Summary

Announces a meeting of the Society to elect its officers.

Summary

Experiments to cut Laelia stigma from rostellum and then to fertilise rostellum are baffled by "a latent instinctive power". Somehow the pollen-tubes find their way to the style.

Suggests CD study variation in ferns.

Summary

Difficulties in beginning experiments upon retirement.

Describes his observations on insect pollination of Antirrhinum and the effect of excluding the pollinators.

Has been observing variant forms of Plantago

and comparing local orchids with CD’s observations.

Possibility of an intermediate-styled primrose.

His experiments at Kew and J. B. Lawes’s at Harpenden on deterioration of vegetables and cereals.

Summary

Will exhibit the photos at the Entomological Society and have them identified.

Fritz Müller’s observations on relative abundance of mimicking and mimicked species.

Summary

Huxley’s lectures [Man’s place in nature (1863)]; he would be a scientific H. T. Buckle, if he were more careful.

Asks CD what the evidence is for inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Summary

CD’s doctor [J. M. Gully] has ordered him to do nothing for six months.

Thanks RT for orchid specimen.

Dares not look at Oxalis flowers.

Regrets RT cannot get seed, especially from his trimorphic flowers.

Asks for bulbs of two or three forms.

Summary

CD has been so ill they must discourage visit by WDF. Recovering slowly with new treatment.

Summary

Has seen that ARW has read a paper to the Linnean Society.

Thinks that Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics (Spencer 1851) would be too deep for him.

Summary

Has told John Murray to send copy of the Origin. There are "many valid and weighty arguments against my notions".

Summary

Informs CD of possible dimorphism of Epilobium angustifolium.

Summary

Sending Drosera plants by post instead of rail because they are rotting.

Summary

Replies to CD’s queries about expression.

Summary

Gives reference to his observations on tendrils [Proc. Am. Acad. Arts & Sci. 4: 98–9].

Notes cases in which the pollen of the fertilising plant affects the form of the fruit of the fertilised plant, e.g., gourds and maize.

Discusses the Civil War and the attitudes of the English press.

Summary

Thanks CD for his paper on climbing plants. Lists the many genera that he has found in his area in a short period since reading CD’s paper. [See 4881.]

Summary

Sends his MS of orchid paper ["A few notes on the fecundation of orchids and their morphology", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 127–35] for CD to send to an editor.

CD was right about Catasetum sexes.

Ficus experiments fail.

Summary

Discusses sleep movements of Porlieria.

Has read an abstract of Julius Wiesner on heliotropism and geotropism ["Die heliotropischen Erscheinungen im Pflanzenreiche", Anz. Kais. Akad. Wiss. Wien 15 (1878): 137–40] which seems important but is puzzling.

Gives details of his observations on climbing plants with reference to comments by Julius Sachs.

Summary

The work of the Zoology is now completed. The Smith, Elder & Co. account for the second number of part five is presented. CD expresses his "grateful thanks" to the Lords Commissioners.

Summary

Thanks JVC for his information (from two correspondents) on the rate of growth of merino rams’ horns.

CD has been revising Origin [5th ed.]. Has found a good deal to alter.

Summary

CD is pleased with how good a case WK’s facts have made.

Summary

Pleased at CD’s opinion of Thomson’s article.

Non-reading is great fault of the best school of English scientific men.

Opposed to Lubbock’s going into Parliament.

W. J. Burchell’s collections are coming to Kew.