Discusses flora of Sandwich Isles. "There is nothing I shd enjoy so much as to visit California, but I am growing old & my health is weak".

Sends his "Charles Darwin, eine biographische Skizze" [Das Ausland 2 Apr 1870].

About the insertion of a column on marriage of cousins in the census form.

Thanks for HHV’s interest in the census [CD’s plan to add questions on consanguineous marriage to the census] on which CD hopes to persuade Sir J. Lubbock to speak.

Crossing experiments and self-sterility [in Eschscholzia].

Pangenesis.

Hermann Müller on insect adaptations for fertilisation of flowers.

CD working on book on man and sexual selection.

Good news: one little rabbit has a white forefoot.

In a fortnight will begin to arrange notes on expression. Asks for FCD’s conclusions about the contraction of eye muscles. Is interested in abstract of FCD’s experiments on "rate of travelling of the nervous powers".

Encloses part of letter from Fritz Müller on Passiflora, with seeds.

Is endeavouring to have included in next census a question as to whether the parents in each household are cousins.

Answers to CD’s queries on expression; observations on the facial expressions of the insane.

Comments on WP’s biographical article on CD. Asks him to thank O. F. Peschel for his present of the publication [Das Ausland 2 Apr 1870].

On death of his wife. Botany a solace.

Asks CD to review Wallace’s recent book of essays [Natural selection (1870)], particularly the new essay, which questions the applicability of natural selection to man.

Expresses sympathy [on death of FCD’s daughter].

Will be grateful for his paper and letter.

Announces CD’s election as Honorary Member of the Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou.

Responds to CD’s request for Canna seeds.

Studying dichogamy in Lotus. Describes mechanism that pumps pollen on to a visiting bee. Corrects Axell on Lotus.

Concern over Wallace’s book [Contributions to the theory of natural selection (1870)] and its apparent backsliding from Darwinian theory. HWB suggests that only CD is capable of criticising the book.

HWB hopes not too much was made over his few comments on man in M. F. Somerville’s book [Physical geography, revised ed. (1870)].

Willy is back from New Zealand. JDH perturbed by what to do with him.

J. W. Dawson’s Bakerian lecture for Royal Society is full of errors, and JDH is forced to recommend that it not be published. [An abstract of the lecture was published: "On the pre-Carboniferous floras of north-eastern America", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 18 (1869–70): 333–5.]

Intends to see Adam Sedgwick.

Arranges to meet AN.

Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].

Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.

CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".

Saw Alfred Newton.

CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,

and on cross- and self-fertilisation.

Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?

Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.

Behaviour of ants.