Summary

JP’s note [8739] suggests reversion, but that is an easy trap. Will look to the ears of "our brethren at the Zool. Gardens".

Summary

Sends two [unidentified] papers on inheritance of medical malformations. Suggests that besides the inheritance of specific variations, the tendency to show variations in the same organ system (stomach, nervous, etc.) may also be inherited.

Summary

Thanks HBD for his lectures On the germs and vestiges of disease [1861].

Thinks his reasoning that the V. M. F. ("force exhibited in the operations of life") is not a "given quantity" is satisfactory.

How far the conditions of life affect the forms of organic life puzzles CD more than any other part of his subject. Thinks he may have underrated its importance in Origin.

Asks for source of the quotation on regeneration in HBD’s work.

Summary

Will send portion of copied manuscript [of Variation 2: 8–10] for WB to examine. Asks about inherited abnormalities of the eye.

Summary

Asks to have observations made of a person retching violently, but ejecting nothing from stomach, in order to test relation between spasmodic contraction of orbicular muscles and tears. CD believes tears are caused by matter filling nostrils.

Summary

Describes a patient’s ears with peculiar tufts of hair in places where he has never seen them before. Encloses sketch.

Summary

Is honoured by, and accepts JP’s invitation for 3 August.

Summary

Pleased that JC-B will review Expression.

Fears he will not be able to improve the book with JC-B’s "wonderfully curious" photographs because Murray printed such a large edition.

Would be glad to have JC-B’s notes on inheritance – "a most important subject".

Summary

Perhaps you would like to see a very small “tumour” on a lateral branch of the Silver Fur, caused by an Œstrum, as stated (with references) in my Power of Movement in Plants. These tumours are sometimes almost as big as a child’s head. At what age they emit the upright shoot, I do not know.

Summary

Thanks CD for his note and his new book [Movement in plants].

Makes him feel "we must go beyond plants for a really elemental pathology".

Wishes he knew enough about crystals to work at them.

Summary

Has previously quoted details concerning the regrowth of her amputated extra digit in Variation [2: 14–15]. The case has since been disputed, so CD, who is revising his work, asks for some fuller details.

Summary

Would like to call on CD if convenient.

Summary

Regrowth of amputated digits is a capacity possessed by the new-born but rapidly lost.

Summary

Asks JP to remember him if anything occurs to him "in regard to inheritance at corresponding or rather earlier ages". Sends JP a few examples for his "Chronometry of life". CD is sure he often met with striking facts but he disregarded them. "Deviations alone would have struck me."

Effects of different climates on breeding periods.

Summary

Fairy-rings grow because the fungal spawn radiates outwards then dies off at the centre as it becomes exhausted. The verdure of the grass depends upon the decay of the fungus supplying nitrogenous manure. Rings are formed mainly in upland pastures poor in nitrogenous matter. Gives examples of woodland fungi that form rings.

Summary

Enquires about fairy rings.

Summary

Asks JC-B to read CD’s MS on confusion of mind, which often or generally accompanies blushing.

Summary

Thanks for MS observations on expression. Discusses hair standing on end in terror and rage. Asks JC-B to observe contraction of platysma myoides. "Your description of the grinning and exposure of the canine teeth under furious rage is excellent. I presume that you would not object to my quoting it." Asks about contraction of "grief muscles". Comments on blushing. Offers to send book by G. B. A. Duchenne [Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine (1862)].

Summary

Regrets that he cannot send the promised volume [Biographie médicale, 7 vols, 1820–5, biographical appendix to Dictionaire des sciences medicales]. Offers to have his son make an abstract of the biography [of Erasmus Darwin].

Summary

Has heard from Ashwin Conway Newman of Guy’s Hospital of a case of a child without any prepuce whose father was a renegade, uncircumcised Jew, but whose ancestors had all been Jews. Newman thinks this a good case of inheritance with reversion. JP’s letter [missing] now shows how rash such a conclusion would be.