Thanks an unidentifiable natural history society for electing him an honorary member.

Asks whether CD has any changes to make in a new German edition of Variation, which is to be published next year.

Thanks for offer of photograph.

Thanks CD for Expression.

Describes work on Die Kalkschwämme and its principal conclusions.

The application of biogenetic law.

Notes variability among calcareous sponges.

Gastrula-like "Gastraea" as ancestor of multicellular animals.

Posits homology between Hydra, Olynthus of calcareous sponges, and initial germ layers of higher animals.

Comments on Lubbock’s Prehistoric times [1865]

and on David Strauss’s Der alte und der neue Glaube [1872].

Thanks JT for his information and hopes to attend to it in any future edition.

Thanks AdeC for great pleasure his new book [Histoire des sciences (1873)] has given him. Comments on several of the essays.

When AdeC backs up Asa Gray in saying all instincts are congenital habits, CD must protest.

Asks several questions about butterflies of the Alps discussed on p. 322 [of Histoire].

Thinks Mr Salt has not understood about their wills and wants to clarify the matter when he has heard from CD.

Thanks HdeL-D for his photograph and encloses one of himself.

Has not strength nor time to alter and improve Variation.

First English edition of Expression now at 9000 copies.

Hopes to have a visit to discuss proportions to be left to the children under their wills; thinks 5/6 to the boys, 1/6 to the girls who "will have as much as is good for them".

Drosera filiformis captures only small insects [but see 8989].

Writes of her experiments with butterflies.

CD’s theory steadily gains ground in the U. S., despite Agassiz.

Sends CD the case of a man he knew who could reject food voluntarily, in substantiation of the passage in Expression [p. 259] in which CD says "the suspicion arises that our progenitors must formerly have had [this] power".

His thanks for the excellent photograph. [See 8668.]

He is no longer working on expression but appreciates the obliging offer.

Sends copy of last edition of Origin.

Respecting AH’s theory that acceleration of growth produces new characters, urges AH to examine decapods that do and do not pass through zoea stage. Believes there are no marked differences between them.

Will be in London for a week. Invites ARW to lunch.

In his admirable work on expression CD has left out influence of fifth pair of cerebral nerves on the portiodura and on physiognomy; sends reference to his paper on this subject ["On certain points in the physiology and pathology of the fifth pair of cerebral nerves", Med.-Chir. Trans. 52 (1869): 27–42].

Plans to see THH in London.

Report of yellow fever among Brazilian monkeys probably untrue; his correspondent is only a journalist.

Encloses letter about monkeys allegedly dying from yellow fever.

Describes a case of maternal instinct, in which a hen protected kittens.

Considers that the erection of hair and feathers in fear may serve a real defensive purpose, which he details.