Summary

JP’s note [8739] suggests reversion, but that is an easy trap. Will look to the ears of "our brethren at the Zool. Gardens".

Summary

Thanks HBD for his lectures On the germs and vestiges of disease [1861].

Thinks his reasoning that the V. M. F. ("force exhibited in the operations of life") is not a "given quantity" is satisfactory.

How far the conditions of life affect the forms of organic life puzzles CD more than any other part of his subject. Thinks he may have underrated its importance in Origin.

Asks for source of the quotation on regeneration in HBD’s work.

Summary

Will send portion of copied manuscript [of Variation 2: 8–10] for WB to examine. Asks about inherited abnormalities of the eye.

Summary

Asks to have observations made of a person retching violently, but ejecting nothing from stomach, in order to test relation between spasmodic contraction of orbicular muscles and tears. CD believes tears are caused by matter filling nostrils.

Summary

Is honoured by, and accepts JP’s invitation for 3 August.

Summary

Pleased that JC-B will review Expression.

Fears he will not be able to improve the book with JC-B’s "wonderfully curious" photographs because Murray printed such a large edition.

Would be glad to have JC-B’s notes on inheritance – "a most important subject".

Summary

Perhaps you would like to see a very small “tumour” on a lateral branch of the Silver Fur, caused by an Œstrum, as stated (with references) in my Power of Movement in Plants. These tumours are sometimes almost as big as a child’s head. At what age they emit the upright shoot, I do not know.

Summary

Has previously quoted details concerning the regrowth of her amputated extra digit in Variation [2: 14–15]. The case has since been disputed, so CD, who is revising his work, asks for some fuller details.

Summary

Asks JP to remember him if anything occurs to him "in regard to inheritance at corresponding or rather earlier ages". Sends JP a few examples for his "Chronometry of life". CD is sure he often met with striking facts but he disregarded them. "Deviations alone would have struck me."

Effects of different climates on breeding periods.

Summary

Enquires about fairy rings.

Summary

Asks JC-B to read CD’s MS on confusion of mind, which often or generally accompanies blushing.

Summary

Thanks for MS observations on expression. Discusses hair standing on end in terror and rage. Asks JC-B to observe contraction of platysma myoides. "Your description of the grinning and exposure of the canine teeth under furious rage is excellent. I presume that you would not object to my quoting it." Asks about contraction of "grief muscles". Comments on blushing. Offers to send book by G. B. A. Duchenne [Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine (1862)].

Summary

Has heard from Ashwin Conway Newman of Guy’s Hospital of a case of a child without any prepuce whose father was a renegade, uncircumcised Jew, but whose ancestors had all been Jews. Newman thinks this a good case of inheritance with reversion. JP’s letter [missing] now shows how rash such a conclusion would be.

Summary

Sends a sentence, quoting JP, on inherited peculiarities in eye-brows. Asks whether he may use it in his chapter on inheritance [Variation, ch. 12].

Summary

Asks TW to persuade painters to observe how far down body blush extends on models.

Summary

Is delighted with JP’s article on vivisection ["Vivisection: its pains and its uses, No. 1", Nineteenth Century 10 (1881): 920–30]. CD is "boiling over with indignation on the subject".

Summary

Agrees with GR’s remarks on Asa Gray’s pamphlet.

New edition of Origin to appear immediately.

Fact of clubbed fingernails in cyanosis quite new to CD. Asks for information.

Summary

CD is glad the portrait [of CD by John Collier] has been arranged; suggests dates, but feels he should have no say in the subscriptions or remuneration.

Thinks the Lakes are beautiful.

Is reading W. Graham’s The creed of science.

Summary

Caroline [Wedgwood] has been ill for the last 20 months.

James Paget to be consulted about William Darwin’s brain concussion.

Summary

On six-fingered men: suspects increase confined to metacarpals and digits. Has asked James Paget to look it up.