Summary

CD too unwell to read. JS should not send Primula paper MS until CD returns home.

Summary

JS’s MS [of Primula paper] arrived, but CD is too ill to read it.

CD has sent JS’s paper on orchid sterility to Botanische Zeitung and to Hooker.

Summary

Regrets CD’s poor health.

"Do not return Primula MS."

Summary

CD thanks AN for the note and remarks on the partridge’s leg. CD is too ill to write a note, but will send [for] the specimen as soon as he can. [See 4326.]

Summary

CD agrees about reversion.

The discovery of crossing in cryptogams is very interesting.

Summary

CD is too ill to write.

As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]

Summary

CD too unwell to write but has signed the [unspecified] paper and forwarded it as requested.

Summary

Sets out estimate for cutting blocks for illustrations of a trap.

Summary

Encloses a four-page printed pamphlet on the cruelty of steel traps [see Collected papers 2: 83–4].

Summary

Thanks to WDF’s directions, Anne’s tombstone has been found.

CD improved, but recovery is slow. She describes treatment.

Encloses paper she and CD have written [see 4294, which was wrongly addressed by ED and had not reached WDF].

Summary

Apologises that CD is too unwell to do any work, but he is most interested in the frequent occurrence of inherited variations in one locality. It would have been a pleasure to visit if his health had permitted.

Summary

Sorry to hear of CD’s poor health.

Summary

CD’s health.

Family and local news.

Summary

Returns a borrowed extract from the [Zoological?] Record.

Summary

Asks whether he ought to write to CD while he is ill.

Wonders if he might use Haast’s notes on introduced animals for a notice he is preparing ["Note on the replacement of species in the colonies and elsewhere", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864): 123–7].

Summary

ED writes on behalf of her husband, who is ill, to thank FH for his letter

and to thank [L. C.] Treviranus for his paper on orchids.

CD wishes to know whether Orchis pyramidalis grows in FH’s neighbourhood. He needs a fresh specimen to compare the stigma with those grown locally.

Summary

CD too ill to write.

Has evidence of long life of seed transported on a partridge’s foot.

Sends a squib by Samuel Butler on the Origin.

Summary

CD too ill to write.

Asks that a presentation copy of Origin be sent off.

He has authorised an Italian translation of Origin.

Summary

Thanks WDF for his letter [on steel traps].

Gives a better report of CD’s health since he gave up water-cure.

Summary

CD too unwell to answer JvH’s letter.

He was interested in the "marvellous ground parrot"

and the report on "naturalisation of animals in New Zealand".

Honoured by election to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury.