Summary

Had thrown Geographical Society’s Proceedings in waste-basket, but as Strachey shows such admirable powers of discrimination he will fish it out and read the whole article.

Comments on 3d ed. of Sachs’s work [Lehrbuch der Botanik (1873)]. Wishes he were more controversial.

Has become wonderfully interested in Drosera and Dionaea.

9000 copies of Expression have been printed and most are sold.

Summary

CD agrees cultivated plants may begin to vary after some time and then may vary suddenly, but cautions JDH on lack of evidence. His explanation is that small variations are ignored until they accumulate.

Summary

Thinks JDH should arrange his facts against the aquatic formation of coal.

Summary

Ernst Haeckel writes that young German scientists are enthusiastic for natural selection.

Did JDH write the article in Natural History Review on trees not producing flowers ["Botanical lesson books", (1864): 355–69]?

Encourages Harvey to publish on his "disagreeable" monster plants.

Summary

Lyell and CD would urge JDH to make his essays into a book, but see he has embarked on a huge project with G. Bentham [Genera plantarum, 3 vols. (1862–83)].

Summary

Will be glad to see JDH at Down.

Summary

CD is furious at the prospect of Lankester’s being black-balled by the Linnean Society. He plans to solicit support from various members and to come up with Frank for the voting.

Summary

Overjoyed at the way the newspapers have taken up JDH’s case. The memorial has done great good this way, whatever the wretched Government does. It is enough to make one a Tory. JDH has done a service to all men of science by showing governments that they cannot be trampled on.

Summary

Floral anatomy; pistil curvature and pistil movement. CD’s rule that bent pistils occur in "gangway" into nectaries.

The book JDH is planning, which he and CD discussed at Kew, should deal with plant reproduction.

Summary

Sends Fritz Müller’s address; has sent him Insular floras [pamphlet].

Summary

Abstract will run into a small volume.

Urges JDH not to reject natural selection until he has read abstract.

[Enclosed are CD’s comments on a ?JDH manuscript that perhaps belong elsewhere.]

Summary

Thanks JDH and Thiselton-Dyer for useful information.

Is surprised Mimosa albida is not sensitive to water. Asks that they try again, or lend it to him.

Remembers a walk in Brazil in great bed of Mimosa.

After JDH left, CD was very bad, with much loss of memory and severe shocks continually passing through his brain.

Summary

Doubts Decaisne’s report of larkspur self-fertilisation.

Enthusiastically observes climbing plants. Needs to know how novel his observations are. Finds R. J. H. Dutrochet has made similar observations, so he has wasted some time. [See Climbing plants, p. 1 n.]

Summary

On papilionaceous flowers and CD’s theory that there are no eternal hermaphrodites. Connects this theory to absence of small-flowered legumes in New Zealand and the absence of small bees as pollinators.

Summary

Has not heard of Curtis on Dionaea.

Duke of Argyll is clever, but it is a sin to speak of a real old Duke as a "little beggar".

"My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design."

On spontaneous generation and Bastian.

Summary

CD relieved by JDH’s positive response to his MS.

CD continues observations on means of transport.

JDH’s Raoul Island paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 22 (1857): 133–41], showing continuity of vegetation with New Zealand, best evidence yet of continental extension.

Summary

Progress of [Thomas?] Thomson and G. H. K. Thwaites on accepting mutability.

Bee orchid pollination.

JDH has written to CD on homologies of stigma in Goodeniaceae.

Summary

Request for plants.

CD’s continuing ill health.

Summary

Will JDH be in London?

Cirripede observations.

Summary

Encloses another specimen of the "bilateral" Laburnum flower.