Summary

Request for plant.

Receipt of Oliver’s letter.

Summary

John Scott is gratified at Bentham’s proposal that he become an associate of the Linnean Society.

Summary

CD too ill to write.

Has evidence of long life of seed transported on a partridge’s foot.

Sends a squib by Samuel Butler on the Origin.

Summary

Request for plants.

CD’s continuing ill health.

Summary

Informs JDH of CD’s death.

Summary

He and Lizzie [Elizabeth Darwin] will come to Kew on Saturday.

Summary

Emma prepares JDH for his visit to Wedgwood factory and Barlaston.

Summary

Requests seeds for study of movement in cotyledons. Would love to study Welwitschia cotyledons.

Son William is to be married 28 November.

Summary

CD would be pleased to sit for a bust by Thomas Woolner for JDH, but he is too ill now.

Emma’s views on slavery and the Civil War.

Summary

Casual observations on Drosera.

Wants to know author of good review of Origin in London Review [& Wkly J. Polit. 1 (1860): 11–12, 32–3, 58–9].

Athenæum will reprint Gray’s discussion.

Summary

Wants to discuss raising a testimonial fund for Huxley and whether Huxley would stand this.

Summary

CD will visit Kew on way home from E. W. Lane’s hydropathy establishment.

Summary

CD’s illness: he is vomiting "vegetable" cells.

Dutrochet has published the best of CD’s observations on tendrils [see Climbing plants, p. 1 n.].

Lyell has found Joshua Trimmer’s Arctic shells on Moel Tryfan.

Summary

Tendril-bearing plants seem to CD "higher" organised with respect to adaptive sensibility than lower animals.

Wishes to encourage John Scott.

Death of JDH’s daughter makes CD cry over his own dead daughter Annie.

Sedgwick’s scientific merit.

Summary

Reread JDH’s letter "with infinite pleasure".

Plans to visit Kew.

Summary

CD very ill.

Suspects F. Boott’s widow is illegitimate granddaughter of Erasmus Darwin.

CD, like JDH, has speculated that agrarian weeds have become adapted to cultivated ground. Suggests comparison with country of origin.

Wallace’s praise of Herbert Spencer’s Social statics baffles CD.

[Letter completed by E. A. Darwin.]

Summary

Dissection of Leschenaultia convinces CD insect agency necessary for self-fertilisation in this case.

Primroses and cowslips seem universally to occur in two forms. Very curious to see which plants set seed.

Summary

John Scott has left Edinburgh Botanic Garden.

Asks JDH to ask Tyndall whether Frankland exaggerates the effect of snowfall on advance of European glaciers.

Huxley and Falconer squabble too much in public.

Summary

Health very bad. All scientific work stopped for 2½ months.

E. B. Tylor’s Early history of mankind [1865] impresses him.

Would like JDH’s opinion of last number of Spencer’s [Principles of] Biology [vol. 1 (1864)], especially on umbellifers. CD not satisfied with Spencer’s views on irregular flowers.

ED reports on CD’s health.

Summary

Interested in Barkly’s letter about Mauritius. Doubts non-volcanic origin. Urges collection of all forms of terrestrial life to determine whether they are of a former continent or "waifs and strays". He leans to latter view, as snakes and reptiles are different.

Huxley’s address wonderfully "brilliant", but it is a mistake to separate evolutionists from uniformitarians.

Bentham has come out "splendidly" on descent of species.