Summary

Discusses details of LJ’s part of Zoology [Fish].

CD is working hard on Coral reefs.

Summary

H. T. Stainton should be elected F.R.S.

Summary

Corrects Werner Hoffmeister, cited in Earthworms, p. 63: earthworms do not block their holes to keep out Scolopendras but to prevent evaporation.

Summary

Would welcome JSBS visit to discuss Drosera. Nitrogenous fluids can act as ferments only if they act merely by exciting molecular movement in adjoining molecules.

Glass and cotton excite movement and cause cell contents to change visibly. Huxley coming to see this phenomenon.

Studied effect of poisons 12 or 15 years ago to see whether the action was similar to that on nervous tissue.

Summary

Regarding CD’s inability to find a young botanist to investigate Russian wheat; comments on utter lack of organisation in scientific research in Britain as compared with Germany.

Gives arguments against CD’s suggestion that the saxonka seeds could have long dormancy period which would account for their gradual overtaking of kubanka.

Summary

Offers to send Ascidia specimens of Beagle voyage. Describes some of them.

Hopes THH will review his book [Living Cirripedia, vol. 1] which has been published for a year with no notice taken of it except briefly by Dana.

Discusses Limulus-like larva. "I have become a man of one idea.– cirripedes morning & night."

Summary

Asks PHG to conduct an experiment to see if young littoral molluscs will cling to a duck’s foot – CD seeks to explain distribution of molluscs without adopting E. Forbes’s [continental extension] theory.

Summary

Encloses MS on sexual selection acting on street dogs of Beirut [MS of "On the modification of a race of Syrian street dogs", Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 25 (1882): 367–70, published with a prefatory notice by CD.

Summary

Extracts from MS of vol. 4 of HCW’s Cybele Britannica [1847–59] showing the diversity of views on species among botanists.

Summary

Comments on GJR’s lecture on animal intelligence [Rep. BAAS].

Comments on J. R. L. Delboeuf, La psychologie [1876].

Suggests that GJR keep a young monkey to observe.

Summary

Response to Origin. Praise for summary of chapter 10 and chapter 11.

The dissimilarity of African and American species is ‘necessary result of “Creation” adapting new species to the pre-existing ones. Granting this unknown & if you please miraculous power acting’.

C. T. Gaudin writes of Oswald Heer’s finding many species common between Miocene floras of Iceland and Switzerland. Interesting for CD’s migration theory.

Summary

Discussion of the geology of Coquimbo, Chile.

Summary

Arranges for HdeV to call.

Summary

Thanks MATW for the results of her experiments on the inheritance of caterpillar peculiarities and would be grateful for any further observations on differences in structure or habits between silkworm breeds, or peculiarities in inheritance.

Summary

Agrees to read manuscript if short.

Summary

CD’s election to Botany Section of French Academy amuses him, because he "doesn’t know the characters of a single natural order!".

Summary

CD elected Associate Member of the Royal Belgian Academy.