Sales of Origin.
Discusses revisions for second edition. Mentions possible French translation.
Views of Quatrefages [de Bréau].
Showing 41–60 of 63 items
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.
Sales of Origin.
Discusses revisions for second edition. Mentions possible French translation.
Views of Quatrefages [de Bréau].
Discusses corrections for second edition [of Origin]. Will leave out the reference to whale and bear. Discusses pheasant crosses. Success of the book.
Asks how many kinds of supposed birds’ footprints were found in North American sandstone.
Making progress on second edition of Origin.
Encloses letter from Adam Sedgwick [2548].
Mentions conversion of A. C. Ramsay.
Comments on note from Charles Kingsley saying CD’s theory is not opposed to a high conception of the Deity.
Mentions negative views of Origin of Sedgwick, John Crawfurd, Roderick Murchison, John Phillips, and Joseph Prestwich.
Encloses a letter from FitzRoy to the Times.
Mentions letter from W. B. Carpenter accepting single progenitor for major animal classes.
Speculates about Richard Owen’s opinion.
Discuss CL’s suggestions for revisions to the chapter on the geological record [Origin, ch. 9].
Henry Holland’s reaction to the book.
Comments on CL’s work on flint tools of early men.
Describes at length a conversation with Owen concerning Origin. Notes "that at bottom he goes immense way with us", but emphasises Owen’s unfriendly manner. Remarks that Owen accepted a relationship between bears and whales. "By Jove I believe he thinks a sort of Bear was the grandpapa of Whales!"
Has heard Herschel considered his book "the law of higgledy-piggledy".
Comments on Hooker’s introductory essay [in Flora Tasmaniae].
Cites C. V. Naudin’s article ["Considérations philosophiques sur l’espèce et la variété", Rev. Hortic. 4th ser. 1 (1852): 102–9].
Mentions letter from William Jardine criticising discussion of the Galapagos in the Origin.
Mentions William Clift ["Report in regard to the fossil bones found in New Holland", Edinburgh New Philos. J. 10 (1830–1): 394–6].
Discusses relations between fossil and living types.
Discusses Hooker’s introductory essay [in Flora Tasmaniae]. Criticises Hooker’s views on flora of rising and sinking islands.
Encloses letter concerning Edward Blyth’s application for a position with the China expedition.
Mentions reviews of the Origin. Guesses that Huxley wrote the Times review.
Alludes to discussion of relations between fossil and modern types [in Principles of geology 3: 144].
Discusses destruction of tropical forms in the glacial period.
Mentions letter from Dana concerning Dana’s illness.
Communicate papers by CD and A. R. Wallace on "The Laws which affect the Production of Varieties, Races, and Species". Explain that CD and Wallace have, independently and unknown to each other, arrived at the same theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of specific forms, and that neither has yet published, although CD first sketched his theory in 1839. Give their reasons for arranging the joint presentation.
CL would like to put Joachim Barrande on the Royal Society’s foreign list. Of French geologists and palaeontologists, he is the man who has made the greatest sacrifices and produced the greatest results.
Urges CD to publish his theory with small part of data.
Corrects names of land shells on list of shells picked up at Down.
Discusses transport of Ancylus from one river-bed to another by water-beetle.
"I hear that when you & Hooker & Huxley & Wollaston got together you made light of all Species & grew more & more unorthodox."
Mentions discussion of old Atlantis by Oswald Heer.
Comments on Helix and Nanina.
Mentions beetle discovered with small bag of eggs of water-spider under wing.
Madeira evidence favours single species birth-place theory.
CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".
CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".
Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?
To cast doubt on CD’s view that volcanic action is associated with elevation of land, CL suggests that local oscillations in strata underlying volcanoes could also explain how active volcanoes have uplifted fossil deposits of marine shells. Overall he is more inclined to believe that recent volcanoes belong to areas of subsidence rather than of elevation.
Enumerates fossil mammals known in Secondary strata.
Lack of angiosperm plants in rocks older than Chalk is no reason to anticipate rarity of warm-blooded quadrupeds.
Extended discussion of their respective difficulties with the definition and status of species and with the extent to which the theory of transmutation may be applied.
Has rediscovered S. S. Haldeman’s 1844 paper defending the transmutation theory with great skill.
Asks for reference to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s first enunciation of the progressive development and transmutation theory.
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.
Wishes CD would enlarge on the doctrines of [Pyotr Simon] Pallas about the various races of dogs having come from several distinct wild species or sub-species.
Suggests organisms have a latent principle of improvement which is brought out by selection or breeding.