Invites JJW to visit Down. Will try to get A. R. Wallace and H. W. Bates also.

Enjoyed JJW’s visit.

Interested in changes in plumage of pheasants.

Still at work on sexual selection in birds.

CD cannot remember whether correspondent believed the wing that Gallus bankiva opens and scrapes before the female, is ornamented. He fears it is not.

Comments on paper by JJW ["On insects and insectivorous birds", Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (1869): 21–6]. JJW’s verification of A. R. Wallace’s suggestion regarding inheritance is quite a discovery.

Asks for information about male birds migrating before females.

Thanks for information about bird migration.

Comments on canary hybridisation.

"My health got so bad I could do nothing at Down".

Gives information about migration of male and female birds.

CD thinks JJW’s account [in 7137] is significant for a theory of generation and should go to some scientific society; suggests additional data is needed. Quotes cases of subsequent progeny apparently affected by a previous impregnation. Perhaps not prudent to allude to "despised" Pangenesis, which CD fully believes will have its day.

Asks about birds erecting feathers when enraged or frightened. Interested in examples of expression in birds and animals.

Tells of the sheldrake dancing on tidal sands to make worms come out.

On birds erecting feathers.

Comments on production of buds in Cytisus.

Discusses case of rabbit-breeding which affected subsequent progeny of female.

Cannot accept JJW’s invitation to a party. His health has been worse than usual for some months – can see no one nor can he go anywhere.

Is preparing a cheap edition of the Origin [6th] and will answer Mivart’s objections.

CD is pleased JJW likes C. Wright’s "Darwinism" [see 7940]. Huxley will publish a splendid review of it in Contemporary Review [Nov 1871].

"Like you I have often wondered at the different food of the old and young, as with graminivorous birds feeding their young with insects."

Recommends forthcoming book by John Lubbock [Monograph of the Collembola and Thysanura (1873)].

Not surprised incipient disease in female would make her unattractive to male.

Sorry JJW’s official duties are so heavy.

Thanks for new case.

Not very well.

JJW is quite at liberty to use CD’s name as patron of cat show.

Has no doubt he will find JJW’s address interesting.

Thinks same spot for nesting might prove attractive to birds, though they had had no intercommunication.

August Weismann is interested in JJW’s experiments on birds and the caterpillars they eat.

Yellow flowers occurring on a purple Cytisus grafted onto a yellow stock.

Yellow and purple flowers occur on plant grafted with Cytisus purpureus, but only on separate racemes. Only yellow blooms seed.

Sends CD some of the Cytisus, which has produced yellow flowers on a purple graft.