Asks for information about cases for stove-plants. [Answers recorded in another hand.]

Asks for authentic information on following questions: 1. Has the weight of the gooseberry variety London subsequently exceeded the 1845 record of 880 grains?

2. Is any record kept of the diameter of the largest pansies?

3. How early does any variety of Dahlia flower and do some varieties withstand frost better than others?

JS’s facts on Primula are new to CD.

In Linum CD has also found dimorphic and non-dimorphic species.

Plans to publish next autumn on successive homomorphic generations in Primula.

"Fluctuating forms" due to culture.

Urges JS to publish.

Lobelia functionally monoecious.

Where did JS publish on Clivia hybrids? Did he count parent and cross seeds, as Gärtner shows is necessary?

CD has done large experiments on artificially fertilised cowslips. They never resemble oxlips.

Would welcome detailed criticism of natural selection by a careful observer like JS. Most criticism worthless. Expects a great deal from Lyell’s reaction.

Suggests JS do orchid experiment to see if rostellum can be penetrated by pollen.

Apologises for the trouble he has caused over his enquiries about strawberries. Describes the problems he and Emma have had with Verbascum.

On THH’s Lectures to working men.

Work by Ferdinand J. Cohn on the contractile tissue of plants ["Über contractile Gewebe im Pflanzenreich" Abh. Schlesischen Ges. Vaterl. Cult. 1 (1861)] seems important. CD has come to the conclusion that there must be some substance in plants analogous to the supposed diffused nervous matter in lower animals.

[Part of P.S. missing from original.]

Cannot aid TWW with respect to bees from East Indies. Suggests he write to Edward Blyth.

Thanks him for getting query on variation in bees circulated in Germany.

Criticises style of JS’s fern paper [Edinburgh New Philos. J. 2d ser. 16 (1862): 209–27].

JS’s remark on "the two sexes counteracting variability in the product of the one" is new to CD.

Does the female [fern?] plant always produce female by parthenogenesis?

They seem to work on same subjects; CD has much material on Drosera.

Does not understand JS’s objections to natural selection.

Offers to suggest experiments.

Maintains his view on crossing. Thinks practical breeders would agree with him; doubts that variability and domestication are at all necessarily correlative.

Identical plants in different conditions a heavy argument against "direct action" [of physical conditions].

His 1000-pigeon case is altered if long-beaked are in least degree sterile with short-beaked.

His work on dimorphism inclines him to believe that sterility is at first a selected quality to keep incipient species distinct.

Case of easy modification of Lythrum pollen to favour or prevent crossing.

Monsters.

Has just finished chapter on variations of cultivated plants.

Edinburgh doctors have sent him Diploma of Medical Society.

CD sends thanks for Manual of European butterflies [1862].

Is pleased that WFK does not believe in immutability of species, "a doctrine perfectly adapted to stop philosophical research", and hopes he will publish further.

Notes WFK’s name is the same as the entomologist’s.

Thanks ACR for Catalogue; pleased some of his volcanic specimens have been included.

Will review T. F. Jamieson’s paper on Glen Roy. Knows the facts and knows too well that he [CD] is everlastingly smashed.

Thanks for paper and references on variations [missing].

Regrets HWB’s trouble about artists, etc., saying such trouble is a law of nature.

Asks whether HWB has heard of starving Indians who are forced to cook in different ways, and eat new things.

H. W. Bates’s paper; CD will review it. ["Mimetic butterflies" (1863), Collected papers 2: 87–92.]

Enthusiastic about Lectures IV and V [Lectures to working men (1863)].

Sends specific comments on fantail pigeon,

sterility of hybrids,

the geological section diagram.

JS should be proud of his paper ["Nature of the fern-spore", Edinburgh New. Philos. J. 2d ser. 16 (1862): 209–27].

CD has just found that JS’s observations on the confluence of two sexes causing variability were independently confirmed by Huxley.

CD has always suspected a fundamental difference between buds and ovules.

Asks for examples of "bud-variation" or "sports".

Asks JS to test germination of pollen on rostellum of Laelia.

Offers JS money for experimental supplies, e.g., netting, to keep insects out of flowers.

Encloses an outline of crossing experiments with Lythraceae, Primula, Pelargonium, and others, which he feels would be valuable.

Note on melastomids.

Thanks correspondent for sending him a strawberry hybrid.

Thanks for Begonia and Oxalis.

Keeps obstinate about crossing and could argue till doomsday, but will not bother JDH.

Sees that JDH has finished Welwitschia.

Thinks Huxley’s Working Men’s Lectures excellent.

Has finished Linum paper [Collected papers 2: 93–105],

and abstract of Bates’s paper for Natural History Review,

and has begun to arrange concluding chapters [for Variation]. Is paralysed on how to begin.

Family and local news.

Explains the terms of his £200 gift or loan to Miss Ludwig’s father.

Has heard from Asa Gray [see 3850] that JA is bringing live plants over for CD. Gives address for forwarding box to Down.

CD is collecting [for Variation] all accounts of what some call "sports" and what he calls "bud-variations". He asks whether very slight variations in fruit appear suddenly by buds, or whether only rather strongly marked varieties thus appear.