Dear Darwin

Mr Smith is sending on to you a box with pigeons’ skins from Upper India which D^r King of the Calcutta Gardens forwards from some correspondent of yours.¹

We returned this day week from Scotland²   I am settling down comfortably & without any “hitches” of any kind.

Dyer has just gone for his 6 weeks holidays, which will keep me very busy.³ Andrew Clark has put me on diet for Gout!!!⁴

I have been plagued for years with Eczema auricula. which came on very bad shortly before I married; got better under Arsenic &c & is now breaking out again, & besides the pain is making me very deaf. Clark calls it Gout, but as my father & Grandfather had it & called it by the more intelligible name of E. A. so shall I.—⁵ They tell me that it is the most intractable of all ailments— which is not comforting.—

How are you, & how is Frank.?⁶ The Lubbocks’ asked us for 21^st., but we are booked for the Spottiswoodes on that day⁷

Ever yours affec | Jos D Hooker

Just fancy!— the tourists are pitching the perched blocks of shores of Loch Coruisk into the Loch.— Symons is writing to the proprietor.⁸