Sends an article for FD.

Is glad he is able to work on his teasel paper [Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 26 (1878): 4–8]; suggests some observations FD could make.

Thanks for papers and letter; has been working in the mornings on teasel.

Asks for reference to an article on a mandrill.

Has seen notice on Empetrum but cannot understand how leaves in bud could act as fly-catchers.

Explains how they look after Drosera plants.

Encloses his father’s autograph.

Asks FD to write on his behalf and say that he is unwilling to join a deputation [on vivisection] and that he believes in the need to protect physiology as well as lower animals.

Asks FD to mollify Daniel Oliver and assure him that CD asks "only for what I wd. give my life’s blood for".

Asks for details of dimorphism in Sethia from Thwaites, Enumeratio plantarum Zeylaniae [1864]. [See Forms of flowers, p. 122.]

Forwards letters.

His father is grateful for the account of the alleged discovery of men with tails.

His father does not believe in their existence of the tailed men, although the tails may be an inherited monstrosity.

Sends thanks for diploma on CD’s behalf.

CD is going away and has asked FD to thank GJR for his amusing letter [of 6 June], which CD thinks should be published in Nature. CD thinks the guinea pig theory very probable.

CD thinks there may be something in the ‘veneration’ theory.

Lists the tasks he has completed; sends on letter from Romanes; news of Bernard.

Asks FD to forward some eczema mixture to Southampton for him

and to hunt out notes on earthworm activity at Beaulieu Abbey.

CD has written to [Charles] Wyville Thomson in favour of PPCH’s request [for duplicates of Pycnogonida collected by the Challenger expedition], and hopes it will be successful.

Offers to send MS of part of his new book [Life and habit] which gently pokes fun at CD. His book will offer an alternative to Pangenesis.

His father thanks WMM for his letter about the elephant case [see 11214]. If the story is true, CD thinks that the fruit must contain some alkaloid such as that in Indian hemp.

Nomenclature for kinds of heliotropism.

SB’s book [Life and habit (1878)] will be bound shortly. He will send two copies, one of which can be given to CD. To SB’s surprise it has turned out to be an attack on CD’s views and a defence of Lamarck; describes how he was brought to the opinions expressed in it.

Writes for CD, thanking TFC for his pamphlet on Selliera. CD was so interested that he ventured to forward it to Nature for publication.