Potatoes will be lost unless JT has immediate authority to proceed.

Thanks CD for his cheque for £100. Has told Secretary of BAAS Committee [for the Station], so that he may report it. [See O. J. R. Howarth, The British Association (1931), pp. 196–7.]

Thanks for CD’s appreciation of his work on family history. Sends one of his books [unidentified].

Writes on family matters and researches.

Mentions construction of a pendulum

and completion of a paper he will send to the Royal Society.

Wonders whether Lord Derby would advance him the money to continue his work.

Is prepared to continue his work, if financial help is forthcoming.

Has sent off paper to the Royal Society

and begun work on a new problem which he feels contains the meaning of Bode’s Law, concerning the mean distances of the planets from the sun. There are mathematical difficulties, however, which he may be unable to surmount.

Will get to work on the pendulum next week.

Suggests Torbitt make a report on his progress so far.

Writes of the weather,

his reading of Huxley’s Crayfish [1880],

and domestic matters.

Encloses note and cheque from James Caird [for Torbitt].

Agrees that CD should write to the Times [about Torbitt’s potato experiments].

Encloses statement of U. S. sales of CD’s works to 1 Feb 1880 and sends a cheque for balance due to CD.

Sends seeds of Megarrhiza and gives details of species.

Encloses letter from James Caird, who has entire confidence in CD’s appropriation of the money [collected for Torbitt’s experiments].

Hopes to finish his report tomorrow; last year’s crosses were failures.

Sends pheasant tail coverts, which he believes are unusual in pattern, resembling those of a peacock.

Sends details of Netter 1879 (Abraham Netter. 1879. De l’intuition dans les découvertes et inventions. Strasbourg: Treuttel & Wurtz.)

A letter of resignation from the Down Schools Committee. He will send a cheque for balance in hand when he is informed as to whom it is to be sent.

Wishes to see some small appointment found for A. R. Wallace, whose present labours are trying.

German edition of Erasmus Darwin delayed because Murray has not sent phototypes and galvanographs.

Two of CD’s articles from Nature to appear in April Kosmos ["Sexual colours in butterflies", Collected papers 2: 220–2, Kosmos 7 (1880): 72–4;

"Fertility of hybrids from the Chinese goose", Collected papers 2: 219–20, Kosmos 7 (1880): 77–8].

Moritz Wagner will begin a series criticising natural selection.