CD and Francis Darwin both attended the Linnean Society meeting on 2 February 1876 to support a second, successful, attempt to have Edwin Ray Lankester elected as a fellow after his rejection at a meeting in December 1875. See letter from J. D. Hooker, 28 January 1876 and n. 1.

John Tyndall had become engaged to Louisa Charlotte Hamilton; see letter from J. D. Hooker, 28 January 1876 and n. 4.

See letter from J. D. Hooker, 28 January 1876 and n. 2. CD had asked Hooker for comments on a paper by Lawson Tait on Nepenthes (the genus of tropical pitcher-plants) that Tait had asked CD to pass to the Royal Society of London for possible publication. The paper has not been found, but in a later publication on the characteristics of the pitchers in Nepenthes and based on observations he made at this time, Tait described subdermal (‘epithelial’) structures that he believed to be modifications used in the absorption of water or nutrients; he also disagreed with Joseph Dalton Hooker’s identification of glands on the underside of the hoods of Nepenthes as nectaries, considering those also to be more likely to be involved in digestion (L. Tait 1879–80, pp. 7–8, 59–61).