Will not be able to attend the proposed conference and feels no benefit will arise from it.

Worm-castings from [Roman] ruins at Brading contained bits of tiles or bricks. Obliged for WED’s trouble about Brading castings.

Movement in plants well received in Germany.

Asks GJA to sign memorial [petitioning Government for pension for Wallace].

Asks Flower to sign document [application for pension for Wallace].

John Tyndall has provided apparatus for experiment with light.

Frank [Darwin]’s paper a brilliant success [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 18: 406–19, 420–55. Read 16 Dec].

Has got a monkey for observation.

Does JT require part or all of £90 that CD holds from subscribers for his experiments?

Comments on papers by Francis Darwin.

Suggests methods for growing seedlings for experiments involving light.

Comments on GJR’s observations on monkey.

On Wallace’s pension and Frank’s F.R.S.

Gives permission to copy figures from Insectivorous plants for article in Encyclopaedia Britannica [by PG, 9th ed., vol. 13, pp. 134–40].

Discusses Prehistoric Europe; establishing the existence of interglacial periods; iceberg vs glacier transport of erratic boulders.

Thanks for his letter and magnificently illustrated book.

Regrets CD is unable to attend proposed conference [see 12918]. Would like his opinion on why it is not desirable.

The recipient is thanked for his "interesting letter".

CD sends an article received from [James Geikie?]. "You will see that it is important to know whether the laminae of slate have ever been bent up-hill."

Believes the conference will be of no value because individuals can only decide for themselves on the truths of science and religion.

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

Thanks for information about cats avoiding certain species of mice.

Will CD hold the £90 for JT? Asks him to read enclosed printed letter to W. E. Gladstone which he hopes will attract attention.

Has asked Hooker to sign the Wallace memorial and send it on to THH.

Read splendid lecture by THH on evolution in the Times ["On the application of the laws of evolution to the arrangement of the Vertebrata and more particularly of the Mammalia", Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. (1880): 649–62].

Thanks for the American pamphlet, which has caused him to write the enclosed extract on "bent and shattered edges of slaty laminae".

Recalls student days at Cambridge and microscope JMH gave him.

Discusses his children, health, and work.