Summary

Forwards H. T. Stainton letter for reply.

Finds many Cucurbita have tendrils with sticking ends.

The "potentiality of so many organs in plants to play so many parts is one of the most wonderful of your discoveries . . . one day it will itself play a prodigious part in the interpretation of both morphological and physiological facts".

Is disgusted with Sabine’s address [see 4708] because of its mutilation of what JDH wrote.

THH’s slashing leader in Reader ["Science and ""Church policy"" ", 4 (1864): 821] – as usual he destroys all in his path.

Encloses letter from G. H. K. Thwaites with a message for CD [see encl].

Summary

Comments on his Primula paper [see 4213].

Describes his situation in Calcutta.

Summary

Sends his paper on "Willow-galls" [Proc. Entomol. Soc. Philadelphia 3 (1864): 543–644].

Lengthy criticism of Agassiz’s views on species as stated in his Essay on classification [1857].

Interested by CD’s trimorphism in Lythrum. Thinks some great mystery may lie in the fact that in some genera, some species are tri-, some di-, and some monomorphic, and in other genera, Apis, Vespa, Bombus, all the known species are dimorphic.

Summary

Comments on CD’s Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31]

and on H. Crüger’s orchid paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 127–35].

May take position at Calcutta Botanic Garden.

Regrets he cannot be elected to Linnean Society.

Pleased Asa Gray has commented on JS’s paper.

Summary

Tells CD where to pick up the partridge’s foot with the ball of earth attached; sends a copy of his remarks on the same. [See Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3d ser. 13 (1864): 99–101.]

Summary

Sends papers with comments. Convinced that the Aru pig is a species peculiar to New Guinea fauna, not a domestic animal that ran wild.

Admires CD’s paper ["Three forms of Lythrum", Collected papers 2: 106–31].

Summary

JS has now taken post of Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta.

Wishes to vindicate himself of the charge that he pursued his experiments at Edinburgh to the detriment of his work.

Apologises for poor quality of his Verbascum paper, which was written from his notes during the passage to India [J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 36 (1865) pt 2: 145–74].

Summary

Sends photograph.

THH wishes he could write the popular zoology but writing is a boring and slow process when he is not interested, and he is overburdened with lectures.

Summary

Reforms at Kew.

X Club Dinner. H. B. Wilson and J. W. Colenso as guests.

Troubled by Lubbock’s going into Parliament – loss to science.

Has written to Busk.

Sending Botanische Zeitung.

Summary

Hopes CD has received his letter of 12 August.

Sends some new observations on climbing plants. [The observations are part of "Notes on some of the climbing-plants, near Desterro, in South Brazil", J. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) 9 (1867): 344–9.]

Summary

Sends a box of orchids.

Summary

Glad to read what CD sends. Any glimmer of light on those subjects is of utmost importance.

Quotes a letter from Haeckel on progress of Darwinism in Germany.

Summary

New herbarium is finished.

Congratulations on Copley Medal.

Summary

Doesn't think will be able to find Buckthorn. Sends reference from Revue de Deux Mondes. Is settled at the Bank.

Summary

Wants to publish his observation on colour changes in Matthiola seeds.

Has been crossing cotton.

Approves of C. V. Naudin and Max Wichura.

Summary

FM’s comments on Climbing Plants.

Summary

On FitzRoy’s suicide.

The Lyell–Ramsay disagreement [on formation of lakes?].

Summary

MTM heard part of the abstract of CD’s paper on climbing plants, read at the Linnean Society on 2 Feb. Offers CD his opinion and information on the subject, which he has studied for many years.

Summary

Thanks CD for his paper "Climbing plants" [see 4861] and for a photograph.

Hopes soon to send a copy of his memoir on hybridisation

and with it will forward a short note on the tendrils of the Cucurbitaceae.

Summary

Grateful for CD’s approval of Chapters on language.

Is inclined to believe that the races of man were primordially distinct.