S. M. Hersfeld [Herzfeld] has applied to WS for financial assistance in order to retrieve some books and apparatus from a carrier. He has previously been aided by CD, so WS seeks his advice.

Cannot precisely explain conditions of existence of any organism.

Discusses ethics of risking one’s life to save another.

Since CD supplied Herzfeld with money to retrieve his goods from the carrier, but he did not use it for that purpose, WS sees no way of helping him except to send him home as "a distressed Austrian subject".

Hopes CD got telegram about Convolvulus. Is measuring plants every four hours. Will go to Brittany by boat from Southampton on Monday night.

Writes of a Mrs Noel, who is annoyed with CD’s neglect of Erasmus Darwin’s brother, W[illiam] A[lvey] D[arwin I], [in Erasmus Darwin].

Thanks for AdeC’s Phytographie [1880]. CD finds in it a number of "philosophical" remarks new to him. The work would have been invaluable to him in dealing with puzzles when writing his cirripede monographs.

Describes his system of keeping notes on separate pieces of paper filed in several scores of large portfolios.

Has just sent MS of Movement in plants to the printer. Thinks he has suceeded in showing "that all the more important great classes of movements are due to the modification of a kind of movement common to all plants from their earliest youth".

Discusses GHD’s genealogical researches

and his health.

Wild cat gestation is twelve days longer than domestic cat, a fact not mentioned in Variation.

Still remembers FJH. Thinks no scientific journal would publish her essay on Genesis and science.

Regrets death of her brother [W. D. Fox].