Summary

Thanks CD for account of F. A. Pouchet’s experiments. Cannot yet dispute his conclusions.

Continues experiments on the colour of goldfish as affected by light and presence of plants.

Summary

Received Moritz Wagner’s essays [Das Ausland (May 1875)] and sent him a long letter [10643] disagreeing with his views because they do not explain adaptation.

Thanks for Büchner’s essay [Die Darwin’sche Theorie, 4th ed. (1876)].

Summary

CD forwards letter from F. J. Cohn [11093] that provides confirmation of observations by Francis Darwin on the contractile filaments protruded from the glands of Dipsacus.

Summary

Asks permission to publish comments by FJC regarding paper by Francis Darwin [see 11073].

Summary

Corrects an important misprint in English edition of Cross and self-fertilisation, p. 275, line six from top [but see 10877].

Summary

Warm thanks for CC’s letter. CD needed no word from CC to be convinced of his high opinion.

Summary

Cannot give information requested. Seems incredible that mere contact should be poisonous.

Summary

Thanks JVC for a correction [for 3d German edition of Variation]. He is the most accurate translator that ever lived.

Summary

Apologises for sending wrong Cross and self-fertilisation erratum. The error is on p. 191 (where "cross-seeds" appears, it should read "self-fertilised"). There is no error on p. 275.

Summary

Forms of flowers will soon be published and is not a long book.

Does not suppose he will publish any more books, "though perhaps a few more papers". He "cannot endure being idle, but Heaven knows whether I am capable of any more good work".

Erratum JVC sent was due to a printer’s error after he had seen last proofs.

Summary

JVC’s publisher [Schweizerbart] must decide soon how many copies of two maps in Volcanic islands and South America are needed.

Has sent new edition of Orchids – greatly altered, but he hopes improved.

Summary

Thanks JVC for correcting a bad blunder in Forms of flowers.

His health fairly good; has been able to work "pretty hard".

Summary

Has read a large part of the Novara voyage [Narrative of the circumnavigation of the globe by the Austrian frigate "Novara" (1861–3)] with pleasure. CD was particularly interested in the scandalous French behaviour at Tahiti.

Summary

Had found out his error [use of "cleistogenous" for "cleistogamous" in Cross and self-fertilisation] some timeago.

Is now writing on cleistogamic flowers [for Forms of flowers (1877)], and, with it, will have worked up all his old materials on plants. JVC will then have a rest from his labours of translation.

Summary

Will look for worm-castings in the cloisters,

and will send CD items from the Cambridge papers on the honorary degree.

Has hit on a possible fallacy in W. Thomson’s theory of secular cooling of the earth.

Summary

Thanks JVC for errata [in Cross and self-fertilisation]

and especially for interesting and amusing notes on expression. Will use them if a new edition [of Expression] is needed, but Murray has printed too many copies of first edition.

Summary

A letter from CD’s admirers in the Netherlands, sent with an album of their photographs, in celebration of his sixty-eighth birthday.

Presents an account of early efforts in the Netherlands in the direction of developmental theories, and evidence of the support and enthusiastic reception given CD’s theory.

Summary

Sends details of H. H. R. Koch’s work on bacteria, including first photographs.

J. S. Burdon Sanderson’s and Koch’s collaboration on systemic fever.

Thinks movement of Francis Darwin’s Dipsacus filaments is an artifact.

Summary

Galton agrees with GJR about rudimentary organs.

GJR’s note referred to possibility of selection acting on organic types as distinguished from individuals.

Thinks Grant Allen has not made out his point [in Physiological aesthetics (1877)], but his fundamental principle probably has much truth.

Summary

Regrets that F. Hilgendorf proved so greatly in error ["Planorbis Multiformis", Monatsber. K. Akad. Wiss. Berlin (1866): 474–504; "Noch einmal Planorbis Multiformis", Z. Dtsch. Geol. Ges. 29 (1877): 50–62].

Discusses polymorphic species.

Surprised that shell form developed from various different progenitors.

Reminds CD of C. Nägeli’s conclusions on Hieracium.

But still retains belief expressed in first edition of Origin that variation in protean species is neither advantageous nor disadvantageous.