Summary

Admires THH’s article on Kölliker’s and Flourens’ criticisms of Origin [in Natural History Review (1864): 566–80].

Summary

Review of Spencer was by Chauncey Wright.

Will get a note on John Scott’s paper off to Sillimans Journal [Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 39 (1865): 101–10].

Summary

Sends £10 for Down charities.

Summary

Surprised at Kölliker’s misunderstanding; of Flourens he could have believed anything.

Family news.

Summary

Has heard about but not read Origin; is concerned that it may contribute to unbelief. Gives many pages of scriptural quotations and exegesis on the creation of earth, species, etc.

Summary

Asks anyone who possesses a treatise on gardening, or an almanac, one or two centuries old, to look up what date is given as the proper period for sowing scarlet runners or dwarf French beans. CD wants to ascertain whether these plants can now be sown earlier than was formerly the case.

Summary

Huxley has answered Kölliker in Natural History Review [(1864): 566–80].

CD is correcting two of Scott’s papers; is convinced primrose and cowslip are two good species.

Summary

Encloses an extract concerning beans from the Systema Horticultureæ of 1688 by J. Worlidge. Will be pleased to lend the volume if needed.

Summary

Sends a poem about sowing kidney beans.

Summary

Responds to the letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, [before 8 October 1864].

Summary

Requests photograph.

Summary

Has heard that the yeast in CB’s brewery has failed. Asks for confirmation and answers to some questions.

Summary

In response to CD’s notice in Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 2: 93], sends planting times of peas from an 1861 almanac.

Summary

Prescribes continuing the phosphate of iron.

Summary

Morphological differences only partly define species; physiological differences, e.g., incompatibility results in Primula, are far more interesting.

T. Thomson’s review of Agardh’s muddled book ["Agardh’s classification of plants", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1864): 536–51].

Summary

Thanks for letter and memoirs.

Suggests a "rather hopeless experiment" of introducing poisons into tissues of plants on the chance that monstrous growths may be produced.

Summary

Forwards a letter from his head brewer, Laurence Burleigh, on yeast. They seldom exchange yeast with other brewers, and he doubts whether weak yeast from one brewery will ferment strongly in another.

Summary

To Lyell’s chagrin, CD has come round again to A. C. Ramsay’s glacial theory.

On primrose and cowslip, CD maintains they are good species, notwithstanding Scott’s work.

CD defines species by power of remaining constant for a good long time and showing appreciable amount of difference from close species.

Summary

Comments at length on Ramsay’s glacial paper ["On the erosion of valleys and lakes", Philos. Mag. 4th ser. 28 (1864): 293–311]. Prefers it to Tyndall, but unconvinced about sea action and unwilling to grant that ice power sculptures the totality of landscape.

Unwilling to support Wallace for Royal Medal.

Herbert Spencer’s noisy vacuity.

Garden varieties that are constant and infertile with parent deserve to be called species.

Scott ineligible to be Linnean Society associate because he is not in England.

George Busk’s incoherent talk on Gibraltar cave fossils.

Summary

Thanks CD for notes concerning the development of his ideas about the origin of species. Says August Schleicher and Carl Gegenbaur also interested.

Names new supporters of CD’s theory, including Max Schultze, Rudolf Leuckart, and Alexander Braun. Zoologists have been more interested than botanists.

He is writing a general work on the relationships among animals [Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866)].

Comments on Fritz Müller’s Für Darwin [1864].

Gegenbaur is revising his Grundzüge der vergleichenden Anatomie [2d ed. (1870)] to accord with evolution.

Thanks CD for copy of book on balanids [Living Cirripedia, vol. 2].