Problems with Mr Robinson, who has suddenly departed for Ireland for a month. The parish urgently needs some respectable man to hold the living permanently.

Enthusiastic about JDH’s plan for a British Flora – "a grand idea to make a Flora a guide for knowledge already acquired & to be acquired". Gives examples of subjects.

No work exists on various biological points in plants.

Asks GHD to look in William Thomson’s book [W. Thomson and P. G. Tait, Treatise on natural philosophy, vol. 1 (1867)] to see how many million years ago Thomson says earth’s crust solidified. CD is troubled by "brevity of the world", because pre-Silurian creatures must have lived during endless ages "else my views wd be wrong, which is impossible – Q.E.D.".

Is working on new edition of Origin [5th (1869)].

Asks JDH’s assistance on a problem posed by Nägeli on morphological differences that are of no utility to plants and hence could not be selected. CD wants to show that these differences do not support the idea of progressive development as Nägeli suggests.

Owen pitches into CD and Lyell in third volume of Anatomy of vertebrates [1866–8].

JDH’s letter invaluable for an answer to Nägeli’s essay [Entstehung und Begriff der Naturhistorischen Art (1865)].

Has gone through his index to Gardeners’ Chronicle but finds little of use to JDH for his Flora.