Summary

Emma and Leonard have scarlet fever.

Houstonia seems "a grand case"; J. T. Rothrock should publish his observations on the two pollens and the reciprocal action of two hermaphrodites.

Rhexia glandulosa offers nothing odd, but Heterocentron will turn out something marvellous like Lythrum.

Would like to know what AG thinks of last chapter of Orchids.

Summary

Believes Lythrum is trimorphic. Asks AG for seeds of plants he suspects are polymorphic.

Summary

Is sending first half of orchid book.

Feels he is wrong about Melastoma.

Summary

Adaptations of orchid flowers. Believes the structure of all irregular flowers is adaptation to insect fertilisation.

Linum grandiflorum distinguishes its own pollen so that when placed on stigma of same flower the pollen-tube is not even exserted.

Summary

AG’s orchid observations are admirable.

Owen has lectured on birds’ descending from one form.

French criticism of CD’s Primula paper.

Only AG has seen that Orchids was "a ""flank movement"" on the enemy".

Summary

Recommends H. W. Bates’s paper on butterflies of Amazonia ["Insect fauna of the Amazon valley", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 495–566].

Lyell’s book [Antiquity of man (1863)] is eagerly awaited.

Summary

Thanks AG for praise of Orchids and his notes on several American species of orchid. Comments on AG’s observations.

Is experimenting [on dimorphism] with Rhexia and Melastoma.

Asks AG’s opinion of a paper by Thomas Meehan ["On the uniformity of relative characters between allied species of European and American trees", Proc. Philadelphia Acad. Nat. Sci. (1862): 10–13] which is the best case of the apparently direct action of the conditions of life CD has seen.

Requests postage stamp for his ill son [Leonard].

Thanks AG for observations on Cypripedium and gives recent observations of his own.

Arethusa is very pretty; structure seems like that of Vanilla.

Finds the little (so-called imperfect) flowers of Viola and Oxalis curious: the pollen-grains emit their tubes whilst within the anthers, and they travel in straight lines right to the stigmas.

Sympathises with events in the U. S.

Reports on French translation of Origin by Mlle C. Royer, "one of the cleverest & oddest women in Europe".

Alphonse de Candolle says he wants direct proof of natural selection; "he will have to wait a long time for that".

Summary

Glad AG will publish some separate notes on orchids ["Fertilization of orchids through the agency of insects", Am. J. Sci. 2d ser. 34 (1862): 420–9].

Trimorphism in Lythrum.

Bee behaviour.