Notes advertisement of Tito Vignoli, Fundamentalgesetz der Intelligenz im Thierreiche [1879].

Contributes to subscription for Grant Allen.

Regrets GJR and wife could not visit.

Encloses paper [not identified] by Thomas Meehan, a very inaccurate observer.

Thanks GJR for gift of game.

Contributes to [Naples] Zoological Station.

Asks to show GJR’s letter to George Darwin and other sons. A secret cannot be well kept.

Thanks GJR for his letter, regrets pressure of other work prevents his giving GJR’s remarks the attention they deserve. GJR makes clearer how an organ that has started to decrease will go on decreasing.

Comments on Spencer’s terms.

Speaks of visiting GJR at the Brown Institution.

Invites GJR to visit.

Thanks GJR for copy of his book [Christian prayer and general laws (1874)].

Discusses breeding and sterility.

Discusses experiments to test Pangenesis. Cites useful references.

Suggests GJR visit Kew gardens.

Urges GJR to visit Hooker at Kew.

Discourages grafting ears of rabbits. Suggests comb of fowl.

Describes accounts of potato grafting in a German journal.

Is sending plants from cut-leaved vine.

Invites GJR to visit.

"When in presence of my ladies do not talk about experiments on animals."

Describes experiments designed to produce graft-hybrid. Has achieved adhesion in great majority of experiments. Too early to tell what ultimate success will be.

Looks forward to reading CD’s statements about reflex action in Insectivorous plants.

Has prepared paper ["Physiology of the nervous system of Medusae", Rep. BAAS (1876): 158–63] in which he insists on occurrence of reflex action in absence of nerves. Would like to cite CD’s authority for occurrence of reflex action in plants.

Sends specimens of grafted potatoes. Describes grafting experiments designed to prove possibility of graft-hybrids, and thus, Pangenesis.

Sends successful graft-hybrid of red and white carrot.

CD should correct passage in Variation explaining deformation of sternum in fowls [Variation, 2d ed., 1: 287–8].

Chapter in Variation on Pangenesis is admirable.

Asks to borrow Ernst Haeckel’s Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Hydromedusen (1865) [and Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Siphonophoren (1869)].

Has not been neglecting Pangenesis for Medusae.

Thanks for copy of 2d ed. of Variation.

Anticipates reading Haeckel’s Perigenesis der Plastidule [1876].

Physiologists will think vivisection bill stringent.

Honorary memberships of Physiological Society created expressly to honour CD.

Working hard at jellyfish just now. Needs snake poison.