Asa Gray writes as if Civil War were a holy war.

J. E. Renan on Jesus [Vie de Jésus (1863)].

Literature on tendrils of Cucurbita is contradictory.

Tendril plants received.

Has just completed large crossing experiment with Lythrum.

Doubts Decaisne’s report of larkspur self-fertilisation.

Enthusiastically observes climbing plants. Needs to know how novel his observations are. Finds R. J. H. Dutrochet has made similar observations, so he has wasted some time. [See Climbing plants, p. 1 n.]

The almond-tree TR gave him produced no fruit, but the Chinese double peach has three. Asks for ripe almond fruits and any odd peaches, to compare the stones.

Asks about modification in fruit or foliage in any fruit-trees from being grafted,

and about seedlings of pears and wheat said to have been found in hedges and woods.

CD’s illness: he is vomiting "vegetable" cells.

Dutrochet has published the best of CD’s observations on tendrils [see Climbing plants, p. 1 n.].

Lyell has found Joshua Trimmer’s Arctic shells on Moel Tryfan.

Thanks for information about Pliocene mammal. Interested in relating process of formation to duration of the species. Oswald Heer’s view that species suddenly formed surely false.

Bad summer with much sickness. Going to Malvern [for water-cure] for a month.

Muddled over phyllotaxy and made out nothing.

[Roland] Trimen of the Cape of Good Hope sends evidence that a moth [Achaea chamaeleon] is capable of perforating the skin of a peach with its delicate proboscis. Have any readers observed moths or butterflies sucking any fruit of which the skin was not previously broken?

Admits, at last, that New Zealand must have been connected to some continent, but not Australia.

Climbing plants: asks for more plants.

Comments on JP’s work [Old Price’s remains (1863–4)].

Anglo-American relations. Progress of the Civil War.

Sends address.

Comments on BAAS meeting at Newcastle.

Condolences on death of JDH’s daughter.

Has a letter from Haast on the spreading of European plants.

Recommends Wyman’s short notice ["Report on Dr Jeffries Wyman’s experiment on the cause of contractility in vegetable tissues"] in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 3 (1852–7): 167.

Has read JS’s paper [MS of "Observations on the functions and structure of the reproductive organs in the Primulaceae", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 78–126] which has interested him greatly. Will communicate it to the Linnean Society if JS carries out a few corrections.

Would like to hear about his Verbascum and Passiflora experiments.

Pleased with JDH’s account of his French tour.

Doctor Brinton, recommended by Busk, does not believe CD’s brain or heart affected. Feels he is going steadily downhill. If so, hopes his life will be short.

Sends Haast’s letter.

Sends Haast’s report; JDH may use any and all of the details in the letter.

Asks identity of a reviewer of Lyell’s Antiquity of man [Edinburgh Rev. 118 (1863): 254–302].

CD has a Wedgwood vase of his father’s for JDH.

Tendril-bearing plants seem to CD "higher" organised with respect to adaptive sensibility than lower animals.

Wishes to encourage John Scott.

Death of JDH’s daughter makes CD cry over his own dead daughter Annie.

Sedgwick’s scientific merit.

On Wedgwood vases for JDH.

Willy Hooker’s scarlet fever.

Fertile flowers of violets, except Viola tricolor, require insect visits.