Leonard has scarlet fever; CD is sorry WED is unwell.

CD orders electrotypes for German edition of Orchids.

Asa Gray doubts an American publication is possible but will review it in Sillimans Journal.

[British] botanists have praised it. Other reviews.

Has read the Origin several times. His position is like Asa Gray’s: he wishes to believe in descent, but proofs of natural selection are lacking.

Looks forward to CD’s promised large book.

Thanks for Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Did CD sow the seeds of his crosses? One would like to know whether the two forms reappear at random.

Sorry he did not meet CD in London.

Discusses investment in land as compared with railway shares.

Sends answer to Wedgwood’s query

and is sorry to hear CD is again unwell.

His book is progressing very slowly.

Asks that CD not make use of any of the facts about generative organs in beetles for he finds "such a chaos of statements" that facts are not to be depended upon.

WED’s travel plans; an insect he has observed on Orchis maculata.

Refers to his Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Asks GHKT to investigate a similar case in Cinchona.

Has broken up school a few days early to avoid danger. Hopes CD’s son is nearly recovered.

Is pleased that AdeC is interested in the Primula case ["Dimorphic condition of Primula", Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Is pursuing analogous experiments on other plants and on seedlings raised from the unions.

CD’s "large work" progresses slowly owing to ill health and his work on Orchids.

CD is not surprised that AdeC is unwilling to admit natural selection – "the subject hardly admits of direct proof or evidence. It will be believed in only by those who think that it connects & partly explains several large classes of facts".

Hopes AdeC will publish on Quercus

and rejoices that he intends to return to the study of geographical distribution. No one can claim to have read AdeC’s truly great work on that subject [Géographie botanique (1855)] with more care than CD.

Superb, but exaggerated, review [of Orchids, by M. J. Berkeley] in London Review [& wkly J. Polit. 4 (1862): 553–4]. Asa Gray thinks almost as highly. "I have not been a fool, as I thought I was, to publish." The Athenæum review will hinder sales greatly.

Asks experienced observers whether there are any marked differences between bees kept in different parts of Germany.

Household problems: wife’s health, visitors to Kew.

Will go to sale of J. C. Ross’s effects looking for glacial and Kerguelen Land works not at British Museum.

Testimonial in support of WBT’s application for curatorship of the Hartley Institution.

Asks for information concerning heterostyled and dioecious plants.

Asks CD to help Thomas Carlyle find and borrow a book.

It is not certain cuts are wanted by an American publisher [of Orchids].

Has fixed price of £10 for Schweizerbart [Stuttgart publisher].

Has received Australian government grant to collect and publish on fossils. Has collected thousands of fossils.

His friend Trenham Reeks [Secretary of Museum of Practical Geology] would give Carlyle information and help. This note will serve as introduction.

Yesterday found hundreds of [Ophrys] apifera and [Ophrys] arachnites in bloom in the same area. The two species grow in clumps and do not mix with each other.

L. C. Treviranus inclined to translate Orchids, but "unfortunately" HGB has already done it. Book’s discussion of plant sexuality important for zoology as well as botany.

Origin is in press. Attaches a list of "quelques petites difficultées" encountered in his translation.