Summary

Does not like the photos; thinks they should try again.

Last account of Susan Darwin reports she is having a good deal of faintness.

Summary

Gratified by AG’s praise of "Climbing plants".

Thanks for Specularia seed.

Summary

They have left Kew to improve J. D. Hooker’s health.

Summary

Asks Emma to write to Erasmus [E. A. Darwin] in support of Miss Elizabeth Garrett as Professor of Physiology at Bedford College for girls.

Summary

Bad health during last six months has prevented scientific work.

News of family.

Summary

Falconer’s death haunts him. Personal annihilation not so horrifying to him as sun cooling some day and human race ending.

His health has been wretched.

Masters has written his agreement with CD’s "Climbing plants".

Summary

Agrees with JDH on difference in grief over loss of father and of child. His love of his father.

The Reader.

Politics and science.

Health improved by Bence Jones’s diet.

[Dated "Thursday 27th" by CD.]

Summary

On Lubbock’s plans.

Visited by Antoine Auguste Laugel.

Guessed right on Bentham’s "Planchon".

Much struck by Thomson’s article on nomenclature [see 4812]; importance of this subject.

Sorry best scientists read so little; few read any long papers.

Summary

Belated thanks to CL for copy of Elements. Praises CL’s work. Notes especially Atlantic continents, the Weald, the Purbeck beds, glacial action, and the formation of lake-basins.

Also mentions account of Heer’s work

and CD’s disagreement with J. D. Forbes.

Suggests that CL have Murray print a two-volume edition [of the Elements].

Summary

Hildebrand has sent copy of his paper on Pulmonaria in Botanische Zeitung.

How much should CD contribute to Falconer’s bust?

Oswald Heer on alpine and Arctic floras.

A. R. Wallace on geographical distribution in Malay Archipelago.

Lyell’s new edition of Elements. Wishes someone would do a book like it on botany.

Summary

John Brent [book?] has come, and he will send it.

Hopes CD will visit again.

Summary

Criticises Duke of Argyll’s address [to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1864)] and demurs on Argyll’s "new birth" theory.

Agrees with CL on beauty.

Enjoyed hearing of Princess Royal’s discussion [on Darwinism].

CD’s illness.

CL’s advice on chapter [of Variation] on dogs was excellent.

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

Sends some figures on long- and short-styled primroses for "Uncle Ch".

Summary

Sends advice on naturalist matters.

W. H. Harvey’s work [with Wilhelm Sonder, Flora capensis (1859–65)],

and Robert Brown’s publication ["On the organs and mode of fecundation in Orchideae and Asclepiadeae", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 16 (1833): 685–745].

Writes of having seen in S. America a Hymenopteran with tarsi covered with pollen-masses of Asclepias.

Interested in JPMW’s researches in South American caverns.

Mentions poor health.

Thanks for tracings.

Summary

Pleased at CD’s opinion of Thomson’s article.

Non-reading is great fault of the best school of English scientific men.

Opposed to Lubbock’s going into Parliament.

W. J. Burchell’s collections are coming to Kew.

Summary

Agrees with JDH on Lyell–Lubbock controversy except that Lubbock’s printed note does not seem to him insulting. Hopes JDH can heal the breach.