On colour changes in rabbits. Suspects JBI’s is of impure origin.

Is correcting proof of Insectivorous plants.

News of the parish and neighbours.

CD pleased JBI is interested in his book [Cross and self-fertilisation].

He is pretty well and hard at work with Francis.

Sends forms to be signed so that the trustees of the Down Friendly Society may be properly registered.

CD has harangued the Down Friendly Club. Does not think it will dissolve.

CD’s opinion of a specimen sent by JBI from an unknown tree, and the Ross-shire tale about it.

CD disappointed in Pusey’s sermon against evolution [Un-science, not science, adverse to faith (1878), sermon read by H. P. Liddon at St Mary’s, Oxford, on 3 Nov 1878]. Does not agree that religion and science can be kept as distant as Pusey desires. Geology and biology must deal with history of earth and of man. But that is no reason for bitter hostility.

JBI’s "barnacles" would have been extraordinary, but they are hard lichens.

Has revisited Cambridge.

CD interested in JBI’s observations of behaviour of bees. Finds his criticism about hexagonal cells made by queen wasps a good one. Cannot remember how he got out of the difficulty.

His book on worms to be published soon.

E. A. Darwin has died after short illness.

Wasps’ nest has arrived.

Gives his view of how queen wasp builds a hexagonal cell by straightening walls between several cells, which she builds at the same time.