Thanks CD for subscribing to the Cybele Hibernica.

Reports some observations made on the common buffaloes of India seen swimming and diving in 12ft of floodwater in order to crop the herbage beneath.

Sends copies of the Field containing all the pigeon articles [see 4785].

Luke Wells will undertake engravings for Variation.

University has at last provided room for a small zoological museum. The Philosophical Society might donate its collections to it, including CD’s fishes.

WBT’s eye is getting on very well.

Enclosure comments on a note to folio 1 [of CD’s MS on variation], WBT thinks his works not worth citing: his edition of the Poultry book was never completed and Profitable poultry is out of print.

He encloses a portrait and asks for one of CD.

He has sent mimetic paper to B. D. Walsh.

Mentions work at Royal Geographical Society on N. Pole business [plans for an Arctic expedition, eventually postponed until 1875–6].

It is Bos arni which dives for herbage and in so doing it also swallows many freshwater shrimps.

Sends camera outlines of pollen. Thinks the red longstyled ones are more sterile than the yellow.

Notes on the caste system of India; its influences on form and habit.

Observations for CD on oxlips, which she finds never grow near cowslips or primroses.

Will be proud to publish CD’s new work on domestic animals [Variation]. Will announce it as the complement of the Origin. Advises on woodcuts; does not wish to limit number; agrees to CD’s suggestions for artists.

Reforms at Kew.

X Club Dinner. H. B. Wilson and J. W. Colenso as guests.

Troubled by Lubbock’s going into Parliament – loss to science.

Has written to Busk.

Sending Botanische Zeitung.

Supports Atlantis hypothesis.

Comments on CD’s Lythrum paper [Collected papers 2: 106–31]

and on H. Crüger’s orchid paper [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 127–35].

May take position at Calcutta Botanic Garden.

Regrets he cannot be elected to Linnean Society.

Pleased Asa Gray has commented on JS’s paper.

MS [of CD’s pigeon chapter] arrived safely.

Pigeon and poultry engravings [for Variation].

W. J. Hooker is unwell.

Bentham wrote on Planchon ["The ancient and modern floras of Montpellier", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1865): 202–25],

T. Thomson on subspecies ["Species and subspecies", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1865): 226–42]

and Greene of York on ["The Linnean Society’s transactions", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1865): 189–202].

JDH did the leader in Gardeners’ Chronicle [(1865): 267–8, 291–2].

Delighted with CD’s calm opinion of Origin. Has same view of some of his own papers.

Pleased at CD’s opinion of Thomson’s article.

Non-reading is great fault of the best school of English scientific men.

Opposed to Lubbock’s going into Parliament.

W. J. Burchell’s collections are coming to Kew.

Wonders whether CD might contribute, if possible, an occasional letter to the Reader to help in their effort to establish the journal.

Sends CD the first volume of her Life of Josiah Wedgwood [2 vols. (1865–6)].

Has heard from Hooker that CD is very ill and asking for suggestion of a doctor to consult. Recommends A. B. Garrod as specialist in gouty complaints.

Sends Catalogue [of the collection of fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology (1865)], most of which was written in pre-Darwinian epoch [i.e., 1857].

Hears magnum opus [Variation] completely developed, though not yet born.