Thanks CD for his book [Orchids]. CD has opened a new field for observation and a new unexpected track to explore phenomena that had before appeared "irreconcilable with ordinary opinion and method shown in the organic world".

Yellow anthers of Heterocentron produce on the same plant thrice as many seeds as the crimson anthers. Crimson anther seeds produce dwarf plants, others rise high up. Monochaetum ensiferum facts are still more strange. Wants to investigate the case, and asks for a plant of the Melastomataceae just before flowering.

Has JDH a Rhododendron boothii from Bhutan with pistil bent the wrong way?

No summary available.

Thanks for Orchids.

"The big book [Variation] will no doubt go on again now."

JL is writing on Somme implements ["Evidence of antiquity of man", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 2 (1862): 244–69].

Thanks for Orchids.

Thanks for the book [Orchids].

Found thousands of Ophrys aranifera plants.

Sends drawings of masses of ice that fell in the neighborhood on the 7th. Would like drawings returned to deposit them in the museum. Hopes grandchildren reached Collingwood safely.

Sends CD a quotation from Plato which anticipates the Origin.

Has been enjoying CD’s paper on dimorphism in the Journal of the Linnean Society ["Two forms of Primula", Collected papers 2: 45–63]. He has found similar structures [see Forms of flowers, pp. 116, 122].