Summary

Sends anecdotes relating to Expression;

criticises CD’s use of Hensleigh Wedgwood’s views on language.

Complains about J. J. Moulinié’s translation of Descent.

Summary

Has enjoyed FWF’s volume [Chapters on language]. Had found Max Müller’s theory obscure and weak.

Believes FWF would come to agree with him on species if he studied general questions in natural history. To argue for immutability of species on the basis of geology resembles a wise savage in a nation with no books saying his language has never changed.

Summary

Comments on an address by William Thomson (‘On the rigidity of the earth’?), which is about the same problem that GHD is working on. Is confident Thomson has overlooked some points.

Summary

Sends CD the first volume of her Life of Josiah Wedgwood [2 vols. (1865–6)].

Summary

Thanks for CD’s letter, and further discussion of the sale of Tromer Lodge.

Summary

Sends thanks to all for their letters.

News of dining and theatre at Edinburgh.

CD will learn to stuff birds from "a blackamoor".

Summary

Is glad WED is in the sixth [form]. Discusses WED’s intention to become a barrister.

Summary

CD’s divergent series explains those anomalous plants that hover between what would otherwise be two species in a genus.

Inclined to see conifers as a sub-series of dicotyledons that developed in parallel to monocotyledons, but retained cryptogamic characters.

Mentions H. C. Watson’s view of variations.

Man has destroyed more species than he has created varieties.

Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.

In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".

Summary

Detailed account of progress of Anne’s illness.

Summary

Hopes affairs will enable him to get back to flowers.

Huxley’s letter [about the fund raised for him] was noble. Would like to have seen CD’s to him.

Summary

Receipt, in CD’s hand, signed by JT, acknowledging subscriptions.

Summary

The specimen is not a fish but the larva of some batrachian or frog-like animal. Has sent it to British Museum, which says it resembles the axolotl of Mexico.

Summary

Discusses affairs at Down and WED’s coming trip to the Lakes.

Is getting on very slowly with his "confounded proof-sheets" [of Origin].

Summary

Recounts dinner at Erasmus’ house with Harriet Martineau and others, and a visit to Cambridge to stay with Henslow and meet old friends again.

Summary

Has heard, through Lubbock, of a gentleman who is offering a partnership in a bank.

Summary

CD is not well enough to sit for Woolner.

Two Bignonia plants, which JDH does not distinguish as species, can be separated by differences in climbing and sensitivity behaviour.

Wants to write a non-quarrelsome reply to R. A. Kölliker ["Darwin’sche Schöpfungstheorie", Z. Wiss. Zool. 14 (1864): 174–86] in the Reader. Lyell opposes, but E. A. Darwin and Hensleigh Wedgwood support the idea.

Summary

JVC questions accuracy of Hensleigh Wedgwood’s statement that the word for a toad in all European languages expresses the habit of swelling [see Expression, p. 104]. Has changed "all" to "some".

Summary

Is glad WED has made a good beginning [at Rugby?].

Summary

Writes following his visit to WDF.

Mentions fossils Fox has collected.

News of Albert Way.

Hensleigh Wedgwood has resigned his post because of scruples about taking oaths.

Summary

Describes insects caught while visiting Lythrum.