Sends forms to be signed so that the trustees of the Down Friendly Society may be properly registered.
CD has harangued the Down Friendly Club. Does not think it will dissolve.
CD’s opinion of a specimen sent by JBI from an unknown tree, and the Ross-shire tale about it.
JBI reports that the editor of Journal of Horticulture has identified the tree at Loch Carron as Sambucus racemosa, red-berried elder.
Suggests various remedies for toothache.
Encloses his £3 subscription to JBI’s Sunday School. Asks to reduce it in the future to £2 per annum.
Has been unwell.
CD disappointed in Pusey’s sermon against evolution [Un-science, not science, adverse to faith (1878), sermon read by H. P. Liddon at St Mary’s, Oxford, on 3 Nov 1878]. Does not agree that religion and science can be kept as distant as Pusey desires. Geology and biology must deal with history of earth and of man. But that is no reason for bitter hostility.
JBI on CD’s integrity and the separateness of science and religion.
Reports finding a wood pigeon’s nest on the ground, though woods are nearby.
Sends specimens of what he takes to be barnacles found on rocks in the mountains.
JBI’s "barnacles" would have been extraordinary, but they are hard lichens.
Has revisited Cambridge.
"Barnacles" [from rocks in Scottish mountains, identified as lichens],
burglar alarms,
and family news.
Has heard that land may be available for parsonage at Down.
Hensleigh Wedgwood has told CD that land JBI had inquired about will be sold at auction with the house [Trowmer [Tromer!?] Lodge].
JBI’s observations on bees and wasps. The hexagonal cells made by solitary queen wasps do not fit explanation in Origin.
CD interested in JBI’s observations of behaviour of bees. Finds his criticism about hexagonal cells made by queen wasps a good one. Cannot remember how he got out of the difficulty.
His book on worms to be published soon.
E. A. Darwin has died after short illness.
Did not intend his last letter as criticism. Is sure CD would not "wriggle out" of a difficulty if he had observed it.
Sends CD a wasps’ nest.
Wasps’ nest has arrived.
Gives his view of how queen wasp builds a hexagonal cell by straightening walls between several cells, which she builds at the same time.
Sends record of pigeon flight from London to Antwerp. [Lord W. Lennox, Merrie England (1857), p. 185.]
Provides another case of apparently pure bred pointers producing litter with one setter puppy. Correspondent was told that this occurred in several litters; gives names of owners and others who can corroborate the information.