Summary

CD sends the gist of an extremely negative report from the [Royal Society’s] physiological referee on the value of RLT’s modifications of Brücke’s process for isolating pepsin [see 10470].

Summary

Promises to send sheets of his new book [Cross and self-fertilisation].

Summary

Thanks AD for sending a memoir on foliation of rocks ["Expériences sur la schistosité des roches", C. R. Hebd. Acad. Sci. 82 (1876): 710–16, 798–804]. Regrets to say that it never reached him.

Summary

AD’s memoir [see 10504] has arrived at last.

Summary

Book [Webb and Berthelot] has reached CD.

Sorry EH dissents from Pangenesis.

Summary

Discusses corrections and illustrations [for Volcanic islands and parts of South America, 2d ed. (1876)].

Summary

Asks her to send seeds from a flower in the garden at Hopedene, and the name of a dwarf crimson Oxalis.

Expresses appreciation of the house, which the Darwins have borrowed.

Summary

Thanks for letter of 21st.

When the curious Salvia arrives, CD will have it carefully planted. Interested in seeing its flowers.

Summary

Caroline [Wedgwood] has been ill for the last 20 months.

James Paget to be consulted about William Darwin’s brain concussion.

Summary

Thanks for a letter describing variation in chickens.

Summary

Encloses essay by Haeckel criticising Pangenesis [Die Perigenesis der Plastidule (1876)]. Discusses Haeckel’s theory of inheritance.

Asks about the Physiological Society.

Summary

Discusses FD’s observations on the protrusion of protoplasmic masses by cells of the teasel. Suggests analogy with amoeba. "I would work at this subject if I were you, to the point of death."

Summary

Describes discovery by his son [Francis Darwin] of protoplasmic filaments extending from small glands in the leaves of Dipsacus [see Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 26 (1877): 4–8].

Summary

Regrets he cannot hear lecture by F. C. Donders.

Hopes to see WB before he returns home.

Summary

‘Your mother ought indeed to feel proud that she had two sons such true naturalists as you and your brother [John Jenner Weir].’

Summary

Comments on FD’s discovery – "if it so proves". It will be important to see whether the protoplasm oozes through the cell-walls [of Dipsacus] or whether it can be withdrawn.

Summary

Looks to FD’s "grand discovery" as almost certain. Suggests observations.

Summary

Thanks for essay [Philosophische Consequenzen der Lamarck–Darwin’schen Entwicklungstheorie (1876)].

Summary

Further comments on GHD’s work on the influence of geological changes on the earth’s axis.

Frank [Francis Darwin] has made a fine zoological discovery.

Summary

Joseph Fayrer can supply cobra poison.

Discusses vivisection.

Mentions visit to the John Hawkshaws.