Thanks MTM for his excellent review [of Insectivorous plants]

and for his trouble about the gooseberry.

Thanks JF for his book.

At present has no observations he wishes made in India.

Thanks for sending Moritz Wagner’s letter and his essays [on "Der Naturprocess der Artbildung" in Das Ausland (1875)]. Will read them and write to Wagner when his health is better.

Declines to receive Scherzer at Down.

Comments on David Milne’s paper ["On the parallel roads of Lochaber" (1847), Trans. R. Soc. Edinburgh 16 (1849): 395–418]. CD still believes in marine origin. Rejects barrier of detritus at mouth of Glen Roy. If roads were formed by lake, it must have been ice-lake.

Comments on evidence of glaciers and icebergs in North Wales. Thinks pass caused by tidal channel, not river. Suggests that RC make altitude measurements at various points.

Thanks for sending article on inheritance.

CD has arranged with Murray for CR to have woodcuts at cost for proposed French translation [of Movement in plants].

Has sent £10 to Mme Barbier.

Thanks for note. CD had had misgivings about Chatin but had assumed he was trustworthy [see Movement in plants, p. 389].

Requests AW to ask Arthur Adams, who is going on a polar expedition to Lancaster Sound, to collect cirripedes.

Asks location of "Cape Rivers".

Cannot help JP [with bird-powered flying machine].

Introduces Capt. George Montague Wheeler of the US Engineers, who has charge of the government expedition west of the 100th meridian.

An enclosure for CD has arrived from the Academy of Sciences in Vienna: please can CD send a postal order for 4s.

Instructions to send parcel to Orpington Station, S.E.R.

Is delighted with JP’s article on vivisection ["Vivisection: its pains and its uses, No. 1", Nineteenth Century 10 (1881): 920–30]. CD is "boiling over with indignation on the subject".

Thanks VOK for a photograph and his New Year wishes.

Thanks for letter and promise to send pamphlet.

Requests receipt for payments to Society in 1858–9.

Is pleased GHKT goes a little way with him.

Has rectified in foreign editions of Origin his omission of an explanation of the failure of many forms to progress;

also has discussion of beauty in MS. Does GHKT really believe Diatomaceae, for instance, were created beautiful so that man, millions of generations later, should admire them through a microscope? CD attributes most of these structures to unknown laws of growth; useful structures are accounted for by natural selection.

Thanks CH for correction of blunder in Origin about hive-bees sucking clover: "a greater kindness than a new fact".

Hopes to be well enough on Friday to see JL.

Several of the family have had influenza.

Relates plan for an appendix to his Journal of researches which will include facts of species of birds’ being different in different islands of the Galápagos and also of the lizards and tortoises on the islands. Asks JSH whether he can supply parallels in the plant life.