Summary

A memorandum describing the expressive behaviour of a cat with added notes by CD.

Summary

Apologises that CD is too unwell to do any work, but he is most interested in the frequent occurrence of inherited variations in one locality. It would have been a pleasure to visit if his health had permitted.

Summary

Regrets CD’s poor health.

"Do not return Primula MS."

Summary

CD too unwell to read. JS should not send Primula paper MS until CD returns home.

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

CD thanks AN for the note and remarks on the partridge’s leg. CD is too ill to write a note, but will send [for] the specimen as soon as he can. [See 4326.]

Summary

Glad to hear of the plant; CD instructs WED to make further observations. If it is a good case he will insist on WED’s sending a communication to the Linnean Society.

Summary

Returns a borrowed extract from the [Zoological?] Record.

Summary

CD too unwell to write but has signed the [unspecified] paper and forwarded it as requested.

Summary

JS’s MS [of Primula paper] arrived, but CD is too ill to read it.

CD has sent JS’s paper on orchid sterility to Botanische Zeitung and to Hooker.

Summary

CD’s Copley Medal. The numbers were ten to eight in CD’s favour but the Cambridge men mustered strongly for Sedgwick.

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

Sorry to hear of CD’s poor health.

Summary

CD agrees about reversion.

The discovery of crossing in cryptogams is very interesting.

Summary

CD’s Linum paper [Collected papers 2: 93–105].

Sending up-to-date railway map of southern region.

Summary

CD is too ill to write.

As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]

Summary

Encloses a four-page printed pamphlet on the cruelty of steel traps [see Collected papers 2: 83–4].

Summary

CD sends thanks for pamphlet.

He has been very unwell for three months; it will be long before he can apply himself to his usual pursuits.

Summary

Asks whether he ought to write to CD while he is ill.

Wonders if he might use Haast’s notes on introduced animals for a notice he is preparing ["Note on the replacement of species in the colonies and elsewhere", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864): 123–7].

Summary

CD’s health.

Family and local news.