Summary

Thanks for information on inheritance of mental peculiarities in cats.

Summary

"As I have never especially attended to Conchology I am sorry to say I cannot tell you the name of the enclosed shell which I now return–"

Summary

Acknowledges receipt of £245 18s.

Summary

Thanks JL for information about Acropera luteola.

Also thanks for the Gongora; cannot avoid the impression it is male.

Summary

Thanks JL for a flower of Bolbophyllum, a genus that puzzles him.

Recent work has convinced him a number of orchids are male. Points out that JL [in The vegetable kingdom (1846), pp. 177–8] "accidentally misquoted" R. H. Schomburgk on this point.

Summary

Delayed thanking JL for two notes until he heard from Hooker about Acropera luteola; had no idea A. luteola was not a well-known name.

Cites his reasons for identifying A. loddigesii as male; hopes for a Gongora flower from Hooker which, JL suggested, may be the female.

Summary

Trusts DO’s opinion on Acropera ovules.

Summary

Delighted to have Quiz [Johnny Innes’ dog].

Summary

Arrangements for receiving Quiz.

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Asks JDH to arrange for some melastomads to be sent to him.

Summary

Admires LR’s book [Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten (1861)].

Will attempt to arrange for skull of wild white Chillingham cattle to be sent by Earl of Tankerville.

CD has come to same conclusion as LR on zebus.

CD’s MS of Variation is half-prepared.

Summary

Seeks information on heating hothouses night and day.

Summary

Henri Lecoq’s miserable book on plant geography [Étude sur la géographie botanique de l’Europe (1854–8)].

H. W. Bates’s pleasure at meeting JDH.

Summary

Arrangements for sending Quiz.

Summary

Thanks CD for his contribution to the memoir of Henslow [L. Jenyns, Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow (1862)].

Summary

Gongora cannot be female of Acropera; it may itself be a male.

Hopes Daniel Oliver will "sink Atlantis" in his Royal Institution lecture.

Summary

Variation in instincts among domestic animals.

Summary

Discusses the worsening relations between their two countries and the possibility of war.

Expects Orchids and his Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63] to be out soon.

Thanks AG for some facts on dimorphism.

George Bentham has given him a list of Oxalis and Mentha species that are dimorphic like Primula.

Is in a "thick mud" regarding design in nature.

Summary

Asks CD whether he hears from Asa Gray. JDH’s opinion of the crisis [Trent case, Nov 1861] and the American Civil War.

Julius von Haast alludes to glacial drift in Middle Island of New Zealand.

Backwardness of JDH’s son, Willy.

Encloses a reference from Daniel Oliver which may be useful.

Summary

Rudimentary ovules of Acropera.

High opinion of Bates.

Orchid anatomy.