Summary

Provides CD with a method of obtaining a numerical ratio that expresses the superiority in heights of crossed plants to self-fertilised plants.

Summary

Is elated by his work on the alteration in the earth’s axis and the displacement of the poles. [See 10689.]

Summary

Writes of his "geo-mathematical" work.

Summary

His paper on the alterations of the poles and changes in level of continents is in shape.

Sends Cambridge news.

Summary

Greatly excited by the astronomical implications of his work.

Summary

Comments on an address by William Thomson (‘On the rigidity of the earth’?), which is about the same problem that GHD is working on. Is confident Thomson has overlooked some points.

Summary

Sends W. Thomson’s complimentary opinion of his paper "On the influence of geological changes on the earth’s axis" [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 167 (1877): 271–312].

Summary

Has heard CD is about to be proposed again for the Académie Française, but Huxley is proposed at the same time and may succeed against CD "as being more orthodox!"

Summary

Cambridge University will offer CD an honorary degree.

Summary

Writes in detail about Cambridge offer of the honorary LL.D.

Summary

Loss of water from leaf surfaces; action of a still air layer.

Proposal for CD’s LL.D.

Summary

Writes again about arrangements for the honorary degree ceremony.

Has been working on tides, which he is almost certain have altered the obliquity of the ecliptic.

Summary

Will look for worm-castings in the cloisters,

and will send CD items from the Cambridge papers on the honorary degree.

Has hit on a possible fallacy in W. Thomson’s theory of secular cooling of the earth.

Summary

Asks CD if he would like to sign GHD’s Royal Society proposal for membership.

Summary

Has been reading Samuel Haughton on geological time ["Notes on physical geology, no. III", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 26 (1877): 534–46]. It is utter rubbish. Asks whether CD thinks GHD should write a critical note on the subject [see Nature 17 (1878): 509–10].

Summary

Recounts some figures relating deaf-mutism and consanguineous marriages.

GHD has failed to be elected to the Royal Society.

Summary

Is frustrated to see, from a paragraph in Nature [18 (1878): 242], that Charles Lagrange has got hold of the same sort of ideas as he has.

Erasmus is unwell.

Summary

Refers to Charles Lagrange, who is working on the same subject as GHD, but in a fundamentally different way.

Summary

Sends drawings of specimens [of Thalia] CD requested.

Summary

Recounts the experiments on Fechner’s law he has found in Helmholz; they are on the smallest perceptible differences of illumination. Describes how to test whether plants’ responses to lights are in accordance with it.