Summary

Sends drawings of atypical Geranium and honeysuckle pollen-grains. Would they produce variation in seedlings?

Summary

Sends enclosure [a letter from Lady Lyell?]. He is choking with vanity.

Is going to send Willy to Mr La Touche in Salop; he brought up young Colenso and Frank Lyell. Some of his friends will think he is sending his son into a nest of young adders!

Summary

The illness and death of his daughter have delayed his answers to CD’s queries. He has, however, worked on the circulation of the eye and has almost finished a paper on it, which he will send to CD. In general, the views of Charles Bell are confirmed.

As for CD’s second query, he doubts that the relationship exists, but will answer fully in next letter.

Summary

Sends his "Charles Darwin, eine biographische Skizze" [Das Ausland 2 Apr 1870].

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J. W. Dawson’s Bakerian lecture for Royal Society is full of errors, and JDH is forced to recommend that it not be published.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

On death of his wife. Botany a solace.

Summary

Not discouraged by F. Müller’s Passiflora.

Observations on insects visiting barberries.

Summary

Expression in horses.

Crying in babies.