Thanks for invitation [to stay with GR at Oxford], but his poor state of health requires him to stay in private lodgings.

CD’s plans are uncertain because of his daughter’s [Henrietta Darwin] fever.

If GR would kindly reserve rooms for CD near college, CD will write before the meeting [of British Association at Oxford] if he is prevented from coming.

Agrees with GR’s remarks on Asa Gray’s pamphlet.

New edition of Origin to appear immediately.

Fact of clubbed fingernails in cyanosis quite new to CD. Asks for information.

Thanks for explanation of cyanosis and clubbed nails.

Hopes GR will work out point about mucus tubes.

Index of Origin does not refer to variability of rudimentary organs mentioned at pp. 149, 168. Offers references to Rudolf Leuckart and to Franz von Leydig to support CD’s point.

The embryology of the vertebrate nervous system may be an exception to the law of inheritance at corresponding ages.

GR’s letter is a gold-mine.

Pleased to have Pierre Gratiolet’s comment on the embryology of greatly modified organs

and GR’s valuable cases of analogous variation.

Doubts craniologists, but recounts his father’s opinion that the shape of CD’s head was altered when he returned from the Beagle.

CD’s doctrines apply to man’s mental organisation, but the soul is a different matter. Cites Dean Henry Alford, M. J. Berkeley, and Prof. [J. F.?] Ferrier.

Asks CD to look at the "special phylogonies" on pp. 138 and 152 of his book [Forms of animal life (1870)]. His comments are based on reading Haeckel, who is highly speculative and quite wrong.

Applauds CD’s expression of dissent from J. S. Mill’s view of differences of mental powers of men and women [Descent 2: 326–9]. Sends some corrections.

Suggests alteration in Descent [1st ed. 7th thousand] in citing pagination of George Busk’s paper "The caves of Gibraltar" [Trans. Int. Congr. Prehist. Archaeol. 3 (1868): 106–67].

Sends copy of his "Address [to the department of anthropology", Rep. BAAS 45 (1875): 142–56].

Notes criticism of remark by Walter Bagehot dealing with extinction of barbarians [cited in Descent 1: 239].

Thanks for GR’s "Address" [see 10141].

Wishes he had not quoted Bagehot’s remark [in Descent 1: 239] about decrease in savage populations. Interest in subject.

Sends three of his anthropological papers.

CD understates his case when he says the mandibular wattle of the "Irish greyhound pig" has no analogue or homologue.

Thanks GR for his notes and essays [see 10581].

Similar appendages to those GR mentions [see 10581] appear on the necks of goats, but the idea of reversion to a common progenitor of goats and pigs "stumps" CD.

Has sent Balfour’s certificate on to Ray Lankester, and encloses a certificate for Moseley for CD to sign.

Calls attention to a paper by Emil Bessels on Eskimos, which he extracts [see 10737].

CD has cited GR for material that is not his in Variation, 2d ed., 1: 469, on transmission of mutilation.

Studying anatomy of the Irish pig.

Emil Bessels’ paper is in Archiv für Anthropologie 8 (1875): 107. He connects a band of poor Eskimos encountered at Smith’s Sound with glacial man.

Discusses the structure of the human cranium, in particular a find by Cocchi and observations by Canestrini.

Sends a copy of a letter from Herbert Blakeway of Illinois, which accompanied a pig’s head with wattles.

Discusses the Castle Martin breed of Bos, the history of which shows parallels with the Himalayan rabbits.