Comments on JDH’s Flora Antarctica. CD is delighted with it.

"I can never cease marvelling at the similarity of the Antarctic floras: it is wonderful."

Questions JDH on points raised by the work: absence of alpine flora on southern islands; comparison of climate and floras of Tasmania and New Zealand.

Is busy with shell work and cannot make it to Kew. Invites JDH to Down. Intends asking Edward Forbes and Hugh Falconer.

Can JDH come to Down on 6 December? If this is convenient, CD will ask Forbes, Falconer, and perhaps Waterhouse.

Delighted that JDH will come to visit him.

CD’s enjoyment of JDH’s visit and "all our raging discussions".

Would like to compare insects from Kerguelen Islands with those from Tierra del Fuego.

Disappointed with Webb and Berthelot.

Delighted to hear of more species from the Galapagos, surprised to hear W. Indian character of flora.

Will come to visit Kew if Claude Gay speaks English. Otherwise would prefer to wait until spring.

Will visit JDH in spring.

Will JDH ask Gay what birds, reptiles, or mammifers inhabit Juan Fernández [Island]?

Has JDH seen William Herbert’s paper ["Local habitation and wants of plants", J. Hortic. Soc. Lond. 1 (1846): 44–9]?

Thinks JDH’s explanation of polymorphism on volcanic islands is probably correct.

Proposes experimental test to see whether alpine form of a plant is inherited like a true variety.

Has had to make a Post Office order to JDH payable at Charing Cross instead of Kew.

Does Sir William [Hooker] know the Dean of Manchester’s London address?

Glad to hear of JDH’s botanical appointment [with Geological Survey].

Edward Forbes has written about his subsidence doctrine; CD objects to its hypothetical base.

Sends enclosure for JDH to read [letter from E. Forbes, 956]. "I cannot see my way about his post-miocene land."

Agrees with JDH about Forbes’s views.

Discusses A. Saint-Hilaire’s lectures and asks on what grounds botanists judge the relative "highness" of plants.

C. G. Ehrenberg wants specimen grasses from Ascension Island.

If JDH can send grasses CD will write to Ehrenberg enclosing them.

Interested in sterility of alpine plants in lowland and sterility of some plants in cultivation.

Curious to see Galapagos paper.

Is pleased JDH will attend to polymorphism and also with the botanical relation, as stated by JDH, between Africa and Java.

Would welcome any information on impregnation in the bud.

CD’s suggestions for improving a paragraph by JDH.

On distribution of certain species and their variation relative to a central, typical form.

CD brought some plants in spirits from Tierra del Fuego. Did JDH see them?

Problems of explaining formation of coalfields. Comments on recent work on coal formation.

Regrets he cannot visit JDH.

Has been talking with Lyell about coal, which he finds utterly perplexing.

Is delighted with the generalisations in latest numbers of Flora Antarctica.