species with marked varieties.
Dana’s pamphlet also too metaphysical for CD.
Natural selection chapter on hybridism completed.
Doubts JDH will resist theory in his introduction to Flora Tasmaniae.
On papilionaceous flowers and CD’s theory that there are no eternal hermaphrodites. Connects this theory to absence of small-flowered legumes in New Zealand and the absence of small bees as pollinators.
CD has never doubted probability of Bering Strait land connection.
Family illness.
Returns books by Candolle and Robert Brown.
Six volumes of Candolle’s Prodromus confirm rule that small genera vary less than large. Labiatae an exception to rule.
General success of survey makes CD very concerned about sources of error. Wants to meet JDH for an important talk about big genera. Arranges meeting.
Fertilisation of clover by bees in New Zealand.
Uneasy about biggest genera and their varieties.
H. T. Buckle’s sophistry [History of civilisation in England (1857)].
Working on bees’ cells.
JDH has confirmed CD’s opinion on the affinities of species in great genera. Is looking at large genera in several local Floras to find the "range & commonness of varying species".
Has been "beyond measure interested" in the construction instincts of the hive-bee.
C. C. Babington agrees with JDH that botanists tend to note varieties more in large genera than in very small ones.
Heartened that tabulations of small and large genera done in different ways yield good results. JDH has done some tabulations but has not followed CD’s method of getting equal numbers of small and large genera.
JDH’s "objection" that small local genera do not vary and mundane ones do, is exactly CD’s point. Local floras useful to test idea that varieties are incipient species. Same genus in different countries cannot be lumped.
Thanks JDH for his objections; will respond by sending fair copy of MS when written.
