Has read CD’s Primula paper.

Regrets to hear that CD and family are victims to the influenza epidemic.

Answers CD’s questions on Australian flora, bees, geology.

Thanks CD for his Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63].

Asks if CD has observed the true oxlip (Primula elatior).

Comments on Hottonia and Stellaria graminea. [See Forms of flowers, pp. 72, 313.]

Will send an Arethusa; offers other specimens.

Dimorphism.

Falconer contradicts Sumatra and Ceylon elephant story.

Lyell as rabid as ever about America.

JDH castigates the Americans after the Trent affair. The value of an aristocracy. How will CD answer Asa Gray’s letter?

His "remarkable plant" [Welwitschia mirabilis] exhibited at Linnean Society.

Genera plantarum is in press.

The Witness attacks THH’s lecture.

Assures CD he spoke more favourably of his doctrines than the reports show.

Agrees with CD’s arguments on sterility of hybrids and predicts physiological experiments will produce physiological species sterile inter se. Has come even closer to CD’s view especially since Primula paper. Will soon be more Darwinian than CD.

He will send CD one of his sketches to add to the two CD has kept since Beagle days.

Asks for FitzRoy’s address.

Has received a satisfactory answer from Lord Tankerville.

Seeks to define oldest fossil cirripede.

Reports that the orchids Myanthus and Catasetum are identical.

Thanks CD for returned MS and letter with its good opinion. Asks CD to write to Murray.

Grateful for CD’s approval of "Lake-habitations".

The Japan pig, an unusual domestic species with no wild prototype.

Will visit CD on Saturday.

Has sent CD the published part of his work on Carex [Illustrations of the genus Carex (1858–67)]. Hopes to add 200 more figures. Comments on great variability among the 600–odd species, and on their geographical distribution.

Owen’s paper on the aye-aye [Rep. BAAS 32 (1862) pt 2: 114–16];

his attacks on CD and his theories.

Discusses manuscript by H. W. Bates [Naturalist on the river Amazons (1863)].

Mentions CD’s forthcoming book [Orchids].

Encloses seeds.

Lecoq’s work mentions instances of apparent dimorphism. [H. Lecoq, Études sur la géographie botanique de l’Europe, 9 vols. (1854–8).]

Is preparing a volume of his articles [Essays on scientific and other subjects (1862)], to one of which he would like to add a postscript referring to CD’s Origin [pp. 100–1]. Sends proposed postscript for CD’s approval.

CK defended CD’s theory at a shooting party with the Bishop of Oxford, the Duke of Argyll, and Lord Ashburton. The discussion started as a result of shooting some blue rock-pigeons which were different from blue rocks of other localities. CK held that all pigeons were descended from one species.

CK proposed that mythological races, e.g., elves and dwarfs, were intermediate species between man and apes, and have become extinct by natural selection; i.e., by competition with a superior white race of man.