Summary

His long experience with propagation of Cytisus and other "sports".

Summary

Lists the 14 men elected to be F.R.S. Garrod defeated McLachlan.

Summary

Is attempting to write a book on elementary lessons in anthropology [Anthropology (1881)] and wonders whether CD’s son [Francis] would care to collaborate and aid him with the biological parts.

Summary

Responds to CD’s query as to the duration of crossed varieties of peas. [See Cross and self-fertilisation, p. 305.]

Summary

Describes cosmological ideas of Christian Radenhausen.

Summary

Met CD at a bath the previous summer.

Proposes he work on human illness.

Summary

Thanks for copy of Cross and self-fertilisation.

Francis Darwin’s observation of nectaries in Pteris is most curious.

Doubts cross-fertilisation in the rare cases of two flowers on the same stalk in Victoria and Euryale.

Summary

Has read and greatly admires CD’s latest book, Cross and self-fertilisation; seeks permission to translate it into French and to add some annotations. [EMH’s translation was published in 1877.]

Summary

Studying anatomy of the Irish pig.

Emil Bessels’ paper is in Archiv für Anthropologie 8 (1875): 107. He connects a band of poor Eskimos encountered at Smith’s Sound with glacial man.

Summary

Has confirmed CD’s observations on Drosera.

Asks whether CD agrees that it is "no longer a fact" that the bladders of Utricularia vulgaris enable the plant to become lighter for fecundation and heavier when that act is accomplished. Plans to undertake further observations, under very high-powered microscopes, of mechanism of digestion.

Summary

Reports on the tendency of the normally fruitless Convolvulus arvensis, to form fruit when roots are cut and plant is in danger of dying.

Summary

A Dr Sarazin offers services as translator.

Will read CD’s letter about Robert Swinhoe to Royal Society Council and see what can be done for him.

Summary

JDH looking for Hoya for CD.

Hookers tried to visit Down on foot, but weather was too inclement.

Summary

Asks CD to renew his former offer to propose him for the Royal Society, as Michael Foster, now on the Council, is unable to do so.

Summary

Forwards a flower from a Mrs Crawshay, who sees its "evident struggle to become double as another instance of gradual evolution".

Summary

His brother, George, reports from Calcutta a case of a man whose hands are divided like a cow’s foot.

Summary

Thanks CD for copy of Variation in name of Anthropologische Gesellschaft, Munich.

Dr Born has demonstrated that all Batrachia and their relatives the Anura have six toes.

Sends short paper on intelligence of cephalopods ["Die Cephalopoden in der zoologischen Station des Dr Dohrn", Z. Wiss. Zool. 26 (1876): 1–23].

Summary

He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]

Summary

Bombus mastrucatus, an alpine bee, conforms to his observations that B. terrestris breaks open the flowers of Trifolium pratense. However, in the Alps, B. terrestris does not behave this way.

Gentiana species are adapted to lepidopteran cross-fertilisation.

Summary

Can CD send sheets of Cross and self-fertilisation as previously promised? OZ writing article on subject ["Darwin über Kreuzung und Selbstbefruchtung im Pflanzenreiche", Das Ausland (1877)].

German Darwinists preparing a Darwin album with photographs of themselves as gift.