Thanks for offprints [of "Sketch of an infant", Collected papers 2: 191–200]. Several Germans have asked permission to translate it.

Thanks CD for permission to print ["Sketch of an infant"] in Kosmos.

Discusses children’s ability to distinguish colours.

Describes disagreements among German supporters of CD. Discusses reaction of German protestants to Darwinism.

Is forwarding several plants requested by CD.

Has sent Mimosa. The horticultural and physiological Mimosa is M. albida, which has a western distribution, rather than M. sensitiva as it is commonly called in error.

Queries about cauliflowers.

Writes as a trustee of Down Friendly Society about withdrawing some funds.

Thanks CD for Forms of flowers.

Further objections to "voluntary" sexual selection. Believes that he can explain all the phenomena of sexual ornaments and colours by laws of development aided by simple natural selection.

Excited by Thomas Belt’s "oceanic glacier river-damming" hypothesis. The last paper, "Glacial period in the Southern Hemisphere" in the Quarterly Journal of Science is particularly fine.

Reports a fossil fungus, complete with fossil zoospores, within the vascular bundles of a Lepidodendron from the Coal Measures. The genus is Pythium and it appears no different from living species.

Asks for details on CD’s Descent references to female infanticide.

JFM’s work on the laws of incest finds strong evidence for man’s relation to animals.

List of plants sent.

Is acquiring some "maritime and glaucous" plants for CD.

Comments on paper by Francis Darwin ["Glandular hairs of the common teasel", Q. J. Microsc. Sci. 17 (1877): 169–74, 245–72].

Having read CD’s article in Mind ["Biographical sketch of an infant", Collected papers 2: 191–200], AHS questions CD about the child’s first attempts at speech, hoping to throw light on the origin of language.

Has examined some sea-kale and iris leaves sent by CD and does not think the scars are caused by fungus but rather through the action of insects. Feels "bloom" may protect leaves from such insect attack.

Comments on Forms of flowers.

Describes his work on fossil plants collected in the Arctic.

Notes work on Ginkgo.

Writes as a trustee of the Down Friendly Society to ask whether the Bank will act as their agent in withdrawing funds from the National Debt Office.

Thanks CD for statement about children’s speech. Asks permission to quote him in his forthcoming book.

Makes suggestions regarding statement on potato experiments to be published in Daily News.

Sees abortion as a refinement of infanticide; all such practices originate in female infanticide. Herbert Spencer’s over-speculation.

Thanks for Forms of flowers.

In his Monographiae phanerogamarum [vol. 1 (1878)] he discusses transitional forms of dioecism in three genera of Smilax.

Criticises CD’s use of the words "purpose" and "end", but acknowledges that in English they can mean both cause and effect.