Summary

Hookers and Lyells will visit Lubbocks so he cannot see CD in London.

Will CD sit for Woolner?

Summary

Grieved to hear of CD’s illness; begs him not to give moment’s thought to his MS until health has returned.

Plans to exhibit mimetic butterflies at Linnean Society.

Summary

Doubts the fruit will stick on his Chinese double peach and asks TR to send him a couple when ripe.

Would like to grow seeds of the "curious monstrosity" of a wall-flower, to see whether the monstrosity is hereditary.

Summary

Rejoices that CD is beginning "the book of books", Variation.

Suggests that changes in colour of pollen, stigma, and corolla, as Scott reports in his Primula paper, may be related to changes in the insects required for pollination.

Supports Gärtner translation by Ray Society.

Comments on recent addresses by Lyell [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): lx–lxxv], Bentham [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 8 (1864): ix–xxiii], and Murchison [Rep. BAAS 34 (1864): 130–6].

Summary

Health.

Is sending information about Timor fossils to be forwarded to Hugh Falconer.

Summary

On his deathbed her husband [Francis] expressed admiration for CD.

Summary

Is pleased that CD has [Roland] Trimen to collect specimens of Cape orchids. Suggests directions for securing dry specimens of what he draws.

Identifies Disa barbata and D. Cornuta of the Ophridiae.

Summary

Does not know Scott’s qualifications to be curator at Kew.

Frankland’s theory of glaciers is absurd.

Has JDH heard claim that plants in Northern and Southern Hemispheres turn in opposite directions?

Are there plant families with no twining and climbing plants?

Summary

Has signed and forwarded some orders.

Summary

His bad health has caused him to return to Malvern.

Emma cannot find the gravestone of their child, Anne. Asks WDF whether he can remember its location.

Summary

Sends onion and mint seeds.

Summary

Gives directions to CD’s daughter’s [Anne’s] grave.

Summary

Sends proofs and details [concerning VOK’s Russian translation of Expression (1872)].

Summary

CD thanks AN for the note and remarks on the partridge’s leg. CD is too ill to write a note, but will send [for] the specimen as soon as he can. [See 4326.]

Summary

Naudin has not answered CD’s letter.

Reactions of Candolle, Naudin, Decaisne, and Gaston de Saporta to Origin.

CD’s new hothouse.

CD’s Linum paper.

JDH’s work on Welwitschia.

Summary

Sends observations on [Anchusa] plants from Isle of Wight.

Summary

Replies to a reviewer’s statement, that any theory of descent will connect large classes of facts, by pointing out that no other explanation has been as satisfactory as natural selection. But whatever view is adopted "signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species and have not been created immutable".

Summary

Asks whether he ought to write to CD while he is ill.

Wonders if he might use Haast’s notes on introduced animals for a notice he is preparing ["Note on the replacement of species in the colonies and elsewhere", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864): 123–7].

Summary

Thanks WED for his botanical specimens and observations.

Discusses Corydalis and the fertilisation of Fumariaceae.

Summary

Has a letter from Haast on the spreading of European plants.