Thanks for JDH’s description of CD’s work in Nature.

Anthony Rich to bequeath his property (over £1100 a year) to CD.

Congratulates CD on the Anthony Rich bequest.

Sad but relieved to retire as President of the Royal Society.

Describes battle with Treasury over use of an empty house at Kew.

Waiting for frost to go so experiments can start again.

Urges Frank to reconsider his refusal of Cambridge Examinership.

Frank’s reasons for not accepting the Cambridge Examinership.

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.

Searching for the right gardener.

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

JDH requests specimens from Miss [Sophy] Wedgwood.

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.

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 give much for botanical results of Round Island, but the zoology is wonderful.

Lyell’s new book [The student’s elements of geology (1870)]. Urges Lyell to make it Elementary principles.

Grove is disgusted with CD for being disquieted by William Thomson: "Take another dose of Huxley’s penultimate address to Geol. Soc." [Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 25 (1869): 28–53].

Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.

A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.

Would like to see JDH become Sir J. H. Does not think JDH owes his position in science to his father.

Sends questions on Round Island – if JDH should write [to Henry Barkly?].

Has he read Federico Delpino on Marantaceae [Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 1 (1869): 293–206]?

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.]

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.

Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.

CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.