Thanks AG for his kind note and returns his good wishes.

Anxious that AG should consider a memorial [for A. R. Wallace]. Makes arrangements to avoid delay.

Sends memorial [for A. R. Wallace] for AG to sign. Asks whether AG will forward it to Owen; CD cannot send it as he has not spoken to him for 20 years.

Asks how he can obtain a Museum post for his late brother’s butler, F. W. Surman.

Reports on the snakes he collected in the Galapagos.

Sends his photograph.

Asks for any information of well-marked sexual differences in snakes, batrachians, or lizards. The rattlesnakes at the Zoological Garden differ considerably in colour.

Asks AG for details of variation in patterning of the banded snake.

Is "astonished & deeply grieved" at loss [of AG’s wife].

Thanks AG for full answers to queries.

Delighted Mr Ford will undertake drawings [for Descent]; comments on some illustrations he would like.

Delighted with proofs of illustrations [for Descent]. Hopes AG is pleased with them, as they illustrate facts given on his authority.

Invites AG to Down for a weekend with A. Newton, R. Swinhoe, and Hooker.

Expresses his "unbounded admiration" for Mr Ford’s woodcuts [for Descent]. Thanks AG for his kindness.

Thanks for answer to questions.

Has analogous questions on reptiles that he will send to AG. The subject interests him, but CD must try not to fall into his common error of "being too speculative".

Asks AG to identify the species of Triton Mr Ford has drawn.

AG’s help has turned CD’s chapter on fishes and reptiles from "much the worst" into "one of the best" [in Descent].

Invites AG to stay at Down. Winwood Reade and, he hopes, Hooker and Robert Swinhoe will be there.

Sends some questions [missing].

Bad health has prevented him from working for six weeks.

Thanks AG for answer about Galaxias.

Asks him to mention questions about the ears of Mus to other naturalists.

Will send another copy of Chauncey Wright’s pamphlet [Darwinism (1871)].

AG has proved Ceratodus to be a "wonderfully interesting creature" ["Descripton of Ceratodus", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 161 (1871): 511–72].

Is the horned toad of Oregon a batrachian or a lizard?

Hopes AG will be promoted in the British Museum.

Rejoices at AG’s appointment [as Assistant Keeper at the British Museum].

Thanks AG for Popular Science Review containing his article [on Ceratodus, 11 (1872): 257–66]. CD had already read it with great interest.