Summary

[Provides directions for travel to Down by train.]

Summary

Asks that enclosed letter be posted for him.

Summary

Is glad addressee’s lectures are going well.

Summary

Ray Society has given CD 22 copies [of Living Cirripedia, vol. 1].

Summary

Should like to examine the correspondent’s Madeira cirripedes but is too much occupied with other subjects of natural history.

Summary

Will return all but two volumes; requests four titles, including Pepys’s Diaries, but not the first volume.

Summary

CD is obliged for the offer, but he is "too much occupied to contribute to any periodicals".

Summary

CD regrets he has to turn down an invitation because of his ill health.

Summary

Declines invitation to dine at Downing College because of influenza.

Summary

Thanks for monstrous floral specimen, but it is a common one.

Summary

Asks for information about cases for stove-plants. [Answers recorded in another hand.]

Summary

Encloses a dialogue on species from a New Zealand newspaper [S. Butler’s First dialogue on evolution, from the Christchurch Press].

Summary

Attacks the doctrine of "heterogeny" (spontaneous generation during each geological period) as completely lacking in evidence.

Defends natural selection as connecting large classes of facts in natural history. That certain forms have not changed since remote epochs is not an objection of any force.

Summary

Replies to a reviewer’s statement, that any theory of descent will connect large classes of facts, by pointing out that no other explanation has been as satisfactory as natural selection. But whatever view is adopted "signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species and have not been created immutable".

Summary

Seeks permission to make another visit to Addiscombe [Military College] to see again the model of St Helena. He needs to correct proportion of some geological sections in his Geology [see Volcanic islands, ch. 4].

Summary

Reports the possible extinction of the Macartney Rose.

Summary

Thanks for the photographs of disks of stone, but not to trouble to send casts, as he will not work on expression again.

Summary

Encloses a photograph and [?].

Summary

Asks his correspondent to thank Prof. Reichenbach for his kindness. A plant was discovered in flower at Kew, and he was able to examine the doubtful point.

Summary

Strongly disapproves of the blackballing of Edwin Ray Lankester by the Linnean Society. States the reasons for his disapproval and hopes they will be considered.