Summary

An invitation to Down for Sunday 16 October.

Summary

CD cannot come to London to sit for photograph. Sends one taken by son [Leonard], which family considers the best likeness. CD would be glad to give a sitting at Down.

Summary

CD too unwell to read. JS should not send Primula paper MS until CD returns home.

Summary

JS’s MS [of Primula paper] arrived, but CD is too ill to read it.

CD has sent JS’s paper on orchid sterility to Botanische Zeitung and to Hooker.

Summary

CD thanks AN for the note and remarks on the partridge’s leg. CD is too ill to write a note, but will send [for] the specimen as soon as he can. [See 4326.]

Summary

CD agrees about reversion.

The discovery of crossing in cryptogams is very interesting.

Summary

CD is too ill to write.

As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]

Summary

CD too unwell to write but has signed the [unspecified] paper and forwarded it as requested.

Summary

CD thinks JS’s Primula paper is fit for publication; he will send it on to the Linnean Society.

Summary

CD is very unwell; will be unable to see RT.

Summary

They are impatient for CD’s arrival.

EW is reading F. Head’s "gallop" [Rapid journeys across the Pampas (1826)] "to get up a little knowledge for him".

CD has nearly settled in favour of living in Cambridge.

Summary

CD will not get to Maer that week. The Langtons are leaving and will meet him at Shrewsbury.

Summary

Describes her compassion for all his sufferings and writes of her wish that his gratitude could be offered to heaven as well as to herself. To her, the only relief is to try to believe that suffering and illness are from God’s hand "to help us to exalt our minds & to look forward with hope to a future state".

Summary

The Darwin family are anxious for FEEW’s and Hensleigh’s opinions of CD’s journal. EW is convinced that Henry Holland is wrong if he thinks it not worth publishing.

Summary

CD too ill to write.

He thanks Appleton for most beautiful work of natural history he has ever seen.

Summary

Encloses a four-page printed pamphlet on the cruelty of steel traps [see Collected papers 2: 83–4].

Summary

Thanks to WDF’s directions, Anne’s tombstone has been found.

CD improved, but recovery is slow. She describes treatment.

Encloses paper she and CD have written [see 4294, which was wrongly addressed by ED and had not reached WDF].

Summary

Apologises that CD is too unwell to do any work, but he is most interested in the frequent occurrence of inherited variations in one locality. It would have been a pleasure to visit if his health had permitted.

Summary

CD’s health.

Family and local news.

Summary

Hopes the Darwins in Shrewsbury will help her convince CD that he must not hurry their marriage too greatly. Sarah Elizabeth Wedgwood [II] adds a postscript to the same effect.