Summary

Requests permission to call upon EF either Friday or Saturday morning [14 or 15 November].

Summary

Thanks JP for volume of his lectures [Clinical lectures and essays, ed. H. Marsh (1875)].

Mentions "vivisection question".

Summary

Sends congratulations and a teapot on the occasion of JT’s engagement.

Is pleased JT is not giving up on the spontaneous generation question. Feels strongly that subject will not be clear until it is understood how J. S. Burdon Sanderson and others succeeded in getting bacteria in infusions they had boiled for a long time.

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

An account of his observations on Aldrovanda and Utricularia.

Sends CD his memoir on Aldrovanda [Beitr. Biol. Pflanz. 1 (1875) Heft 3: 71–92] in advance of publication [see Insectivorous plants, pp. 321 et seq., 395–6].

Summary

Fears [CD’s] albumen theory will not work because albumen is coagulated and filtered out in making extracts of belladonna, hyoscyamine, and colchicine [alkaloid poisons].

Summary

Sends a sketch of a bill on vivisection that he understands LP wishes to see.

Summary

Requests permission to call upon EF any morning from Saturday through Tuesday.

Summary

Appreciates award of the Baly Medal and hopes to attend ceremony on 26 June.

Summary

Writes about the Vivisection Bill; there is great fear that it may prevent demonstration dissections on insensible animals.

Summary

[The black-balling of Edwin Ray Lankester by the Linnean Society] is a most scandalous shame. Will arrange for his own admission to fellowship of the Society.

Summary

Lord Cardwell thinks it unlikely that Parliament will take any action on a vivisection bill this session. Playfair should be consulted.

E. F. W. Pflüger’s important memoir on how carbonic acid is produced by living matter and his speculation about origin of living matter [see 9931].

Summary

Thanks JDH and Thiselton-Dyer for useful information.

Is surprised Mimosa albida is not sensitive to water. Asks that they try again, or lend it to him.

Remembers a walk in Brazil in great bed of Mimosa.

After JDH left, CD was very bad, with much loss of memory and severe shocks continually passing through his brain.

Summary

Suggests that benzoic acid would be a deadly poison to bacteria and their allies.

Is puzzled about the use of borax as a disinfectant because in his experiments Drosera were not in the least injured by boracic acid.

Summary

Describes lecture at Royal Institution by J. S. Burdon Sanderson on movement of plants and animals; JSBS’s preliminary part was so long that he never got to the plants.

Comments on the triumph of the ladies in the voting at Cambridge.

Mentions F. Galton’s visit to Down, a call on the Huxleys, and a visit with the Duke of Argyll.

Tells a story about the absent-mindedness of Burdon Sanderson.

Summary

Can FG call on Monday evening?

Summary

The Government has decided to hold a Royal Commission on vivisection with Lord Cardwell as chairman.

Summary

Reports that S. W. Moore may be able to provide various substances for CD’s research on the digestive power of Drosera (sundew).

Summary

Thanks for Insectivorous plants.

Intrigued by the analogy between fairy-rings and annular skin diseases, e.g., herpes and psoriasis.

Summary

CD gives his opinion on vivisection with the understanding that the whole letter will be published. Worked for Act of Parliament, but disapproves of the one passed. CD convinced English physiologists do not perform cruel experiments.