CD seeks to decline the Secretaryship [of the Geological Society] by citing his obligation to FitzRoy to write his volume of the narrative of their expedition. His youth, inexperience, and ignorance of English geology.

Asks Whewell questions on earthquake wave action.

Thanks him for signature [to CD’s request to Chancellor of the Exchequer for funds for Zoology].

Informs him of J. B. Jukes’s plans concerning the Newfoundland survey post.

Asks WW to alter, before printing, the passages in WW’s Presidential Address to the Geological Society [Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond. 3 (1839): 93] which pointedly allude to the delay in publication of CD’s Beagle journal; they might annoy FitzRoy, who, as Captain, has a right to first use of the papers of all officers on board.

Thanks WW for wedding gift.

Expresses admiration for his History of the inductive sciences [1837].

Thanks CD for the Origin. WW is not yet a convert but there is so much "of thought and of fact" in what CD has written that "it is not to be contradicted without careful selection of the ground and manner of the dissent".

Sends a book [his translation of Goethe’s Hermann u. Dorothea] as a wedding gift.