CD’s finding the nervous system of Dionaea is wonderful.

Coiling of tendrils of climbing plants.

Thanks CD for the new book [Expression].

Discusses works lent him by CD: Candolle, Kerner, Braun, Sachs, and CD’s own notes on relative positions of leaves. Plans paper on subject for Royal Society.

Just appointed medical inspector under local government board.

Sends anecdotes relating to Expression;

criticises CD’s use of Hensleigh Wedgwood’s views on language.

Complains about J. J. Moulinié’s translation of Descent.

Sends CD description of preparation of extract of belladonna.

If decapod does not pass through zoea stage, is this acceleration? If hypothetical adult retained zoea characters, would this be retardation? Believes obliteration of growth stages frequently due to natural selection. Most interesting points in AH’s letter deal with senile characters. CD attributes them to laws of growth not selection. Explains degraded characters as result of readaptation to simpler conditions. Believes no innate tendency to progressive development exists.

Hopes AH visits F. Hilgendorf’s famous deposit [at Steinheim]. A. Weismann [Einfluss der Isolierung (1872)] makes good use of Hilgendorf’s observations.

Thanks for copies of CD’s works.

Thanks for information about the Atropia.

First edition of Expression nearly exhausted. Asks CD to send corrections to the printer for another issue, Murray thinks, of 2000.

Comments on additional printing of Expression. Complains about poor quality of plates.

Discusses his theory of acceleration and retardation of development.

Charles Landseer would like to know whether dogs have orbicular muscles.

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

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].

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

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".

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].

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.