Sends 3d ed. of catalogue of rocks [A descriptive catalogue of the rock specimens in the Museum of Practical Geology (1862)].

T. F. Jamieson’s paper on the parallel roads of Glen Roy to be read 20 January. Asks whether CD will be a referee.

Describes a box which has come for CD.

Asks for John Price’s address.

Thanks ACR for Catalogue; pleased some of his volcanic specimens have been included.

Will review T. F. Jamieson’s paper on Glen Roy. Knows the facts and knows too well that he [CD] is everlastingly smashed.

Thanks for paper and references on variations [missing].

Regrets HWB’s trouble about artists, etc., saying such trouble is a law of nature.

Asks whether HWB has heard of starving Indians who are forced to cook in different ways, and eat new things.

Thinks Bates’s paper on mimetic butterflies ["Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 495–566], is very good; would appreciate an article on it from CD ["On mimetic butterflies", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 219–24; Collected papers 2: 87–92].

News of family and friends.

Saw a white rabbit with black-tipped ears on a moor where only brown ones commonly and black ones occasionally dwell.

H. W. Bates’s paper; CD will review it. ["Mimetic butterflies" (1863), Collected papers 2: 87–92.]

Thanks for Journal of researches and Origin.

Thanks CD for comments on his fern paper [see 3847 and 3853]; has great difficulty in expressing his ideas.

Discusses inheritance and variation.

Asks CD for an account of the experiments he would like JS to perform.

Enthusiastic about Lectures IV and V [Lectures to working men (1863)].

Sends specific comments on fantail pigeon,

sterility of hybrids,

the geological section diagram.

Thanks CD for agreeing to review Bates’s paper for Natural History Review.

JS should be proud of his paper ["Nature of the fern-spore", Edinburgh New. Philos. J. 2d ser. 16 (1862): 209–27].

CD has just found that JS’s observations on the confluence of two sexes causing variability were independently confirmed by Huxley.

CD has always suspected a fundamental difference between buds and ovules.

Asks for examples of "bud-variation" or "sports".

Asks JS to test germination of pollen on rostellum of Laelia.

Offers JS money for experimental supplies, e.g., netting, to keep insects out of flowers.

Encloses an outline of crossing experiments with Lythraceae, Primula, Pelargonium, and others, which he feels would be valuable.

Note on melastomids.

Can WBT help get an answer to a query on ducks?

Has heard of a case of special sterility in cattle, in which a particular pair are sterile, but the individuals are both fertile with others.

Thanks correspondent for sending him a strawberry hybrid.

Thanks for Begonia and Oxalis.

Keeps obstinate about crossing and could argue till doomsday, but will not bother JDH.

Sees that JDH has finished Welwitschia.

Thinks Huxley’s Working Men’s Lectures excellent.

Has finished Linum paper [Collected papers 2: 93–105],

and abstract of Bates’s paper for Natural History Review,

and has begun to arrange concluding chapters [for Variation]. Is paralysed on how to begin.

Family and local news.

Has had news from Asa Gray about Civil War.

Belatedly thanks CD for Orchids, which shows CD to be the successor to Gilbert White.

Explains the terms of his £200 gift or loan to Miss Ludwig’s father.

CD is collecting [for Variation] all accounts of what some call "sports" and what he calls "bud-variations". He asks whether very slight variations in fruit appear suddenly by buds, or whether only rather strongly marked varieties thus appear.

Has heard from Asa Gray [see 3850] that JA is bringing live plants over for CD. Gives address for forwarding box to Down.

Thanks for Dawson’s letter. Doubts his evidence that climate of land was not glacial when upheaved after submergence.

Encloses memorandum of questions for C. V. Naudin.

Expression of the emotions.

Is building a hothouse for plant experimenting.

JDH’s ideas on America are more atrocious than his. What a new idea that struggle for existence is necessary to try to purge a government! Probably true. Slavery draws him one way one day, another the next. Yankees are "detestable toward us". Tocqueville.