Summary

Is glad WED is in the sixth [form]. Discusses WED’s intention to become a barrister.

Summary

Thanks him for information concerning Crustacea.

Comments on natural history study in the U. S.

Mentions work done by Huxley on Crustacea ["Description of a new crustacean", J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 13 (1857): 363–9];

John Lubbock on larvae of Diptera.

Summary

Thanks for three last lectures and the account of cirripedes.

Difficulty of classifying the higher groups.

Summary

THH’s catalogue [THH and R. Etheridge, A catalogue of the collection of fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology (1865), part published in 1857] best résumé he has seen of science of natural history. On classification he is not quite sure that he wholly goes along with THH. Encloses a few criticisms of THH’s preface.[enclosure survives as copy only].

Summary

THH comments on G. A. Brullé’s paper ["Researches upon the transformations of the appendages of the Articulata", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 13 (1844): 484–6].

Summary

Comments on species with disjoined ranges; does not feel, despite CD’s expectations, that they tend to belong to small families.

Gives the proportion of U. S. trees in which the sexes are separate [see Natural selection, p. 62].

Summary

Important issue at stake with new flora calculations: evidence that species are only strongly marked varieties. Planning large-scale survey.

Summary

Glad THH has taken up aphid question versus Owen ["On the agamic reproduction and morphology of Aphis", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 22 (1858): 193–236].

Fertilisation and inheritance discussed. Speculates that fertilisation may be a mixture rather than a fusion. Can understand in no other way why crossed forms tend to go back to ancestral forms.

Summary

Asks THH’s opinion on embryological views of G. A. Brullé [Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 13 (1844): 484–6] and F. M. Barnéoud [Ann. des Sci. Nat. ser. 3, Bot. 6 (1846): 268–96] and on Milne-Edwards’ classification.

Has been reading John Goodsir ["On the morphological constitution of the skeleton of the vertebrate head", Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 5 (1857): 123–78].

Has embryology of bats ever been worked out?

Summary

CD is informed that a certain work [unspecified] is not available separately.

Summary

JDH has shaved the hair off the alpine plant.

CD apologises for his criticism.

Apparent but false relations of plant structure to climate: heath-like foliage of all Cape of Good Hope plants.

Summary

Thanks JDH for response on variation. Studying variations that seem correlated with environment, e.g., north vs south, ascending mountains.

CD’s weed garden: observations on slugs killing seedlings.

Seed-salting. One-seventh of the plants of any country could be transported 924 miles by sea and would germinate.

Summary

Birth of his sixth son [C. W. Darwin]. It is dreadful "to think of all the sendings to school and the professions afterwards".

CD is not well but has not the courage for water-cure again; trying mineral acids.

Working hard on the book [Natural selection]; is overwhelmed with riches in facts and interested in way facts fall into groups.

To his surprise [Helix pomatia] has withstood 14 days in salt water.

Pigeons’ skins come in from all parts of the world.