Summary

Encloses a question [missing] concerning language [from Hensleigh Wedgwood].

Summary

Describes meeting of Geological Society [1 June 1853].

Mentions his criticism of Murchison’s lecture on flints.

Describes Robert Chambers’ "On the glacial phenomena in Scotland" [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 54 (1853): 229–82].

Mentions controversial election of members to the Royal Society.

Summary

Relates events at Down;

asks WED to make some observations on Lythrum.

His present hobby-horse is tendrils.

Summary

Asks WED to observe blushing in the blind, and yawning.

Mentions elephants’ crying while trumpeting.

Summary

Yellow anthers of Heterocentron produce on the same plant thrice as many seeds as the crimson anthers. Crimson anther seeds produce dwarf plants, others rise high up. Monochaetum ensiferum facts are still more strange. Wants to investigate the case, and asks for a plant of the Melastomataceae just before flowering.

Has JDH a Rhododendron boothii from Bhutan with pistil bent the wrong way?

Summary

Comments on GJR’s lecture on animal intelligence [Rep. BAAS].

Comments on J. R. L. Delboeuf, La psychologie [1876].

Suggests that GJR keep a young monkey to observe.

Summary

Caroline [Wedgwood] has been ill for the last 20 months.

James Paget to be consulted about William Darwin’s brain concussion.

Summary

Congratulates JDH on receipt of Royal Medal.

CD gathering facts on aberrant genera of insects.

Summary

Writes of a visit to Leith Hill and WED’s injured ankle.

Summary

Illnesses of Mrs Horner and Emma Darwin.

Death of Sarah Elizabeth Wedgwood.

Mentions work on his "Big Book" [Natural selection].

Remarks on J. A. H. de Bosquet’s discovery of a Chthamalus in the Chalk.

Summary

Wants to sell some shares held in trust by EAD and Josiah Wedgwood [III].

Summary

JL’s review of Lyell’s Antiquity of man (1863) [Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 3 (1863): 211–19].

Owen’s review of W. B. Carpenter in Athenæum [28 Mar 1863, pp. 417–19].

Summary

Alphonse de Candolle’s Géographie botanique [raisonnée (1855)] strikes him as a wonderful, admirable work.

Summary

Is glad he returned home to be with Emma, and is grateful to Fanny for following Anne to the grave.

Summary

Discusses WED’s observations on polymorphic flowers.

Summary

Discusses domestic affairs and gives some advice on manners.

Summary

CD will write again when he returns to Down and has looked over his MS.

Summary

Has found EB’s MS most interesting and valuable. Fully half the facts were new to him; will probably use some.

Summary

Asks her to send seeds from a flower in the garden at Hopedene, and the name of a dwarf crimson Oxalis.

Expresses appreciation of the house, which the Darwins have borrowed.

Summary

Thanks VOK for the present of A. E. Brehm’s Illustrirtes Thierleben [1864–7].

The woodcuts will do admirably [for Variation].