Identifies Calanthe masuca.

Asa Gray would not quarrel with them – "snubbing from us may have done him more good than our sympathy".

If CD means the old Vaucher, he was considered a very accurate, acute, able observer.

Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.

In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".

Will hope to be able to send Vanilla flowers in a day or two.

How is CD after his tremendous effect on the placid Linneans? ["Sexual forms of Catasetum", Collected papers 2: 63–70; read 3 Apr 1862.]

Is it convenient for him and Willy to come to Down from Thursday to Sunday?

Discusses Leschenaultia, finds no stigmatic surface in the indusium.

Gives information on where to obtain paper for drying plants and where to obtain a microscope.

Has dissected Leschenaultia biloba flowers. Finds no stigmatic surface in the indusium. Describes what is the apparent stigma but has found no pollen-tubes to confirm it as the real one.

Household problems – stolen silver, maids. His house for some months has had reputation for being not a little disreputable.

On Cameroon plants.

Does not know Rhododendron boothii; is sending Rhododendron keysii, a remarkable form. Will send Melastomataceae anon.

Sends two flowers of Vanilla and two Melastomataceae.

Has worked on Cameroon list ["Mountain flowering plants and ferns of the Cameroons", in Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains (1863) 2: 270–7]

and Genera plantarum.

Oliver has written able paper on dimorphism for Natural History Review [n.s. 2 (1862): 235–43].

CD’s account of Viola is novel and interesting.

Has finished Cameroon mountain plants.

Jury work at exhibition.

Domestic problems – wife is ill, no cook, etc.

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.

M. J. Berkeley wrote London Review & Wkly J. Polit. article.

CD is "out of sight the best physiological observer and experimenter that Botany ever saw".

Laments how much he [JDH] missed when doing the Listera ["Functions and structure of the rostellum of Listera ovata", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 144 (1854): 259–64].

Illness of wife and father.

"More plants from Fernando Po and more European".

Will see to Masdevallia and Bonatea.

Domestic matters.

Lyell’s health.

CD’s eczema.

Hopes CD will solve the mystery of Melastoma.

JDH’s trip to Switzerland with his wife.

Has seen Oswald Heer’s fossils, including a leaf, apparently dicotyledonous, from the Lower Lias in Jura.

Value of insect and crustacean fossils for systematic determination.

JDH "impressed with identity of physical features and what wonderful analogy of biological [features] between Alps and Himalayas".

Observations on Welwitschia.

On microscopes.

Cannot remember any plants but Melastoma with different coloured polliniferous anthers.

Wife’s health better.

Visited Duke of Argyll.

Thanks CD for Cruciferae diagram; will ponder it.

Staggered by complexity of Welwitschia.

Asks his opinion of A. C. Ramsay’s glacial lake theory. Encloses Julius Haast’s communication on glacial phenomena.

Has sent two Impatiens flowers; curious to know what CD makes of the floral whorls and their vascular bundles.

Cassia is another genus that has different [coloured] anthers in same flower.

Continues to work on Welwitschia.

Feels as CD does about his work, which after a time seems flat and stale. He could never have done what CD did in his Orchids.

CD’s facts about Verbascum have horrible bearing on JDH’s practice of lumping species together.

Does CD want Masdevallia?

Sends addresses of persons in S. America who would send Melastomataceae seeds.

Has ordered Matthieu Bonafous on maize [Histoire naturelle du maïs (1836)].