Sends anecdotes and drawings of pigeons for Royal Institution lecture. Offers parts on hybridisation and pigeons from his MS (if THH has patience to read them).

Has heard George Busk is converted.

Will bring materials for Royal Institution lecture [when he comes to London].

Plans to bring out separate detailed volumes [on his theory], starting with domestic variation.

Henry Holland and others have attacked his reasoning from analogy to one primordial created form – by which CD means only that we know nothing of how life originated. The reasoning seems probable to him, so he has kept it in.

Delighted with Times review [26 Dec 1859]. Puzzled by author, suspects THH, but publication in Times makes it unlikely. Sorry for Owen.

Offers to send Ascidia specimens of Beagle voyage. Describes some of them.

Hopes THH will review his book [Living Cirripedia, vol. 1] which has been published for a year with no notice taken of it except briefly by Dana.

Discusses Limulus-like larva. "I have become a man of one idea.– cirripedes morning & night."

Responds to THH’s questioning of his observations on cirripede anatomy with extensive discussion of what he observed. Admits his elementary knowledge of microscopical structures but seriously doubts he has erred. Cement glands, ovarian tubes, etc.

THH’s catalogue [THH and R. Etheridge, A catalogue of the collection of fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology (1865), part published in 1857] best résumé he has seen of science of natural history. On classification he is not quite sure that he wholly goes along with THH. Encloses a few criticisms of THH’s preface.[enclosure survives as copy only].