Summary

Discusses family health and affairs.

Summary

Is looking forward to returning home [from Moor Park hydropathic establishment]. News of other patients and the books she is reading. Although feeling well, cannot walk much.

Summary

Is glad WED is in the sixth [form]. Discusses WED’s intention to become a barrister.

Summary

Has come to think his brains were not made for thinking – he immediately feels better when at Moor Park.

News of his family.

Summary

Independence of variation from climate shown by several plant genera; CD asks for confirmation.

Progressing with book [Natural selection].

Summary

Qualifications of John Lindley, Huxley, Albany Hancock, Joseph Prestwich, J. C. Ross, and Francis Beaufort for Royal Medal.

Summary

Seedling leaves of gorse look like clover leaves. This is like young lions being striped. Thus, laws of animal embryology apply to plants.

Summary

Discusses WED’s future education, the work on the extension, and other domestic affairs.

Summary

George Henslow’s curtness to JDH: "an attack of religion".

Embryonic leaves. Adaptive functions and taxonomic significance of cotyledons.

Asa Gray. Separation of sexes in U. S. trees.

Summary

Invites JL to dine and meet J. S. Henslow.

Summary

Writes of the extension to Down House.

Summary

Thanks JDH for response on variation. Studying variations that seem correlated with environment, e.g., north vs south, ascending mountains.

CD’s weed garden: observations on slugs killing seedlings.

Seed-salting. One-seventh of the plants of any country could be transported 924 miles by sea and would germinate.

Summary

His impressions of the hydropathic establishment and E. W. Lane. Is convinced the only thing for "chronic cases" is the water-cure.

Asks if WDF knows of any breed of pig that originated or was modified by a cross with a Chinese or Neapolitan pig, and whether the crossbreed bred true.

Summary

Thanks JSH for his magnificent present. Hopes Hooker will bring the specimens.

Have water-fowl ever been seen at Ipswich on Mr Ransome’s great tank?

Summary

Voting to elect JL [a member of Athenaeum].

Summary

Dining with the Lubbocks.

JL’s paper on respiration of insects ["On the distribution of the tracheae in insects", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1860–2): 23–50].

Summary

Birth of his sixth son [C. W. Darwin]. It is dreadful "to think of all the sendings to school and the professions afterwards".

CD is not well but has not the courage for water-cure again; trying mineral acids.

Working hard on the book [Natural selection]; is overwhelmed with riches in facts and interested in way facts fall into groups.

To his surprise [Helix pomatia] has withstood 14 days in salt water.

Pigeons’ skins come in from all parts of the world.

Summary

Return of books.

JDH coming to Down.

Summary

Glad THH has taken up aphid question versus Owen ["On the agamic reproduction and morphology of Aphis", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 22 (1858): 193–236].

Fertilisation and inheritance discussed. Speculates that fertilisation may be a mixture rather than a fusion. Can understand in no other way why crossed forms tend to go back to ancestral forms.

Summary

Thinking about HF’s paper on Plagiaulax [Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 13 (1857): 261–82]. Owen might answer that all Purbeck mammals are marsupials.