Summary

Thanks JSBS for his work. CD concludes the ferment of Drosera must differ from pepsin.

Summary

D. A. Spalding has asked for information to help with his experiments on sense of direction in animals. Has arrived at same results as GHD with blindfolded children. Will GHD let him have his results?

Summary

CD has forwarded proofs of Descent [2d edition]. Urges GHD not to work on them if his poor health makes them too tiring.

Thanks GHD about Spalding [i.e., for responding to Spalding’s request, see 9472].

Summary

Intends to keep working on [Descent, 2d ed.] proofs despite his illness.

Summary

Thanks GdeS for his "Études sur la végétation" [Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) 5th ser. 15 (1872): 277–315]. "Nothing can be more important … than your evidence of the extremely slow and gradual manner in which specific forms change."

Hopes GdeS will shed light on whether polymorphic forms like Rubus and Hieracium are generating new species at present; CD doubts this.

Summary

Comments on CL’s planned bequest to science. CD would do the same if he had fewer sons.

Summary

Movement in plants; effect of syringing on Opuntia plants that capture insects with their flowers.

Summary

Thanks CHM for a report about birds of the United States [see 9461].

Summary

CD is deeply pleased by AG’s article on him in Nature [10 (1874): 79–81].

Is preparing book on "Drosera and Co." for the printers. Reports observations on digestion in Drosera and Pinguicula.

Summary

Discusses effects of water on movement of insectivorous plants.

Has just found that Pinguicula can digest albumen.

Asa Gray writes that Sarracenia secretes trail of fluid to attract insects [see 9455].

Summary

Thanks ID for interesting and curious facts but doubts that he will have time to enter more closely into the subject of the intellect of animals.

Nothing would give CD more "pleasure & interest" than to see ID’s country, "now so great & destined to be so much greater", but he is quite incapable of "so great an exertion as crossing the Atlantic".

Summary

Profoundly grateful for AG’s article in Nature; he is especially pleased by what AG says about teleology.

Summary

Sends information on nitrogen and albuminoid content of seeds of Brassica.

Summary

Asks what proportion of leaves of Pinguicula have insects adhering to them. Also, whether seeds of any plants ever adhere to the leaves, and in what situations does P. vulgaris grow.

Summary

Sends her observations on Dionaea capturing insects. [See Insectivorous plants, pp. 311–12.]

Summary

Asks about insects and seeds on leaves of Pinguicula.

Summary

Did not know cabbage contained so much nitrogen.

Pinguicula more excited by seeds than Drosera. Asks for information about Pinguicula.

Asks name of weed.

Asks to borrow Utricularia plant.

Summary

Comments on GHD’s paper ["Marriages between first cousins in England and their effects", Fortn. Rev. n.s. 18 (1875): 22–41]. Hopes it will be published and read at the Statistical Society.

Summary

Charles Martins has given the first Darwinian lectures on zoology at Montpellier.

Joseph Duval-Jouve is also a Darwinian. The latter has lost his position as Inspector of the Academy because of his liberal views.

Wallace suggests that a trap-door spider with an exposed nest preys on nocturnal insects.

Summary

JSBS’s article in Nature ["Venus’s fly-trap", 10 (1874): 105–7, 127–8] could not have been better done.

Has found another plant, Pinguicula, which can catch and digest flies.