The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from R. F. Cooke, 26 November 1880; see n. 3, below.

The journalist and reform campaigner William Cobbett named the paper ‘The Bloody Old Times’ because of ‘its having uniformly advocated punishment, cruelty, proscription and blood against all those, in whatever country, who were striving for freedom’ (Cobbett’s Political Register, 16 October 1830, p. 507; Spater 1982, 2: 542–3).

A review of Movement in plants appeared in The Times, 20 November 1880, p. 9. In his letter of 26 November 1880, Robert Francis Cooke, partner in the firm of CD’s publisher, John Murray, said that another 500 copies of Movement in plants were to be printed and asked for any corrections. George had expressed his disappointment at the quality of the woodcuts, and said that he had drawn figs 147, 149, and 162 from nature rather than from photographs as stated in Movement in plants, pp. 356, 358, and 385, respectively; see letter from G. H. Darwin, 19 November 1880. In his reply to George of 20 November [1880], CD said that he would check by looking at the original photographs.