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Does not spermatic animalcule in Mosses render my view of the crossing of mosses & all others by action of wind difficult. —

Cline on the breeding of animals.¹ p. 8. size of foetus in proportion to male parent. p. 8. his whole doctrine of the advantage of crossing consists in the idea of the male being smaller, & the female larger than the average size: (surely this is very limited view though perhaps a true element) give examples: pigs with small Chinese boar &c. &c. &c.

Offspring take more after father than mother; illustrated by the crossing of hornless sheep with horned. — compare this with what highland shepherd said. —

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¹ Henry Cline, Observations on the Breeding and Form of Domestic Animals, London, 1829.

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p. 12. Attempts to improve the native animals of any country must be made with great caution; owing to its adaptation to the surrounding circumstances.

According to my theory no land animal with fluid seeds can be true hermaphrodite. —

Man probably assumes the hairy character of his forefathers only when advanced in age, & therefore the children do not (& in hairless kittens we see same fact) go back, & this is argument against Blyth's¹

¹ Edward Blyth, Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. 9, 1836, p. 402: "Every modification of every successive type is thus rudimentally different from the most approximate modifications of every other equivalent type, or superior type, to which it does not appertain; and this is the same conclusion to which I have been irresistibly led from consideration of various phenomena connected with the change in plumage which takes place in birds. As every species is perfectly and essentially different from every other species, so, except in a retrograde direction, are the successive typical and subtypical plans upon which they are severally organised".

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doctrine of young birds retrogressing —

Uncovering the canine teeth, or sneering, has no more relation to our present wants or structure, than the muscles of the ears to our hearing powers.

E.¹ frowns prodigiously when drinking very cold water, frowns connected with pain as well as intense thought. —

No one but a practised geologist can really comprehend how old the world is, as the measurements refer not to revolutions of the sun & our lives, but to period necessary to form heaps of pebbles &c. &c.: the succession of organisms tells nothing about length of time, only order of succession. —

¹ Erasmus Alvey Darwin, Darwin's elder brother.

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Splendid Pamphlet (published in Philosoph. Journal Mar April 1^st 1839) by Sedgwick & Murchison¹; which is a beautiful instance of forms, intercalated between two great distinct formations. — particulars are given p. 246-248 & p. 258.

A beautiful case showing the gradation from one grand system to another: in each system, the changes from limestone to san[d]stone &c. show some great change who can say how many centuries elapsed between each of these gaps. far more probably than than during the deposition of the beds. — The argument must

¹ Adam Sedgwick & Roderick Murchison, "Classification of the Older Stratified Rocks of Devonshire and Cornwall", Philosoph. Mag. vol. 14, 1839, pp. 241-260.

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April 3^d — Henslow¹ tells me following facts: believes that only red Lychnis grows in South Wales & certainly [word deleted] only white in Cambridge, in some counties sometimes one & sometimes other. — there is some difference of habit between these varieties, so that they have been thought to be different species. Lychnis dioica, generally dioecious yet parts only very slightly abortive & bed of female flowers will sometimes produce a few seeds. — Ruscus aculeatus a dioecious plant, in which the male plant sometimes

¹ John Stevens Henslow.

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bears female flowers, the organ. are most clearly abortive, so that they become so by suppression of one organ. here language forces on us the change, which seems to have taken place. — Almost all Dioecious & monoecious plants have rudimentary abortive organs, even more so Polygamia: Monoecia & Dioecia, preeminently artificial, so that even some species only in genera have this structure. —

Some willow trees have been observed to change their sex. — this effect from age, what M^r Knight¹

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¹ Thomas Andrew Knight.