Summary

Intends to see Adam Sedgwick.

Arranges to meet AN.

Summary

Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].

Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.

CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".

Saw Alfred Newton.

CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,

and on cross- and self-fertilisation.

Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?

Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.

Summary

Thanks for copy of part one of EPW’s Spicilegia biologica (Wright 1870).

Summary

Comments on QdeB’s volume [Charles Darwin et ses précurseurs Français (1870)]. Mentions error concerning his views on Parus and nuthatch.

Discusses Canis magellanicus.

Discusses reception of his views in France and Germany.

Summary

Thanks Society for honour of his election as Honorary Member.

Summary

Orders seeds, ripened in Algiers; imported seed would be of no use. [Forwarded to Algiers by JDH, see 7272.]

Summary

Thanks FD for seeds of Canna.

Still thinks it would be worth FD’s while looking at the fertilisation of Lotus; does not think Frank Darwin has exaggerated the novelty of the contrivance.

Summary

Thanks AS for his kindness towards himself and his family. Looks back with great satisfaction to his last visit ("as it will probably prove") to Cambridge.

Summary

Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.

CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.

Summary

Thanks FCD for information.

Hopes that translation of his paper will appear in Dublin Journal.

Notes experience of his son [Leonard Darwin] on engorgement of eyes with blood. Discusses secretion of tears when eye muscles are involuntarily contracted.

Summary

Asks to have observations made of a person retching violently, but ejecting nothing from stomach, in order to test relation between spasmodic contraction of orbicular muscles and tears. CD believes tears are caused by matter filling nostrils.

Summary

CD sends a "curious drawing" [missing] relating to imitation and protection.

Summary

Duchenne [Mécanisme] has arrived. Has been testing the photographs with 20 or 30 persons; when all or nearly all agree with Duchenne, CD trusts him. Not one understood the "contracted pyramidal of the nose". CD does not think the so-called muscle of lasciviousness worth exhibiting.

His MS [of Descent] is so large he may print only what he has, and make a second volume of what he is now writing on expression.

Discusses photographs he would like to have: baby screaming, person in paroxysm of fear.

Summary

In his reply to [7227] CD questions the significance of the supposed likeness of the bee, spider, and fly orchids to their presumed namesakes.

He thinks that the beauty of shells is altogether incidental and of no use to the animals.

Summary

Thanks for RAvK’s work [Anatomisch-systematische Beschreibung der Alcyonarien, pt 1, Die Pennatuliden (1870)].

Asks whether muscles to quills of porcupine are striped. Are they homologous to muscles of ordinary hairs? Could unstriped muscles develop into striped?

Summary

Asks about birds erecting feathers when enraged or frightened. Interested in examples of expression in birds and animals.

Tells of the sheldrake dancing on tidal sands to make worms come out.

Summary

Comments on translation of FCD’s paper ["On the action of the eyelids", Arch. Med. 5 (1870): 20–38].

Speculates that closing eyelids may protect eyes from vibrations.

Discusses publication of Expression.

Summary

Comments on new edition of EH’s book [Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, 2d ed. (1870)].

Mentions his own book [Descent].

Visit by Kölliker.

Summary

Mentions passage on gestures in EBT’s Early history of mankind [1865].

Asks Tylor whether the deaf and dumb use opposite signs for objects, qualities, etc., of an opposite nature.

Summary

Thanks for Trox beetles which have been forwarded [to London], but unfortunately CD has no microscope here. Is "in despair how to observe them … they sham dead" and are not inclined to stridulate.