Asks if CD agrees with Carl Claus’s Grundzüge der Zoologie [3d ed. (1876)], in separating tunicates from molluscs.
H. N. Moseley says [in "Notes on plants collected and observed at the Admiralty Islands", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 15 (1877): 77] pigeons eject seeds in fit state for germination. He regards pigeons as providing most efficient means of transport in Malayan Archipelago.
CD’s collected notes on geographical distribution would make a good book.
Sends notes made in June 1867, on Rhamnus catharticus and R. lanceolatus. Encloses diagrams and measurements relating to pollen size in R. lanceolatus.
Data on good and bad pollen-grain yields of different species. Sends sketches of two male Rhamnus catharticus flowers [see Forms of flowers, p. 294].
Thanks for a copy of Insectivorous Plants.
At last, Expression is beginning to sell again.
Cooke has not yet decided on number of Variation [2d ed.] to print.
Provides CD with a method of obtaining a numerical ratio that expresses the superiority in heights of crossed plants to self-fertilised plants.
He has confuted Descent.
Enclosures announce his cures of potato blight, epilepsy, etc.
Has confirmed CD’s observations on Drosera.
Asks whether CD agrees that it is "no longer a fact" that the bladders of Utricularia vulgaris enable the plant to become lighter for fecundation and heavier when that act is accomplished. Plans to undertake further observations, under very high-powered microscopes, of mechanism of digestion.
Bug on Tilia, cited in Variation, was Cimex apterus.
Two photographs of T. W. Clarke, Jr, aged three, offered as examples of expression.
Sends copy of Arabische Korallen [1876].
Comments on reception of his paper on "Gastrula" [see 10012].
Has sent his paper on Echinoidea [see 10373] as a token of his veneration. He tried to address the confusion in knowledge about the different parts of the exoskeleton of the Echinodermata by tracing certain relations of homology not previously noticed. Much more work is required.
Reports on the tendency of the normally fruitless Convolvulus arvensis, to form fruit when roots are cut and plant is in danger of dying.
Reports an observation on his child’s behaviour;
claims to have captured two moths of different species in the act of copulating with each other.
Proposes an unorthodox theory of generation that explains sex determination and atavism.
[The black-balling of Edwin Ray Lankester by the Linnean Society] is a most scandalous shame. Will arrange for his own admission to fellowship of the Society.
Are plants that arise from vegetative propagation individuals or merely parts of the original parent plant?
He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]
Purchases cigarettes for CD.