Suggests collecting seeds at different heights from British Columbia.

Describes experiment on seeds from short anthers.

C. V. Naudin writes he has discovered cause of hybrid sterility.

Agreement to cancel the bond of D. T. Ansted, dated 19 April 1855. Prof. Ansted is arranging to pay CD what he can.

Asa Gray on democracy of plants.

Requests plants for new hothouse. Transferring plants to Down in winter.

Tells JS Acropera capsule should be left to grow.

JS was correct on "bud-variation" in fern frond.

Does not believe Primula structure necessarily related to dioecism, but the difference in fertility of the two forms forced him to admit the possibility.

Thanks for letter and pamphlet.

His approbation of Origin is extremely gratifying, especially since Origin produced no effect whatever in France.

Thanks JS for the very large Acropera capsule. CD has perhaps made a blunder about the sex of Acropera.

JS was right that successive homomorphic generations of Primula breed true.

Plants, safely arrived from Kew, fill new greenhouse.

Glad RF approves of book [Origin].

Impossible in many cases to conjecture how structures acquired.

Comments on degeneration of civilised man.

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man and of Owen’s comment on it.

Disappointed Lyell has not spoken out on species and on man.

Pleasure of new hothouse and the plants JDH supplied for it.

Ill health.

At work on Variation.

Reading JDH on Welwitschia.

Letter from Lyell defends his position on species.

Anger at Owen.

John Lubbock’s lectures.

Thanks for information [on regeneration quotation].

Answers JS’s criticism of natural selection, which he doubts JS understands. CD does not believe in an "innate selective principle".

To understand "utility" JS should read CD on correlation.

Origin of maize: no longer thinks husked form was wild because of Asa Gray’s evidence on its variability.

Has information from Thomas Rivers on weeping habit in trees.

JS’s experiments on coloured primroses.

Encloses bibliographical note on Passiflora.

Lyell’s position on mutability.

Fertilisation of trees by bees.

Lyell’s Antiquity of man lacks originality.

Statements in Lyell provoke CD to determine exact publication date of Origin and JDH’s introductory essay [to Flora Tasmaniae].

CD now believes in repeated periods of global cooling and migration.

Having trouble understanding laws of phyllotaxy in order to grasp Hugh Falconer’s objections.

L. C. Treviranus on Primula [see 3980] misses the "prettiness" of the adaptations.

John Scott says P. scotica is never dimorphic.

Observation on morphology of Primula ovarium sent for DO’s use.

Enthusiastic about JS’s work on Passiflora self-incompatibility.

CD quotes JS on rostellar pollen germination [in "Fertilisation of orchids", Collected papers 2: 77–8]. H. Crüger attributes it to ants’ carrying stigmatic secretion to pollen.

Homomorphic cowslip seedlings are, sadly, showing variation.

CD’s opinion of Lyell’s Antiquity of man.

Geographical distribution during and between glacial periods.

Latent characters and reversion.

Nectar secretion in Edwardsia. Could the stamen protect stigma?

Sends monstrous Primula with three pistils.

Had never heard of Robert Caspary, but what DO thinks is the placenta could be a whorl of pistils without stigmas.

CD regrets he used "creation" in Origin when he meant "appeared".

An Oken-like article in "Owenian style" in Athenæum.

Tropical plants continue to be troublesome.