Thanks for the seeds and plants that he requested.

Discusses effects of water on movement of insectivorous plants.

Has just found that Pinguicula can digest albumen.

Asa Gray writes that Sarracenia secretes trail of fluid to attract insects [see 9455].

Did not know cabbage contained so much nitrogen.

Pinguicula more excited by seeds than Drosera. Asks for information about Pinguicula.

Asks name of weed.

Asks to borrow Utricularia plant.

Has found Pinguicula excited by bits of leaves; appears to digest leaves and seeds. Plant not only insectivorous but graminivorous. Asks WTT-D to identify seeds.

Thanks for letter and seeds.

Asks that Hooker return references about plants eating insects.

Discusses Pinguicula.

Suggests experiments to try [with Nepenthes]. Asks JDH to test whether cabbage seeds and peas exposed to the ferment germinate.

Describes leaf movements of Pinguicula and Drosera in capturing prey. Notes effects of ammonium carbonate on leaves.

Describes how Pinguicula captures insects.

Thanks for letter on Erica tetralix.

Identification of leaves digested by Pinguicula.

Must stop work on "bloom" and leaf movements if he is ever to get anything published on Drosera, etc.

Sends thanks for seeds. Encloses memorandum in case WTT-D wishes to communicate information to Royal Horticultural Society. Has not time to prepare article.

Discusses condition of plants borrowed from Kew.

Thanks JDH for his "quite admirable" address [Rep. BAAS 44 (1874) pt 2: 102–16]. Suggests revisions.

CD thinks he is "now on right track about Utricularia" after wasting several weeks "in fruitless trials and observations".

Mrs Barber’s paper is very curious and ought to be published.

Thanks GB for his "Report on [the recent progress and present state of] systematic botany" [Rep. BAAS (1874): 27–54] and for the way in which he refers to CD’s book.

Thanks WTT-D for his present of Sachs’s book [Textbook of botany (1875)].

Does not think sermon by E. B. Pusey [see 11763] is worth a reply. HNR may quote CD as saying that Pusey is "mistaken in imagining that I wrote the Origin with any relation whatever to Theology". Pusey’s attack will be powerless to retard belief in evolution.

Sends enclosure [a letter from Lady Lyell?]. He is choking with vanity.

Is going to send Willy to Mr La Touche in Salop; he brought up young Colenso and Frank Lyell. Some of his friends will think he is sending his son into a nest of young adders!

Sends seeds from R. L. Playfair in Algiers.

F. Delpino writes asking where M. A. Curtis has published physiological observations on Dionaea ["Enumeration of plants growing spontaneously around Wilmington, North Carolina", Boston J. Nat. Hist. 1 (1834–7): 82–140; see Insectivorous plants, p. 301 n.].

Talk with Duke of Argyll on CD’s and Wallace’s views on man.

Details of the JDH–Ayrton–Gladstone imbroglio.

Encloses letter and cheque [from John Scott].

Again in thick of Ayrton matter. Tyndall and Huxley have shown themselves equal to the occasion in grasp of subject, tenacity of purpose, independence, and good-will.

Encloses a letter [from Huxley about his invitation to lecture at Edinburgh]. Has done his best to dissuade Huxley from accepting the burden.

JDH’s depression in bereavement.

Asks for identification of a Cineraria which is self-sterile.

Fritz Müller’s letter on Cecropia [see 10384].