AG’s application for an appointment to Assistant Keeper at the British Museum.

Is sorry JDH cannot come to Down.

Hopes the House of Lords "pitch into the accursed fellow" [Ayrton].

Sends his article ["Review of Owen’s Cuvierian principle of palaeontology"].

Reports aggressive reactions of three kinds of porcupines to a snake, concluding that in the wild they would probably kill and eat it [see Expression, pp. 93–4]

Sends sketches of expressions in two dogs.

Reports and describes massive hailstones which fell in Petoraghur [Nepal].

WWR is beginning to appreciate CD’s warnings against his polemical writing.

Sends quotation from Thomas Moore’s Memoirs [ed. Lord John Russell, (1853–6)] about hereditary peculiarity in handwriting.

On colour-blindness in his family.

O. Salvin will not be applying for the same post as AG.

Sends duplicate of his previous letter [8189]; he addressed it simply to C. Darwin, England, and had no reply.

Comments on drawings of hostile dog and affectionate dog.

Sends small gift of money.

Will himself correct the details on the woodblock CD finds acceptable. The second one followed CD’s instructions, contrary to his own experience.

His book has received bad reviews; therefore CD’s letter cheers him up.

Sends £35 as his subscription towards the building of a vicarage.

[MS of a short paper on pigeon breeding by an Italian doctor.]

Believes many of the species and even genera of the fish family Labyrinthici are products of domestication.

Events at the British Museum.

Will try again to draw the expression of a pleased dog.

Agrees to contribute £10 towards a new road in the area of Beckenham, although he doubts whether the road will be of much use to him.

Sends MS of a book on progressive development on this planet and in the universe. Asks CD to underwrite its publication.

Has replied [in North Am. Rev. 115 (1872): 1–30] to Mivart’s communication to the North American Review [114 (1872): 451–68].

Discusses the degree of fixedness of different characters in organisms.