The vaunted fidelity of the ark bird has its exceptions.

Gives some details on wild pigeons.

Answers in the affirmative CD’s query about drifted trees.

Non-endemic Ascension Island plants brought by man, not wind-transported.

Bentham has found intermediates between oxlip and cowslip in Herefordshire.

JDH finds quantity of albumen in seeds is not variable within a species.

Lyell urges CD to publish a sketch of species theory; CD asks JDH’s opinion on best course.

Concerned about opposition, particularly by Owen, to Huxley’s admission to Athenaeum.

CD is unsure about JDH’s recommendation that he publish a separate "Preliminary Essay". It is unphilosophical to publish without full details.

CD will work for Huxley’s admission to Athenaeum.

Huxley’s "vehement" [Royal Institution?] Lectures make it difficult to propose him for Athenaeum.

Extensive notes on Madeiran birds: when and where seen on the island and under what conditions.

Inquires about a Mr Smith, who might prove helpful "in the domestic bird line".

CD (and Emma) had a good laugh over JDH’s mortified response to a misinterpretation (in print) concerning his position on multiple creation.

SPW and Waterhouse agree on island faunas; gives Australia and Tasmania as examples. The "stream of migration" from Asia to Tasmania.

Looks forward eagerly to the publication of CD’s "specific" researches.

Invites CD to send his memoranda [on Manual of Mollusca].

Queries from CD on the distribution of molluscan genera referring to SPW’s Manual of the Mollusca [pt 3 (1856)], with SPW’s answers.

Answers CD’s questions about plants common to U. S. and Britain and their distribution in Europe.

Variability of agrarian weeds.

Wishes to borrow fly pincers for his son George.

Discusses T. V. Wollaston’s book on insect variation [On the variation of species (1856)].

Preference of stallions for hybrid mares.

Evidence relevant to E. Forbes’s land-bridge theory.

Do the plants that are common to Europe and North America nearly all live north of the Arctic Circle? CD bases his question on HCW’s "capital" comparison between relations of Europe to North America and Europe to E. Asia if the intervening land had been submerged. CD has been led to speculate that in the mid-Pliocene the organisms now living in middle Europe and northern U. S. lived within the Arctic Circle. Subsequent movements of this flora with advance and retreat of glaciers would explain present distribution better than Forbes’s vast submergences.

Smallpox in the village. Death of Joseph Parslow’s son.

Sends a cultivated specimen of Myosotis (first generation) grown from seed sent by JSH. Asks for a tuft of flower.

Hopes JSH will publish a book on teaching botany, because he has no idea how to begin with his children.

Comments on Huxley–Falconer dispute [see "On the method of palaeontology", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 18 (1856): 43–54].

Wollaston’s On the variation of species [1856].

Has exploded to Lyell against the extension of continents.

Plants common to Europe and NW. America as result of temperate climate.

CD forgets an author [CD himself in Coral reefs] "who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet".

CL begins to think that all continents and oceans are chiefly post-Eocene, but he admits that it is questionable how far one is at liberty to call up continents "to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods".

Will CD explain why the land and marine shells of Porto Santo and Madeira differ while the plants so nearly agree?

Conveys [? J. T. I. Boswell-]Syme’s opinion of variability of agrarian weeds and ranges of species common to U. S. and W. Europe. The Hispano-Hibernian connection.