Summary

Observations on and explanations of the scarcity of fruit and berries (especially holly berries) evident that year.

Summary

Praises unbroken series of CD’s and Francis [Darwin]’s botanical works.

Confirms FD’s Dipsacus observations. Problem of interpreting microscopic filaments as protoplasm or as inorganic and osmotic artifacts.

Summary

Asks for CD’s "Sketch of an infant" [Collected papers 2: 191–200]. He has made observations on new-born children and mammals to determine what behaviour is inherited and what acquired.

Summary

On painful state of CD’s reception in France.

Summary

Thanks for Orchids [2d ed.].

Does not feel his abstract of Cross and self-fertilisation [Am. J. Sci. 3d ser. 13 (1877): 125–41] was thorough enough.

Has heard of their sad bereavement last autumn [death of Amy, wife of Francis Darwin].

Summary

Is less certain of views in letter of 17 May [10963]. Asserts interest in explaining the presence of "speaking monkeys", which occur in higher as well as lower classes.

Summary

Sends specimens of two forms of Rhamnus lanceolata.

Summary

Sends holly specimens. Differences in flowering times of various hollies.

Summary

Thanks CD for new [2d] edition of Orchids.

Mentions some observations on dimorphic plants.

Reports on a third species of Pontederia [see Forms of flowers, p. 185].

Describes some unusual grasses.

Reports rumours from southern Brazil concerning the existence of a gigantic subterranean animal.

Summary

Sends CD a copy of his memoir on the fenland [Geology of the fenland (1877)].

Outlines the results of his recent researches into the geological history of man, the development of Palaeolithic culture, the occurrence of Palaeolithic remains in the boulder-clays of eastern England, and their relation to glacial and inter-glacial periods.

Summary

Accepts CD’s offer to publish his letter, confirming Francis Darwin’s observations [see Collected papers 2: 205–7].

H. Hoffmann’s observations on Amanita contractile filaments must be repeated.

Microscopic examination of secretory gland filaments in Dipsacus leafcups. FD’s pseudopod theory of Dipsacus.

Summary

Discusses the cleistogamous flowers of Oxalis. Thinks they may not be truly cleistogamous but merely arrested or imperfectly developed normal flowers.

Summary

Asks permission to print translation of "A biographical sketch of an infant" [Collected papers 2: 191–200] in Kosmos.

Notes divisions among German Darwinists.

Summary

Sends a published diary [Das Kind, 2d ed. (1876)] in which he recorded the early growth of his first child. Hopes it may find an English translator.

Summary

CD has made clear that in Cross and self-fertilisation he had not intended to suggest that autogamie (fertilisation of a flower by its own pollen) is superior to gitonogamie (fertilisation of a flower by one on the same plant).

Summary

Edwin Ray Lankester wants to reprint FD’s paper ‘Food bodies’ in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science.

Summary

Is unconvinced that correction in Cross and self-fertilisation requested by CD [see 10852] should be made. Asks CD to reconsider.

Summary

Writes again about arrangements for the honorary degree ceremony.

Has been working on tides, which he is almost certain have altered the obliquity of the ecliptic.

Summary

Reports a fossil fungus, complete with fossil zoospores, within the vascular bundles of a Lepidodendron from the Coal Measures. The genus is Pythium and it appears no different from living species.

Summary

Sends article and photograph of abnormally hairy family.

Mentions death of his student, Rudolf von Willemoes-Suhm.