Summary

Has sent JDH’s Genera plantarum to Fritz Müller who finds it useful and offers to supply JDH with Brazilian plants.

Summary

Reports on a séance. "The Lord have mercy on us all if we have to believe in such rubbish."

Asks JDH to vote for his nephew, Henry Parker, for Athenaeum membership.

Summary

Glad to hear Wallace is contender for Gold Medal. Has highest esteem for his extraordinary talents.

Thanks for H. Barkly’s letter from Mauritius.

Glad to see HB takes same view as CD about bones of deer [see 5395].

Objections to continental extension theory.

Progress [on Variation] very slow.

Summary

Has been too busy to write. Is leaving for Switzerland that evening.

A friend, who ran away from home as a boy, has two sons who have done the same several times. Is the case worth investigating for CD?

Summary

Leaves Wednesday with Huxley for holiday.

Family news.

He too thinks well of Bentham’s address.

Asa Gray elected Foreign F.R.S.

G. J. Allman is being proposed for Royal Medal by JDH and Huxley.

Summary

Sends Fritz Müller’s address; has sent him Insular floras [pamphlet].

Summary

Rejoices over baby’s improvement.

Horace Darwin has intermittent fever.

Thanks JDH for page of the Farmer, a great service.

R. Trail’s potato grafting case would be of extreme value for demonstrating Pangenesis. [See Variation 1: 395.]

Summary

Sends Fritz Müller’s address;

disagrees on Mary Barton.

Seeks name of the Mimulus on which he has experimented [see Variation 2: 128].

Requests flowers of yellow variety of Mirabilis jalapa.

Summary

CD has never doubted probability of Bering Strait land connection.

Family illness.

Summary

Cannot come to Down; John Smith is unwell.

Will go to Paris again at end of month.

Wallace and F. J. H. von Mueller of Victoria are most likely candidates for Royal Society Gold Medal for biology.

Encloses letter from Henry Barkly.

Summary

CD’s opinion of minor critics and commentators on Origin.

H. C. Watson’s notion of genera converging is dismissed.

Summary

Reports on personalities at the Bath meeting of BAAS [Sept 1864].

Summary

Differences in variability of species within a single genus. Further observations on Lycopodium.

Interested in Humboldt’s river with different floras on opposite banks, and other unexplained cases of very local distributions.

Summary

CD’s health and his father’s death have delayed his answer. Describes J. M. Gully’s water-cure.

JDH’s Galapagos papers [Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 20 (1851): 163–233] have excellent discussion of geographical distribution, but why no general treatment of affinities?

CD’s views on clay-slate laminae.

Turmoil in Royal Society between naturalists and physicists.

Summary

Kew affairs.

H. J. Carter’s observations are wonderful but want verification.

Skeptical of H. H. Travers’ observations.

Summary

His view of Huxley’s cutting Mivart without explanation. States his own intentions. Mivart’s apology in October Quarterly Review is abominable.

Has heard of a Drosophyllum in Edinburgh. Is it too late?

Summary

Has finished long paper on "Climbing plants". Prefers sending it to Linnean Society if Bentham does not think it too long.

For New Zealand flora [1864–7] CD suggests JDH count plants with irregular corollas and compare with England.

Does not quite agree about Reader.

Is Tyndall author of piece on spiritualism?

CD’s illness diagnosed as "suppressed gout".

Summary

More on Naudin’s hybrid; the wonder lessened slightly.

JDH’s view that insular plants [distantly] related to those of continents are common came to him only after the lecture was in print; has not yet thought it out fully.

Moroccan flora may throw some light on Madeira flora.

Summary

The newspapers’ pother about his mild theology.

Tyndall’s reference to JDH and CD as the two "modestest" men in science.

Huxley offended the clergy twice without cause or warrant.

William Hooker ill.

Astronomers do not like JDH’s reference to them.

Summary

On novels he has been reading: Eliot, Richardson, etc.

On Wallace, the Reader, and anthropology.