The Government has decided to hold a Royal Commission on vivisection with Lord Cardwell as chairman.

Insists that he, not Le Couteur, was the first to recognise and exploit variation within wheat varieties. Disturbed he was not acknowledged in Variation.

Discusses the price to be charged to Appleton’s for the plates of Insectivorous plants.

Replies to CD’s various questions and suggestions concerning publication plans for Insectivorous plants.

The insect-capturing Araujia has been forwarded from Portugal.

He discovers Apocynum is not in the same family, and he has misquoted [John Leonard Knapp’s Journal of a naturalist (1829)]; Apocynum captures by stamens, not stigma.

Sends seeds of Portuguese Drosera.

A set of electros of the woodcuts to Variation was sent to an Italian publisher in 1869, but no reply or payment has been made since then.

The Vivisection Bill was defeated because it was repudiated by one of its own fathers: J. S. Burdon Sanderson.

Has heard from Italian minister that the inhabitants of the Japanese island of Saghalien [Sakhalin], lately ceded to Russia, have their bodies covered with hair, like the gorilla, and are supposedly the remnant of the aboriginal population of the Japanese islands.

Regrets he cannot attend proposed meeting [on vivisection]. Hopes legislation may be passed limiting vivisection while not interfering with the progress of physiology.

CD believes Playfair’s bill would not restrict demonstrations under anaesthetic.