Thanks GGS for calculation [to determine the chances of the same peculiarity recurring in a family, see Variation 2: 5]

Thanks for congratulations on Francis Darwin’s success in the tripos examinations at the university of Cambridge.

The king of Prussia has awarded him the order Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste.

Wants to know how the colour of the eye of the peacock’s tail is produced, whether it depends upon colouring matter in the feathers or reflection, and whether any varying structural change will account for the series of colours surrounding it.

On the play of colours in the peacock’s tail.

Thanks GGS for information on the peacock’s feathers. Asks whether the colour zones around the "eye" could result from varying the thickness of the film of colouring matter or whether it would require different kinds of colouring matter.

Sends GGS examples of feathers from an albino peacock and repeats his query about the zones of colour [see 5950].

Notifies CD that information he [GGS] gave before on colours of peacock’s feathers was wrong [see 5891 et seq.] and refers CD to H. C. Sorby, who has worked on the subject.

CD is curious about the feathers but will wait to see whether H. C. Sorby’s paper appears.

The Royal Society have not accepted R. L. Tait’s paper on insectivorous plants; it will be returned to CD, who submitted it.

The Society’s rejection of R. L. Tait’s paper on Nepenthes is a lesson which will last CD for his life. It is clear that he should not have sent it.

Gives a referee’s report on Samuel Haughton’s paper ["Notes on physical geology, no. IV", read 4 Apr 1878; published as "Physical geology", Nature 18 (1878): 266–8]. Believes his estimate of geological time is extremely wild. The conclusion that the interval of time separating the Miocene from the present is greater than that between the commencement of the Secondary period and the Miocene "seems almost monstrous". Recommends the paper not be published in the Proceedings.

Reports on Joseph Prestwich’s paper, "On the origin of the parallel roads of Lochaber" [read 1 May 1879]. Strongly recommends that the paper be published in Philosophical Transactions [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 170 (1880): 663–726].