Asks for references to works on CD’s views for a paper he is preparing.

Thanks CD for Expression.

Suggests saving some anthropoid Quadrumana from extinction by taming and studying them in their own environments to learn about their development.

Sends "squib" he has written exposing the folly of some of Louis Agassiz’s ideas. AG cannot "fire off [his] cracker" in U. S. so sends it to amuse CD. If it is sent to Nature, CD must not give AG’s name. [See "Survival of the fittest", Nature 7 (1873): 404].

Additional errata in Descent.

Sends a paper on behaviour he has observed in ants.

Winter in Duluth.

HAH is leaning toward spiritualism.

Limit of natural and sexual selection.

Has been around the world three times.

Praises TWH’s Army life in a black regiment [1870]. CD always thought well of Negroes, and is delighted to have his impressions confirmed.

CD answers a question about the attitude of foreign naturalists towards Darwinism by distinguishing between the belief in evolution and belief in natural selection. Gives the views of [Louis] Agassiz, [R. A.] Kölliker, [C. W.] Nägeli, [Ernst] Häckel, [C. F. W.] Claus, [F. J.] Cohn, Alphonse de Candolle, [J. L.] Claparède, Asa Gray, Gaston de Saporta, [E. D.] Cope, and [Carl] Gegenbaur.

Sends his book [Die Befruchtung der Blumen (1873)]. Hopes CD will publish an opinion of it.

Hopes JC-B thinks that CD has properly acknowledged his debt in Expression.

Gives a case of peculiar behaviour in cats that apparently is inherited.

Thanks for Expression. Will write paper on it in next [July] West Riding Asylum Medical Report.

Sends photos of lunatics;

will send notes corroborative of CD’s views, including some on "hereditarily transmitted movements".

Although he believes in evolution, TM feels that natural selection is an inadequate cause;

nor is he satisfied with E. D. Cope’s law of acceleration and retardation.

Discusses some of his work relating to nutrition and sex and colour and sex.

Thanks for HR’s valuable remarks about Expression, and returns HRs copy, signed.

Discusses some of HR’s anecdotes about children sucking their tongues.

Admits that the youth who trembled so that he could not reload his gun after killing his first snipe was himself, when a school-boy.

Recounts the difficulties in preparing the French translation of Origin: the 1870 war, the illness and death of J. J. Moulinié, the alterations and additions from the 6th English edition. Despite competition from Royer’s three editions, Reinwald is contemplating a new edition.

Descent, vol. 1, has almost sold out. Offers CD £40 for rights to reprint a corrected version of Descent.

Pleased that JC-B will review Expression.

Fears he will not be able to improve the book with JC-B’s "wonderfully curious" photographs because Murray printed such a large edition.

Would be glad to have JC-B’s notes on inheritance – "a most important subject".

Distressed by the poor health of GHD and Horace. Asks them to come home.

Asks CD about the origin of certain expressions in man.

Opposes all corporal punishment. Pleased CD agrees with his pamphlet.

Insists that suckling babies pound and scratch mothers’ breasts. Perhaps CD’s evidence to the contrary comes from ladies, who only expose small portion of bosom, as opposed to working-class women.