Summary

Comparison of skulls of Ichthyosaurus and Cetacea.

Summary

A page of [unspecified] text is missing from a parcel of material received from GRW.

CD "hopes and expects to live to see Carboniferous, & perhaps even Silurian, mammifers!"

Has several questions to ask whenever they meet.

Summary

Sends a list of plants with stamps to pay the Hitcham girls who will collect seeds for him.

Describes his work with seeds in salt water.

For his experiments he would like seeds collected from plants that grow both near Hitcham and in the Azores.

Explains again what JSH should do in marking "close species".

Summary

More on seed-salting. JDH’s admission that he expected seeds to die in a week gives CD "a nice little triumph".

Summary

CD experiments: sowing seeds in fields; "breaking" seeds’ constitution with coloured light; plant hybridisation. Compiling works on hybridism.

Respect for W. B. Carpenter.

Note on "nectar secreting" to Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 258–9].

Summary

Artificiality of orders and genera in botany.

Difficulties in numerical analysis of close species in large and small genera.

HCW has "pretty strong bias towards the view that species are not immutably distinct".

Summary

Reports success of seed-soaking experiments. Celery and onion germinate after 85 days’ immersion.

Summary

JDH to be appointed Assistant Director at Kew.

On where to publish seed-salting paper. Floating problem perhaps more important than germination.

Summary

Pea self-fertilisation: has forty-five varieties growing side by side.

Describes seed-salting experiments: e.g., immersion in tank filled with snow. Reports some successful germinations.

Made list of naturalised plants from Asa Gray’s Manual [of Botany] to calculate the proportions of the great families.

Summary

Asks TCE’s advice on preparation of birds’ skeletons.

His pigeon collection is growing; now has pairs of ten varieties.

Summary

Several seeds have come up after 65–70 days’ immersion in salt water.

Has now a fine collection of pigeons and intends to cross them systematically.

Needs information on mongrel crosses of animals of all kinds.

Summary

JDH criticises C. J. F. Bunbury’s paper on Madeira [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 1 (1857): 1–35].

Absence of Ophrys on Madeira suggests to JDH a sequence in creation of groups.

Why are flightless insects common in desert?

Australian endemism.

Summary

Sends a list of 22 plants that grow at Hitcham and in the Azores and are, according to H. C. Watson, least likely to have been imported [by man]. Will pay the little girls of Hitcham liberally to collect the seeds for his experiments.

Summary

Thanks WDF for his offer of assistance in collecting varieties of poultry. Describes his needs. He will raise his own pigeons.

Often doubts whether, despite all help, the problem of species will not overpower him.

Summary

Explains more clearly what he is looking for in his work on poultry: relative variation at different ages, the effect of disuse on different parts, breeding between wild and domestic, and degree of fertility of "mongrels of very diverse races".

Summary

Reports that his intercession with Folliott Baugh [Rector of Chelsfield, Kent] has had no effect. Baugh still believes Farnborough’s rights have not been attended to if entire fund is applied to the school at Down.

Summary

Describes his method of putting young poultry to death.

Asks questions arising from WDF’s reply about crossed mongrels.

Summary

CD hopes to have an hour’s talk with CJFB before CD leaves London.

Summary

Thanks JSH for all he has done. His botanical little girls are marvellous. His marking of the list of dubious species is what CD wanted. Explains that he wanted to ascertain whether closely allied forms belong to large or small genera.

Summary

Asks WDF to observe at what age pigeons have tail-feathers sufficiently developed to be counted.

CD is hard at work on his notes for a book with all the facts "for & versus" the immutability of species.

Asks for a young chicken and a nestling common pigeon.