Household problems: wife’s health, visitors to Kew.

Will go to sale of J. C. Ross’s effects looking for glacial and Kerguelen Land works not at British Museum.

Has been ill (violent skin inflammation).

Has done hardly anything except tend to his experiments. Repeating Primula work has verified former results and very curious facts on sterility of homomorphic seedlings.

Wonders who reviewed Orchids for London Review & Wkly J. Polit..

Asa Gray also infatuated with Orchids.

M. J. Berkeley wrote London Review & Wkly J. Polit. article.

CD is "out of sight the best physiological observer and experimenter that Botany ever saw".

Laments how much he [JDH] missed when doing the Listera ["Functions and structure of the rostellum of Listera ovata", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 144 (1854): 259–64].

Illness of wife and father.

"More plants from Fernando Po and more European".

Remembers JDH’s encouragement when he was "utterly weary of life".

Marvellous about European forms in Fernando Po.

C. V. Naudin will publish a book on hybridity ["Nouvelles recherches sur l’hybridité dans les végétaux", Nouv. Arch. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris 1 (1865): 25–176; part also in Ann. Sci. Nat. (Bot.) (1863)].

CD fears Naudin has underestimated distribution of pollen by insects.

Melastomatous plants are ready for his work on meaning of two sets of anthers.

Very curious about Masdevallia.

George [Darwin] observing orchids.

Adaptation of Herminium beats almost every other orchid.

Will see to Masdevallia and Bonatea.

Domestic matters.

Lyell’s health.

CD’s eczema.

Hopes CD will solve the mystery of Melastoma.

JDH’s trip to Switzerland with his wife.

Has seen Oswald Heer’s fossils, including a leaf, apparently dicotyledonous, from the Lower Lias in Jura.

Value of insect and crustacean fossils for systematic determination.

JDH "impressed with identity of physical features and what wonderful analogy of biological [features] between Alps and Himalayas".

Wife’s health improved by trip.

Heer’s collections convince JDH that Miocene vegetation was Himalayan, not American, as Heer supposed.

Zurich promises to be a good natural history school.

Review of Natural History Review in Parthenon [1 (1862): 373–5].

Illness of his son [Leonard]. Has done no work for weeks.

JDH’s hybrid orchids are interesting; CD is surprised many hybrids are not produced.

George [Darwin] caught a moth sucking Gymnadenia conopsea with a pollen-mass of Habenaria bifolia sticking to it.

Observations on Welwitschia.

Lythrum. Wants to examine fresh flowers of Lythraceae. Lythrum salicaria has interested him very much.

Microscopes.

Asks whether JDH can think of plants that have different coloured anthers or pollen in same flowers (as in Melastoma) or on same and in different plants as in Lythrum. Would be a safe guide to dimorphism.

Observation of action of pollen in Linum grandiflorum.

On microscopes.

Cannot remember any plants but Melastoma with different coloured polliniferous anthers.

Has passed the time by dissecting flowers of Cruciferae. Sends results, with diagrams, to JDH.

Wife’s health better.

Visited Duke of Argyll.

Thanks CD for Cruciferae diagram; will ponder it.

Staggered by complexity of Welwitschia.

Thanks for JDH’s letter [3725].

Has become interested in experimenting on Drosera.

Observations on the ovaria of Cruciferae.

Asks his opinion of A. C. Ramsay’s glacial lake theory. Encloses Julius Haast’s communication on glacial phenomena.

Thanks for Haast’s observations. Particularly glad to get geological evidence of glacial action (in Southern Hemisphere).

Thinks Ramsay’s theory to large extent true, but thinks that in a much disturbed country some lakes would have been formed in depressions.

Encloses MS on observations and experiments on Drosera. JDH’s opinion will help him decide whether to pursue subject in some future year.

Thanks for opinion on Drosera. After working for a time on a subject he is absolutely incapable of judging its value.

Has found a case in Lythrum of a necessary triple alliance between three hermaphrodites; the strangest case of propagation recorded among plants or animals.

Asks for L. thymifolia to see how a trimorphic form passes or graduates into dimorphic.

Questions JDH on Linum perenne.

Has found 33 hybrids in one field between Verbascum thapsus and V. lychnitis. The perfect series of varieties would have justified running the species together, but every one of the intermediate forms is sterile.

Has sent two Impatiens flowers; curious to know what CD makes of the floral whorls and their vascular bundles.

Cassia is another genus that has different [coloured] anthers in same flower.

Continues to work on Welwitschia.

Feels as CD does about his work, which after a time seems flat and stale. He could never have done what CD did in his Orchids.

CD’s facts about Verbascum have horrible bearing on JDH’s practice of lumping species together.

Thanks for Aldrovanda reference and Cassia.

Has wasted labour on Melastomataceae without getting a glimpse of the meaning of the parts.

Wants seeds, from their native land, of Heterocentron or Monochaetum.

Is beginning to change his view about rarity of natural hybrids.