Asks LJ which British birds are polygamous. His query relates to the possession by the male of secondary sexual characters.

CD is also interested in the numerical proportion of the sexes in birds.

Asks about the use of the horns in male lamellicorn or coprophagous beetles.

Thanks LJ for his useful facts. Will "look to" the reference about the nightingale.

Doctors predict it will take years for CD’s constitution to recover.

Details regarding volume on Fish.

Sends notes on Diodon.

Must give up attending Geological Society evening meetings; knocks him up.

CD is pleased with LJ’s introduction [to Fish]. He rejoices that he persuaded LJ to undertake this work.

Glad to hear that LJ will repeat his notes to Gilbert White’s [Natural history of] Selborne [1843] in a separate work.

Critical of G. R. Gray’s attaching his own name to Furnarius cunicularius [in Birds, pp. 65–6]. Strickland’s nomenclature laws are needed to check egoism.

Is sending fish skins and bottles off to Cambridge Philosophical Society.

Fish numbers [of Zoology], now finished, give CD satisfaction when he doubts whether he ought to have applied for Government money.

Wishes Thomas Bell would finish his part [Reptiles].

CD has just corrected last page of index of Coral reefs.

Asks whether LJ can throw light on this subject: "What are the checks and what the periods of life by which the increase of any given species is limited?" CD has been driven to conclude that species are mutable; allied species are co-descendants from common stocks.

On checks to increase of species and the observations which led him to regard species as mutable in form. Would welcome "at some future time" LJ’s criticism of the "sketch" of his conclusions.

Discusses checks on growth of species population; use of term "mutation" in his species theory. His belief in species mutability.

Thanks LB for his essay on local biology.

CD with much care and discomfort is now able to work a few hours almost every day.

Looks forward to LJ’s volume [Observations in natural history (1846)].

Observations on what the world would call trifling points in natural history are always very interesting to him. Deplores their absence in foreign periodicals.

Is slaving away to finish S. American geology.

Congratulates CD on testimonials from the savants of Germany and the Netherlands [Nature 15 (1877): 356, 410–12] and generally on his contributions to biology.

Asks if and when CD’s "Variability of organic beings in a state of nature", as projected in 1868 [see Variation 1: 4] is to appear.

[Copy of some rough notes.] References about species. Variations within species.

Has read Origin and considers it one of the most valuable contributions to present-day natural history. Believes, however, that there are difficulties in the extensive generalisation that all taxonomic groups are related by descent. Does not understand how Genesis is to be read unless at least the human species was created independently of other animals. Cannot bring himself to the idea that man’s reasoning and moral sense could have been obtained from "irrational progenitors": the "Divine Image" is the unsurmountable distinction between man and brutes. [See 2644.]

Thanks CD for his contribution to the memoir of Henslow [L. Jenyns, Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow (1862)].

Sends proof-sheets of CD’s contribution to LJ’s Memoir of Henslow.

Pleased with CD’s opinion of the Henslow Memoir [L. Jenyns, Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow (1862)]

On polygamous birds and the pairing of birds. Late singing of males. [see Descent 2: 107.]

LJ has had a letter from R. T. Lowe in Madeira who thinks Scorpaena histrio, a species from Galapagos described in no. 1 [of Fish], is the same as the one in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. LJ does not think it is possible.