Frank’s reasons for not accepting the Cambridge Examinership.

CD makes progress with barnacles. Describes "supplemental" males in detail. In working out metamorphosis, their crustacean homologies followed automatically.

CD opposes appending first describer’s name to specific name.

Hugh Falconer’s misbehaviour.

Waiting out rains at Brian Hodgson’s.

Will make botanical transverse section of Himalayas from plains to snow.

Arrangements to pass Sikkim Rajah’s territory.

No evidence of glacial or diluvial action in sub-Himalayan mountains. No evidence of detrital coal formation.

Hodgson’s replies to CD on introduced species and hybrids.

At work on Movement in plants.

Discusses John Ball’s, G. de Saporta’s, and his own theories of higher plant origin. Their rapid development remains an "abominable mystery".

Frank is working in Würzburg.

JDH criticises John Ball’s theory of origin of higher plants in Carboniferous highlands, where low carbon dioxide levels permitted survival.

Physical description of Sikkim mountains.

Travelling through Kinchin snows.

Transported boulders.

Continues prior letter of this date. Has received CD’s [1202]. Thanks CD for saving his correspondence.

Sent "a yarn about species" in October mail.

Some "puerile" JDH letters printed in Athenæum.

Requests CD extract anything valuable from his letters to CD and Lyell for Athenæum.

CD’s complemental males in barnacles wonderful.

Warns CD to drop his battle about perpetuity of names in species descriptions.

Searching for the right gardener.

JDH looking for a gardener for CD’s unusual needs.

Will get in touch with young gardener about terms of employment. It is good of Hooker to remember about heliotropism of insectivorous plants.

JDH requests specimens from Miss [Sophy] Wedgwood.

Wants some seeds to see how certain seedlings break through ground.

Wants seedling of Quercus rubra or Q. coccinea.

Congratulations on Erasmus Darwin; likes CD’s part better than Ernst Krause’s.

Received false notice of Asa Gray’s death.

Gray and JDH engaged in comparing widely separated but floristically similar regions.

Movement of cotton plant cotyledons.

Thanks JDH for his praise of Erasmus Darwin.

Delighted that JDH is thinking about geographical distribution, wishes he would go over the New Zealand flora again.

CD’s health and his father’s death have delayed his answer. Describes J. M. Gully’s water-cure.

JDH’s Galapagos papers [Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 20 (1851): 163–233] have excellent discussion of geographical distribution, but why no general treatment of affinities?

CD’s views on clay-slate laminae.

Turmoil in Royal Society between naturalists and physicists.

Miss Arabella Buckley’s letter on Wallace’s poor health and finances leads CD to seek JDH’s aid in getting a Government pension.

Argues against pension for Wallace because of his spiritualism; the underhanded way he brought about discussion of spiritualism at BAAS; his pocketing money from a bet on the sphericity of the earth; his lack of absolute poverty.

JDH convinces CD not to press for pension for Wallace.

Does not recommend that JDH publish extracts of his letters from India in the Athenæum.

CD criticises JDH’s observations on glacial deposits in Himalayas as insufficiently clear and detailed.

CD will live to finish barnacles and make a fool of himself over species.