Printed memorandum giving reasons why there should be subsidy on a large scale of scientific research unencumbered with teaching.

Thanks AD for kind review of Expression. AD’s remarks on necessity of tracing development of functions are novel and valuable.

Comments on BTL’s book [The philosophy of evolution (1873)].

"You are a bold man to speak in favour of pangenesis."

Thanks for report on J. V. Carus’ lecture.

Glad to hear suspicion about J. H. Stirling groundless.

CD has not seen R. W. Emerson. In last two or three years has seen several Yankees. Saw a good deal of the Nortons [Charles Eliot and Susan Ridley Sedgwick].

Is obliged because of health to decline the invitation [see 8938] to make a voyage on the Admiral’s ship. "… I must rest contented with past memories …"

Is glad to hear LD’s translation [of Origin (1873–4)] progresses well.

Offers to send a photograph of himself.

Thanks for sending Experimental researches. He will read it as soon as he finishes a book in hand. [See 8965.]

Thanks AG for information [unspecified]; so trifling an error will not alter his opinion that AG is "the most accurate of men".

Thanks EWL for his book about hydropathy [Old medicine and new (1873)].

Wishes JSBS to look over an abstract of his Drosera experiments and to answer some questions on it.

Discusses role of insects in crossing varieties of Lathyrus odoratus and other species.

Comments on Hermann Müller [Die Befruchtung der Blumen (1873)],

and Anton Kerner ["Die Schutzmittel des Pollens", Ber. Naturwiss. Med. Ver. Innsbruck, 3 (1873): 100–68].

Admires FD’s work on anemophilous plants.

Sends FD £5 for the loan of his microscope.

Would welcome JSBS visit to discuss Drosera. Nitrogenous fluids can act as ferments only if they act merely by exciting molecular movement in adjoining molecules.

Glass and cotton excite movement and cause cell contents to change visibly. Huxley coming to see this phenomenon.

Studied effect of poisons 12 or 15 years ago to see whether the action was similar to that on nervous tissue.

Thanks for Dionaea.

George Bentham’s last Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1873): viii–xxix]. Admires it greatly.

CD’s recent work leads him to a different theory [from GB’s] on the separation of the sexes of plants.

Huxley has been at Down working with CD on Drosera – very helpful.

Thanks for the extract from the American paper.

Thanks for sending WHF’s lecture, ‘On palaeontological evidence of the modifications of animal forms’ (Flower 1873).