Sends notes of reports by E. A. Axon, George Ticknor, and Joseph Alley to Académie des Sciences on deaf mutes.

Thanks CD for offer of a copy of Earthworms.

"I should be a strange creature if I did not feel real pleasure in seeing you." Recalls GWN’s kindness and assistance over forty years.

BJS’s son has seen six Fuegians being exhibited in Berlin; BJS hopes that they might be bought from their master and returned to Tierra del Fuego.

Expresses his admiration for CD and his work.

Thanks FGMP for his sympathetic and very kind letter.

Gives case of a mollusc, Scyllaea, which mimics the Sargassum on which it lives.

Vegetable mould covering paving-stones in Oxfordshire lanes accumulated over 14 or 16 centuries.

Asks whether he is to give a gratuity of "cinquanta lire sterling" to the cook at 6 Queen Anne St.

Lists errata in Earthworms, which he is translating.

Case of Roman roads would have been worth investigating for Earthworms. [See 13531.]

Comments on CD’s Earthworms.

Discusses breeding habits of salmon; will the reliance on autumn-breeding fish to produce young lead to the decline of the number of spring- and summer-breeders in the rivers?

He would support a foreigner for professorship of botany as CD suggests. W. T. Thiselton-Dyer is proposing W. C. Williamson, whom HNM considers a disaster.

Thanks CD for copy of Earthworms.

Earthworms leave their burrows on hearing rifle volleys.

CD is glad birth [of Erasmus Darwin] is over and that Ida has borne it so well.

Financial paperwork; pleased at news of Horace and Ida Darwin’s baby, Erasmus.

Thanks for Earthworms [fifth thousand].

Sends two of his papers.

Thanks for copy of Origin with its flattering inscription.

Hopes some day to have leisure to do original research.

Remarks on the sinking of piles of cannonballs in old forts; presumably a consequence of earthworm activity.