Otto Staudinger’s catalogue shows prices of female Lepidoptera to be higher than those of males.

Thanks for Variation.

CD must be happy about the tendency toward acceptance of his views, though it is regrettable that France is backward in this regard.

His own work goes slowly, but he still hopes his work on artificially produced monstrosities will help to answer the question of the origin of species.

Discusses apes and their relationships to each other. Writes particularly of the gibbon, its structure and well-developed legs giving it the ability to walk without using its hands.

Thanks CD for sending him copy of Variation.

Describes results of his brother’s [August Müller] experiments on effect of climate on maize.

Like ancestors of horses, young tapir is also striped.

Discusses how they might enquire about any provisions in the laws of partnership concerning lunacy.

CD thanks JJW for the mine of information his last "ten!" letters contain. Comments on sexual display of pheasants and colour preferences of pigeons.

Asks about hens that pair earliest in spring and about possible existence of unpaired birds.

Glad to hear about colours of Hylobates.

Cannot find any statement about which digits in man are most subject to syndactylism in Isidore Geoffroy [Saint-Hilaire]’s Histoire des anomalies [1832–7].

Asks questions concerned with seasonal and sexual changes in plumage of various bird species.

Does male woodpecker share in incubation?

MTM did not write Gardeners’ Chronicle review of Variation [(1868): 184].

Encloses letters supporting a project [Botanical Congress?] to promote horticulture, and hopes CD will reconsider giving his support.

George Rolleston’s son was born with a scar on his knee exactly where GR cut himself with a knife years before his marriage. Gives several other examples of inherited mutilation.

Discusses the human foot and its abnormalities; notes an example of syndactylism.

Gives his observations on sexual differences in coloration of terns and ostriches.

More on the "terrible problem" of natural selection and sterility. CD’s reasons for disagreeing with ARW. CD analyses and answers ARW in detail in defence of his conclusion that sterility cannot be increased through natural selection.

Sends Salmon Fisheries Report. Asks for CD’s opinion on his "close season" chapter.

Gives details of some points that occurred to him while reading Variation, including observations on horses, cattle, silkworms, and hereditary baldness and disease.

Has asked gentlemen who administer chloroform to make observations [on expression?] for CD.

Goes to N. Wales with Huxley.

Wishes to borrow Duke of Argyll’s Reign of law.

The BAAS Presidential Address [Rep. BAAS 38 (1868): lviii–lxxv] – his unhappiness about it; history of botany requires too much reading.

Smith will supply notes on Euryale.

Describes the action of facial muscles at the onset of crying as observed by Langstaff.

On dentition of moles. On double teeth [see Variation 2: 391].

Difference in size of male and female Crustacea.

Thanks for sending Variation.

Thanks Charles Langstaff for his observations relating to expression. Has requested observations on the platysma. Discusses the actions of other facial muscles, especially during crying. [Encloses 5828.]

If CD is not convinced by his notes on sterility, ARW has little doubt that he is wrong. In fact he was only half-convinced by his own arguments.

Modifies his first proposition [a species varies occasionally in two directions, but owing to free inter-crossing the variations never increase] and further discusses the subject.

Encloses Berthold Seemann’s notes on flora of the Hawaiian Islands. Presence of European alpine species in Hawaiian volcanoes is a "hard nut" for geographical distribution [but see ARW’s Island life (1880), p. 323].