Summary

Discusses blushing. CD believes confusion of mind alone can account for it. Sends MS for JC-B’s comments and corrections.

Summary

Thanks VOK for sending F. Körte’s book [Die Streich-, Zug- oder Wander-Heuschrecke (1828)]. The passage CD wrote about [see 7735] must occur in the second edition. If VOK ever comes upon the 1829 edition, it would be of use to him.

Agrees that the Versailles army has been savagely brutal [in siege of Paris], but thinks the "Communists [Communards] have made themselves everlastingly infamous".

Summary

Has shipped a portmanteau and box of WDF’s things. Lists bills paid from funds sent.

"My success has been very splendid in the science" [entomology].

Summary

His routine days at Cambridge.

Entomology stopped for the present.

His reading, gambling, and parties. News of Cambridge friends.

Summary

Account of insects he has collected, with figures drawn by sister.

Summary

Discusses fossil bones found in Australia by Mr Isaac. Suggests they be sent to Richard Owen.

Summary

Will give his support to a school for the poor to be a memorial to the late Sir John Lubbock.

Summary

CD will remain in Cambridge during the whole vacation.

J. F. Stephens has been ill; hence no recent publications.

Has seen a good deal of J. S. Henslow.

Summary

Reports the decreased yield of pods resulting from excluding bees from the flowers of the kidney bean. Gives other observations suggesting the importance of bees in the fertilisation of papilionaceous flowers.

Cites cases of crosses between varieties of bean grown close together and requests observations from readers on the subject. States his belief "that is a law of nature that every organic being should occasionally be crossed with a different individual of the same species".

Summary

Congratulates WDF on finishing at Cambridge; he regards his place as a very good one, and comments on how others did.

Father much pleased by gift of a swan.

Adds some entomological news.

Summary

Thanks SH for her kind letter; would like to see her again.

Summary

Reports on his father’s health, and Catherine’s. CD, himself, has been a little sick.

Hensleigh [Wedgwood] thinks he has settled the free-will question – "we have none whatsoever".

Summary

Mainly concerned with entomological specimens CD has recently captured. Three figures of beetles are included.

Summary

Answers JS’s criticism of natural selection, which he doubts JS understands. CD does not believe in an "innate selective principle".

To understand "utility" JS should read CD on correlation.

Origin of maize: no longer thinks husked form was wild because of Asa Gray’s evidence on its variability.

Has information from Thomas Rivers on weeping habit in trees.

JS’s experiments on coloured primroses.

Encloses bibliographical note on Passiflora.

Summary

Asks GRW if there is any easy systematic work on Lepidoptera for his sons. Considers making out the names from descriptions fine practice for the intellect; mere collecting is idle work.

Summary

Replies to a reviewer’s statement, that any theory of descent will connect large classes of facts, by pointing out that no other explanation has been as satisfactory as natural selection. But whatever view is adopted "signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species and have not been created immutable".

Summary

Thanks JDH for short sketch of botanical geography of Southern Hemisphere. Comments on his own S. American collections and observations; notes other Galapagos collections.

Summary

Thanks WL for his MS on coral and suggests that it be sent to the Geological Society for printing or preserving in the archives.

Comments on his and WL’s bad health and recalls WL’s past kindness to him.

Summary

JDH’s letter on grounds of generalisation in plant morphology.

Faunal distribution and the glacial period.

Orchid homologies.

Summary

CD and Hooker suggest Sir John Richardson for Royal Medal. Other suggestions are George Bentham, Joseph Prestwich, Albany Hancock.