Summary

Approves vivisection memorial.

Lyon Playfair supports his request for Kew assistant.

Asks whether CD has botanical suggestions for Arctic expedition.

Summary

Reports making graft-hybrid potatoes.

Has found direct action of pollen in Mays [Zea] crosses and apple-trees.

F. Delpino has asked for CD’s address.

Summary

Sends an omitted reference to an article by Dr Ascherson [Bot. Ztg. (1871): 444 et seq.] for Cross and self-fertilisation.

Summary

Sends proboscis of a Sphinx-moth that is 22 cms long.

Discusses eleven species of butterfly which visit Lantana, a plant which blooms only for three days and whose flowers are yellow on the first day, orange on the second, and purple on the third. Most species only visit the flowers when they are yellow.

Describes and draws the odiferous organs of a Sphinx-moth.

Describes a secondary sexual character of several species of Callidryas and other Pierinæ: the costal margin of the anterior wing is sharply serrated in the males, while it is smooth in the females.

Summary

Thanks for Forms of flowers.

In his Monographiae phanerogamarum [vol. 1 (1878)] he discusses transitional forms of dioecism in three genera of Smilax.

Criticises CD’s use of the words "purpose" and "end", but acknowledges that in English they can mean both cause and effect.

Summary

THF’s article in Nature ["The fertilisation of a few papilionaceous flowers", 6 (1872): 478–80, 498–501] is extremely good.

Suspects he now has answer to why common peas and sweetpeas hardly ever intercross, a point which half drove CD mad for years.

Summary

Sends a translation of two sentences [on floral structure] as requested by Henrietta Darwin.

Summary

Declares himself CD’s defender; but he is a "teleologist".

Sends CD three more papers.

His research confirms his faith and belief in variability of species.

Summary

Has had no less than seven grasses germinate from locust dung sent by JPMW.

JPMW’s paper on Bonatea is being printed by Linnean Society. [See J. P. M. Weale, "Structure and fertilisation of the genus Bonatea", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 10 (1869): 470–6.]

Refers to Lyell’s new edition of Principles [10th ed., 2 vols. (1867–8)].

Summary

Mechanism of flowers of Maranta has already been described by F. H. G. Hildebrand and Federico Delpino.

Summary

On the fertilisation of Tacsonia and Passiflora.

Encloses a poem, "The Biological Teleologist", written after reading Delpino.

Summary

Returning CD’s books.

Sympathises with women’s lot in life.

Summary

Sends seeds of Lathyrus and suggests an advantage of climbing plants is to shed their seeds in places secure from animals.

Contrary to F. Delpino, in JTM’s experience Ophrys aranifera is not sterile. However, seed germination is poor.

In a densely overgrown plot Convolvulus sabatius, not normally a twiner, becomes one.

Continues his extensive study on variability in Arbutus, and speculates on selection in fruit shape.

Summary

Such honours as proposal for election to Institut affect CD very little.

GdeS’s idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed until sucking insects evolved is a splendid one. The suggestion that fertilisation of the surviving members of the most ancient dicotyledons should be studied is a good one. CD hopes GdeS will keep it in mind.

Summary

CD and others now think it advisable to go further than a petition on vivisection, and a bill has been drafted.

F. Delpino’s pamphlet on pitchers ["Sulle pianti a bicchieri", Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 3 (1871): 174–6].

Summary

Sending MS.

Used Anton Kerner’s nomenclature for designating crosses.

Thanks CD for Forms of flowers.

Summary

Sends specimens.

Sensitive plants.

Summary

Thanks for plants supplied from Kew.

On structure and function of leaf glands of certain plants.

Summary

Sends seeds from R. L. Playfair in Algiers.

F. Delpino writes asking where M. A. Curtis has published physiological observations on Dionaea ["Enumeration of plants growing spontaneously around Wilmington, North Carolina", Boston J. Nat. Hist. 1 (1834–7): 82–140; see Insectivorous plants, p. 301 n.].

Talk with Duke of Argyll on CD’s and Wallace’s views on man.