Summary

Asks CD to meet with Dr Wild to discuss the Westminster Review, which CD has supported.

Quotes from Alexander Kennedy on Maori observations on competition between native New Zealand birds and introduced bees for nectar of tree blossoms.

Summary

Has sent JDH’s letter to Nature ["Perception in ants", Nature 7 (1873): 443–4].

Sons recall kindness received from JDH and others in America.

Summary

The Naples Zoological Station and its library are growing fast. His life is a constant battle with the municipality, but has managed to make a little progress on vertebrate ancestry and morphology. His views get further away from what is generally accepted.

Summary

Has investigated whether it makes a difference if extracts [of alkaloid poisons] are made from leaves, seeds, or roots.

Summary

He does not accept Wallace’s definition of instinct because it excludes "inherited experience", i.e., "knowledge acquired by and transmitted through ancestors".

House-flies do not seem to have an instinctive fear of trap-door spiders.

Miss Forster gives him news of CD.

Summary

He has noticed that Mimosa albida leaves closed only partially. It can be objected to CD’s theory that, if true, all, or at least more, species would close their leaves on application of water, unless he can show special injury done to M. albida by water.

Summary

Thanks for Expression. Will write paper on it in next [July] West Riding Asylum Medical Report.

Sends photos of lunatics;

will send notes corroborative of CD’s views, including some on "hereditarily transmitted movements".

Summary

CD has discovered correspondent intends to present a petition to the House of Commons on which CD’s is the sole signature. Asks that his name be erased unless other signatures are added.

Summary

Sends CD a draft of a letter to Nature [see 9087], which he thinks expresses CD’s meaning.

Summary

Starts tomorrow for visit to Farrer and Effie [Euphemia Farrer, daughter of Hensleigh Wedgwood]. Has not done such a feat [i.e., staying as a guest of someone outside the immediate family?] for 25 years.

Has been half killing himself with Drosera.

Summary

Sends HA’s paper ["On leaf arrangement"] with a supporting note [from CD] to Royal Society.

Summary

Thanks for reference to Hermann Müller’s book on fertilisation [Befruchtung der Blumen (1873)].

Summary

Thanks for strange debate, which CD returns. Principle of evolution has first-rate supporters in [Edward Sylvester?] Morse and Theodore Nicholas Gill.

Summary

Thanks FMM for his "Lectures [on Mr Darwin’s philosophy of language", Fraser’s Mag. n.s. 7 (1873): 525–41, 659–78].

CD is not worthy to be FMM’s adversary as he knows very little about language and, being fully convinced man is descended from some lower animal, he is forced to believe a priori that language has developed from inarticulate cries.

Summary

Thanks for copy of translation of Variation

and the "admirable work on the microscopical structure of rock" [C. G. Ehrenberg, Mikrogeologische Studien (1873)].

Summary

Praises Expression.

Reports on Fritz Müller’s observations of cross- and self-fertilisation. HM will cultivate the two forms [i.e., mainly self-fertilised and mainly cross-fertilised] in the way CD has described.

He continues his observation of wild flowers. Encloses drawing of Viola tricolor with notes on its self-fertility.

Summary

Sends a note on R. Caspary’s observations of Corydalis self-fertilisation [see Cross and self-fertilisation, p. 331].

Has begun his experiments on the self- and cross-fertilised flowers.

Summary

On CD’s paper ["Complemental males of certain cirripedes", Collected papers 2: 177–82].

Comments on paper by W. H. Dallinger and J. J. Drysdale ["Life history of a Cercomonad", Mon. Microsc. J. 10 (1873): 53–8].

Discusses origin of life, the Gastraea theory and concept that primary germ layers are homologous in all animals. Notes similar views of E. Ray Lankester ["On the primitive cell-layers of the embryo", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 4th ser. 11 (1873): 321–38].

Reception of Darwinism in Germany.

Summary

The Huxley fund amounts to £1955. CD trembles about THH’s answer.

Summary

Asks JDH to inquire of gardeners at Kew what they think about injury to plants from watering during sunshine. Wishes to experiment. He is already convinced that drops of water do not act as burning lenses.