"Be so good as to send me Unsere Zeit with Julius Frauenstädt’s article ["Darwin’s Auffassung des geistigen und sittlichen Lebens des Menschen" n.s. 8 (May 1872), 597–605]. I am much obliged for the information."

Will FD try to persuade A. D. Bartlett to show a live snake to a porcupine and observe whether the porcupine rattles the quills on its tail? [See 8333.]

Is sorry JDH cannot come to Down.

Hopes the House of Lords "pitch into the accursed fellow" [Ayrton].

Comments on drawings of hostile dog and affectionate dog.

Sends small gift of money.

Sends £35 as his subscription towards the building of a vicarage.

Agrees to contribute £10 towards a new road in the area of Beckenham, although he doubts whether the road will be of much use to him.

Comments on drawing of dog. Will get it engraved [see Expression, pp. 52, 53].

Will send MS of Expression to printers next week.

Thanks for his election to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Has signed the memorial by men of science with real pleasure. Fears it may be too severe. He told Lady Derby about JDH’s troubles. She said she would tell Lord Derby what he had said.

Would be impractical to have FCD check references to physiology in proofs [of Expression]. William Bowman has checked chapter on weeping.

Invites FCD to visit Down when he comes to England in July.

CD wants no more alterations than are necessary [to proofs of Expression]. Warns LD that "any alteration seems at first an improvement".

Overjoyed at the way the newspapers have taken up JDH’s case. The memorial has done great good this way, whatever the wretched Government does. It is enough to make one a Tory. JDH has done a service to all men of science by showing governments that they cannot be trampled on.

Discusses JD’s crossing experiments with Pelargonium; notes that his conclusions on male prepotence oppose those of Gärtner. Suggests that his observations on differences in fertility of certain varieties of Pelargonium crossed with certain other varieties be communicated to the Linnean Society.

Comments on Brace’s work [The dangerous classes of New York (1872)].

CD cannot improve style [of Expression] without great changes. "I am sick of the subject, and myself, and the world".

Discussion of the charge made for the plates [for Expression].

Thanks for new case.

Not very well.

Replies to C. R. Bree’s letter of 27 July [Nature 6 (1872): 260] contending that CD was wrong about early pedigree of man.

Defends the statement of CD’s view in Wallace’s review [Nature 6 (1872): 237–9] of Bree’s book [Exposition of fallacies … of Darwin (1872)].

CD hopes the Times abstract of minutes of Lords of the Treasury will make JDH’s position more comfortable.

The "wretched Lords" make CD indignant, but "nothing equals Owen’s conduct. – I used to be ashamed of hating him so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred & contempt to the last day of my life."

CD’s son Leonard of the Royal Engineers has applied to Sir George Biddell Airy to be an observer on the Venus Expedition. Leonard failed to mention his qualifications, which CD now relates with the request that HA draw them to his father’s attention.