CD has read the two reports on culture of poppies with interest and has planted seeds.

Suggests an experiment for evidence on whether plants, thought merely varieties, are like species and fail to intercross, despite insect pollination.

Read EG’s article ["Some disputed points in music", Fortn. Rev. n.s. 20 (1876): 106–30]. Diversity of musical taste in man indicates that it is acquired during individuals’ lives. The origin of the "sense of sublimity".

Thanks for copy of Claus’s book, Untersuchungen zur Erforschung der genealogischen Grundlage des Crustaceen-Systems: ein Beitrag zur Descendenzlehre (Studies on the investigation of the genealogical foundation of the Crustacea: a contribution to the theory of descent; Claus 1876).

All rejoice that J. C. Adams thinks well of GHD’s work and will present his paper to the Royal Society.

Gives news of his other sons.

Acknowledges receipt of publications of the Académie royale de Belgique.

Asks FD to write on his behalf and say that he is unwilling to join a deputation [on vivisection] and that he believes in the need to protect physiology as well as lower animals.

Would like to cite WO’s case of bees perforating white but not blue monkshood (Aconitum napellus) in his next book [Cross and self-fertilisation, pp. 427–8]. Believes it is probably sterile if insects are excluded.

CD refuses to send AMB a copy of one of his works. "I did think your request unreasonable, as I have to give from 50 to 100 copies of all my books to those who aid me.––"