Summary

Is unable to accept invitation to Shrewsbury. Is grateful for offer of assistance at Wroxeter.

The weight of dry earth cast up by worms is 161/10 tons per acre annually.

Summary

Asks VOK to translate a passage from Franz Körte, Die Streich-, Zug- oder Wander-Heuschrecke [1828], p. 33.

Deplores the "fearful piece of tyranny" that is obstructing publication of Descent in Russia.

Summary

Thanks for FD’s help. CD cannot conceive what Mivart means by "the identity between eyes of Cephalopods and Vertebrata".

Has invited Michael Foster to Down.

Summary

Obliged for ESM’s article ["On adaptive coloration of the Mollusca", Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 14 (1870–1): 141–5]. Glad to have error corrected about protective colouring of shells.

Summary

Mentions the difficulties in explaining the separation of sexes and Carl Nägeli’s view that the sexes of plants were primordially distinct.

Has been experimenting for five or six years to demonstrate that the benefits of crossing are the same as those derived from a slight change of conditions.

Summary

Gives his opinion on four papers by J. P. M. Weale.

Summary

JC-B’s MS most useful.

P. Gratiolet’s observations on contraction and dilation of pupils of eye of a person in extreme terror. Has JC-B ever observed this? Expression has been his hobby-horse for 30 years.

Summary

Thanks for FTK’s locust paper ["Die geographische Verbreitung der Wanderheuschrecke", Petermann’s Geogr. Mittheil. (1871)].

Summary

CD will pay for the American trip if it takes place.

Asks whether FD can help him understand the eyes of cephalopods; is the structure the same as in the Vertebrata and are the parts developed from homologous layers of skin?

Has been pleased by a recent review.

Postscript: Is thinking of a cheap edition of the Origin [1872] in which he hopes to answer St George Mivart’s criticisms.

Asks FD whether he can get some references to good papers on cephalapod eyes.

Summary

Thanks for letter [7533] and the interesting notes. Even more interesting is HHHvZ’s case of the De Haas family.

Summary

Comments on FCD’s 1848 work [see 7582] in which he came near to anticipating CD.

Comments on FCD’s paper [on action of the eyelids, see 7203]. Asks about contraction or dilation of the iris due to emotional states, illness, or prostration.

Summary

"Please accept my thanks for your kind present of your two Papers."

Summary

Asks WWB to send 8 grains of acetate of strychnine by post.

Summary

Sends a copy of Orchids for his wife, T. M. Story-Maskelyne, and a few other items she may wish to have.

Climbing Plants may be purchased at Williams and Norgate; he has no clean copies.

Summary

Thanks JVC for his corrections. Will send other errata. Hopes to send remainder of vol. 2 [of Descent] in a fortnight.

Summary

"If you feel astonished at my bringing man & brutes so near together in their whole nature (though with a wide hiatus) I feel still more astonished, as I believe, at your judgment on this head. I much wish you had enlarged your concluding sentence a little so as to say whether you consider the ordinary mental faculties so distinct, or whether you confine the enormous difference to spiritual powers including the moral sense.––"

Summary

Mentions experiments on Lythrum.

Thanks for list of seeds.

Summary

CD’s comments on proofs of JL’s book [Monograph of the Collembola and Thysanura (1873)].

Summary

CD is considering repeating experiments on melastomads in which different pollen sizes produced differing seedling sizes.

Responds to JDH’s query on differences in pollen within the same species.