Thanks CD for "Climbing plants" [see 4861].

Encloses sketch of a climbing French bean.

Tells of a row of non-climbing haricot beans that in good season put out slender climbing shoots.

He has the peach almond in fruit this season.

Will forward Robert Caspary’s paper to CD when it is published ["Sur les hybrides obtenus par la greffe", Bull. Congr. Int. Bot. & Hortic. Amsterdam (1865): 65–80].

MTM is to become editor of Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Studying moraines.

On Lubbock’s book [see 4860], and Lyell’s apology. Recapitulates whole affair.

W. E. H. Lecky [Rise of rationalism in Europe (1865)] and other reading.

Spencer’s observations are wrong on umbellifers, his reasoning partially right.

Natural History Review is all but defunct.

Wants to borrow money to buy stock in the bridge over the Itchen.

Did not intend to persuade CD against publishing Pangenesis. Will not take the responsibility, nor risk being made a horrible example 50 years hence.

JS has now taken post of Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta.

Wishes to vindicate himself of the charge that he pursued his experiments at Edinburgh to the detriment of his work.

Apologises for poor quality of his Verbascum paper, which was written from his notes during the passage to India [J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 36 (1865) pt 2: 145–74].

Is reading CD’s "Climbing plants".

The Civil War is ended; slavery is dead.