Comments on natural selection. Sometimes he can persuade himself that it is of quite subordinate importance, but so many structures have been explained by it that he can also persuade himself that every structure developed through it. Cites H. G. Bronn’s list [of structures not explicable by natural selection].

Has planted six, as opposed to eleven acres last year, to keep within expenditure. Must pollen be used immediately? Fourteen landowners are growing potatoes for JT.

Invites JF to Down.

Thanks for money for further subscription to Index; FEA soon to step down as editor.

On CD’s solid reputation in America among rising men of science.

Lends BJS Titus Coan’s Adventures in Patagonia [1880].

Thanks him for copies of the missionary journal.

Can CD explain why apes still exist, now that humans have evolved.

Thanks GC for having sent his book [La teoria di Darwin criticamente esposta (1880)].

Thanks for CD’s comments on his paper ["On a point relating to brain dynamics", Nature 22 (1880): 29–30].

Contends that self-interest as a motive for conduct is more salutary than is generally thought, and should be considered in the evolution of morality.

Thanks for two pamphlets;

Otto Zöckler’s [Darwin’s Grossvater (1880)] he thinks worthless.

Thanks CD for the loan of a book;

discusses his family’s health and other domestic affairs.

S. M. Hersfeld [Herzfeld] has applied to WS for financial assistance in order to retrieve some books and apparatus from a carrier. He has previously been aided by CD, so WS seeks his advice.

Cannot precisely explain conditions of existence of any organism.

Discusses ethics of risking one’s life to save another.

Since CD supplied Herzfeld with money to retrieve his goods from the carrier, but he did not use it for that purpose, WS sees no way of helping him except to send him home as "a distressed Austrian subject".

Hopes CD got telegram about Convolvulus. Is measuring plants every four hours. Will go to Brittany by boat from Southampton on Monday night.

Writes of a Mrs Noel, who is annoyed with CD’s neglect of Erasmus Darwin’s brother, W[illiam] A[lvey] D[arwin I], [in Erasmus Darwin].

Thanks for AdeC’s Phytographie [1880]. CD finds in it a number of "philosophical" remarks new to him. The work would have been invaluable to him in dealing with puzzles when writing his cirripede monographs.

Describes his system of keeping notes on separate pieces of paper filed in several scores of large portfolios.

Has just sent MS of Movement in plants to the printer. Thinks he has suceeded in showing "that all the more important great classes of movements are due to the modification of a kind of movement common to all plants from their earliest youth".

Discusses GHD’s genealogical researches

and his health.

Wild cat gestation is twelve days longer than domestic cat, a fact not mentioned in Variation.

No summary available.