Summary

Sends list of bills.

Summary

Thanks CD for the cheque. Gives account of money owed for tutoring and tennis.

Summary

Has no chance of paying his debts, and asks for money.

Summary

Needs more money to pay his tutoring bills.

Summary

Sends CD some notes on the habits of the "American Blight Bird" in New Zealand.

Summary

Was gratified "beyond measure" by AN’s comments on his pigeon chapter [in Variation] in the [Zoological] Record [5 (1868): 94–6]. AN is the first man capable of forming a judgment who seems to have thought anything of this part.

Summary

Informs CD that Oxford proposes to confer an honorary degree upon him.

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 WO for information on platysma, which he did not know could be brought into voluntary action. Is coming to believe it has nothing to do with expression.

On the relation between white colouring and susceptibility to poisonous plants, CD suggests WO send his paper to J. Wyman and propose he investigate whether white as well as black pigs will eat paint-root.

Summary

Sends a cheque to pay off FD’s debts. Warns him of the dangers of overspending his income and advises him strongly to keep accounts.

Summary

Invites WDF to visit.

Describes activities of his children.

Summary

[William Rathbone] Greg is author [of "Failure of ""natural selection"" in the case of man", Fraser’s Magazine 78 (1868): 353–62].

Comments on findings in J. M. Duncan [Fecundity, fertility, sterility and allied topics (1866)].

Saw A. D. Bartlett about monkeys.

Summary

Thanks BJS for his congratulations [on Leonard Darwin’s success].

CD is "as usual, always ailing and grumbling".

Expects his new book [Descent] to "disgust you & many others".

Summary

Interim report on the experiments with rabbits [to test Pangenesis].

Summary

Better news about the rabbits.

Summary

Publication Committee of Zoological Society has granted CD use of woodblock from the Society’s Proceedings.

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!