Summary

CD interested in JBI’s observations of behaviour of bees. Finds his criticism about hexagonal cells made by queen wasps a good one. Cannot remember how he got out of the difficulty.

His book on worms to be published soon.

E. A. Darwin has died after short illness.

Summary

Surprised and pleased JBI liked his "big book" [Variation].

Luckily, naturalists do not seem to think he has committed suicide with the work.

CD wants to turn over the school accounts to John Robinson [curate of Down]. Writes of other parish news.

Will vote in person for Sir John Lubbock.

Summary

Sends record of pigeon flight from London to Antwerp. [Lord W. Lennox, Merrie England (1857), p. 185.]

Summary

Has heard of mules of canary and other finches breeding occasionally, but it is rare, and there is hardly one authenticated case of two such mules breeding together.

Sixteen of the household at Down are sick with influenza.

Summary

News of family and friends.

Saw a white rabbit with black-tipped ears on a moor where only brown ones commonly and black ones occasionally dwell.

Summary

R. H. Hutton has given a paper about CD at Liverpool Church Congress.

JBI has seen four milk-white partridges among brown ones this year.

Summary

Family and local news, and memories of old times.

CD’s youngest son, Horace, is too delicate to go to school.

CD has had a bad summer, is still ill, can do very little work – "Botany … is all that I am good for".

Summary

Full background on the difficulties of the vicarage of Down.

Summary

News of Etty’s health and of neighbours.

Pleased that JBI likes Origin.

CD never expected to convert people in less than 20 years, though now convinced he is "in the main right". Bishop of Oxford’s review made "splendid fun" of him.

Summary

Writes about difficulties in which S. J. O. Horsman, curate at Down, has involved himself and others. Horsman has said he would resign. JBI offers to give up his interests in the living at Down.

Summary

JBI’s "barnacles" would have been extraordinary, but they are hard lichens.

Has revisited Cambridge.

Summary

Duke of Argyll has been dubbed "Duke Darwinii" by papers.

Large number of toads have been found in railway cuttings; wishes a scientific observer had taken pains to explain where they came from.

Comments on Scottish schools and on the morals of the adult poor.

Summary

"Barnacles" [from rocks in Scottish mountains, identified as lichens],

burglar alarms,

and family news.

Summary

CD gets so many foolish letters from foolish people he has little heart to write to friends.

Gives Down news.

R. H. Hutton, editor of the Spectator, is a clever man.

CD has been much abused, praised, and chaffed by newspapers lately.

Summary

CD’s anxiety about being examined in court if Horsman [former curate at Down] brings suit. He doubts it will happen, but if so will defend himself to utmost.

Has pleasant recollections of his relations with JBI.

Summary

Reports on a bird, offspring of a male mule between a canary and greenfinch, and a hen canary.

Family news.

Summary

Hopes Miss [Sarah Elizabeth] Wedgwood will sell part of her land for a parsonage at Down. Recounts his futile efforts to obtain land in the past.

Encloses news item about the supposed hybrid [of cow and deer].

Summary

JBI regrets his part in appointments of his successors.

His friendship with CD and its effect on his fellow clerics.

Summary

Sends Guardian containing Hutton’s paper on CD.

Discusses Henry Powell, the new vicar of Down, and plans for the parsonage.

Summary

CD writes in detail about difficulties with Horsman’s financial accounts and the affairs of the parish.