Summary

About the insertion of a column on marriage of cousins in the census form.

Summary

Good news: one little rabbit has a white forefoot.

Summary

Answers to CD’s queries on expression; observations on the facial expressions of the insane.

Summary

Asks CD to review Wallace’s recent book of essays [Natural selection (1870)], particularly the new essay, which questions the applicability of natural selection to man.

Summary

Announces CD’s election as Honorary Member of the Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou.

Summary

Responds to CD’s request for Canna seeds.

Studying dichogamy in Lotus. Describes mechanism that pumps pollen on to a visiting bee. Corrects Axell on Lotus.

Summary

Concern over Wallace’s book [Contributions to the theory of natural selection (1870)] and its apparent backsliding from Darwinian theory. HWB suggests that only CD is capable of criticising the book.

HWB hopes not too much was made over his few comments on man in M. F. Somerville’s book [Physical geography, revised ed. (1870)].

Summary

Willy is back from New Zealand. JDH perturbed by what to do with him.

J. W. Dawson’s Bakerian lecture for Royal Society is full of errors, and JDH is forced to recommend that it not be published. [An abstract of the lecture was published: "On the pre-Carboniferous floras of north-eastern America", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 18 (1869–70): 333–5.]

Summary

Behaviour of ants.

Summary

Has finished the article [on the action of the eyelids in Ned. Arch. Geneeskd. & Natuurkd. 5 (1870), also see 7238]; summarises: the occlusion of the eyelids protects the vessels, and the eye itself, against the danger of pressure caused by excessive expiratory action. The weakness of the conclusion is that the extent of the danger caused by the pressure to the normal state of the eye is not precisely known.

Summary

A detailed description of the physiological and anatomical processes related to the prolonged involuntary contraction of the orbicular muscles and the secretion of tears (as in retching, violent coughing, or laughing). [See Expression, p. 160.].

Summary

Writes of CD’s recent visit to Cambridge and the joy it gave him.

Summary

Is surprised to find CD disagrees about the argus [see 7229]. TWW finds others he has consulted, including Edward Blyth, agree with him.

Summary

Thanks CD for his help and encouragement in his series of experiments [to test Pangenesis].

Summary

The Negro’s idea of beauty is the same as white man’s.

Believes the Jollops select for blackness.

Native immunity from coast fever is not complete.

Has found stone instruments.

Summary

Returns copy of Duchenne (found in cupboard) with notes [see 7221].

Sends photograph of woman patient with hair standing on end.

Summary

Comments on various figures [in Duchenne’s Mécanisme].

Summary

Hears CD may come to Oxford at Commencement to receive an honorary degree. Invites CD, his wife, and daughter to stay at his house. [CD declined Hon. D.C.L. on grounds of ill health.]

Summary

Asks CD whether he is far enough along with his new work [Descent] to allow him to announce it as a forthcoming publication in his next quarterly list.

Summary

Asks by what action CD believes bee, spider, and fly orchids came to resemble their namesakes

and how the beauty of bivalves could have been produced by natural or sexual selection.