Summary

CD has repeated a test of whether hybrids of the common and Chinese goose are fertile inter se. Reports his success, and comments on its significance for the theory of descent.

Summary

Comments on the branchiate trichopteran specimen from Fritz Müller sent previously.

Summary

Encloses a cheque to the Down Coal and Clothing Club.

Summary

Answers CD’s query about Robert Darwin of Lincoln’s Inn.

Sends an introduction for Leonard Darwin to their tenants at Elston Hall.

Summary

Sends an ammonite from the Upper Lias, which has Balanus-like bodies on surface. He wants CD’s interpretation. Discusses possible function of aptychi, siphuncular tube, and operculum in ammonites.

Summary

CD responds to VM’s desire to plant a tree in his honour by offering three choices.

Again expresses his pleasure in Coniston.

Acknowledges that Ruskin was right about his feeling "a deep and tender interest about the brightly coloured hinder half of certain monkeys".

Summary

Thanks CD for another letter [of his father’s].

Cannot call to mind the story about the robber [see Erasmus Darwin, pp. 64–5].

Summary

Suggests CD send Kosmos to W. S. Dallas as Krause will surely give his permission for translation.

Summary

Fears he cannot give much information for CD’s book [Erasmus Darwin]. Recounts how his mother’s health was improved by Erasmus Darwin’s treatment. Remembers being attacked as a boy by an angry lady whose beautiful teeth were extracted by Dr Darwin "to cure some nervous spasms".

Summary

Thanks for information and stories about Erasmus Darwin.

Summary

Thanks CD for sending some old family letters of RD’s father’s [Francis Sacheverel Darwin (1786–1859)].

Summary

Sends letters from RD’s father to R. W. Darwin.

Summary

Thanks for letter of introduction for Leonard Darwin to CMCD’s tenant at Elston.

Sends some information about R. W. Darwin’s residence at Elston; does not plan to include a portrait of him.

Asks the acreage of land at Cleatham.

Offers to send a print of the portrait of himself by W. W. Ouless.

Summary

Encloses a family document [another letter from F. S. Darwin to R. W. Darwin?].

Asks whether RD has ever heard a story about their grandfather and a highway robber.

Summary

Convinced from the experience of his father and grandfather that no cause has led to so much suffering and inherited ill-health as the consumption of alcohol.

Summary

Asks GHD to look in Cambridge University Library for Monthly Magazine articles containing a malicious calumny concerning Dr [Erasmus] D[arwin] [see Erasmus Darwin, pp. 65–70].

Summary

Was it Lady Charlemont or Charleville who remarked how agreeable their grandfather was?

Asks her to confirm story about Robert Darwin (father of Dr Erasmus).

Summary

Her brother-in-law, Edward Wheler, died on Sunday.

Sends some corrections for Erasmus Darwin.

Summary

Asks for information about his grandfather’s influence on medical practice, to be used in his preface to Erasmus Darwin [1879, p. 107].

Summary

Thanks for MS as it shows many of Erasmus Darwin’s ideas were formed 20 years before he published Zoonomia. Would like to publish last letter if there is a second edition of his little book. MS will be returned registered post.