Wishes to borrow Weismann’s pamphlet on the Daphnidae [ "Ueber die Schmuckfarben der Daphnoiden", Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie 30 (Supp.)]. Is preparing an essay on "alternation of generations".

B. D. Jackson’s plan for new Steudel Nomenclator approved. JDH asks for CD’s cheque.

Sends CD some of the [American Social Science] Association’s publications; asks if they may enrol him as a corresponding member. They have printed CD’s letter to Mrs Talbot

and also his paper from Mind (1877) ["Biographical sketch of an infant"].

Discusses a lectureship at Aberdeen

and a recent visit to Down.

No summary available.

Potatoes [from Torbitt experiment] sent him for eating were very poor. Those for seed produced abundantly, but have not resisted disease better than other kinds that Payne [his gardener] has grown.

Sends article on dimorphism in Oxalis violacea [Am. Nat. 16 (1882): 13–19].

Encloses an extract (from the Bayswater Chronicle [missing]), which is part of an ongoing disagreement in which JFS is involved.

Has read some references to CD’s hypothesis on music and offers a MS by himself which deals with the subject.

Has ordered a tin of Somerset Mixture snuff for CD.

The Secretary to the First Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Works thanks CD for providing the funds for a new edition of Steudel’s Nomenclator [Index Kewensis].

Sends a translation of Aristotle’s De partibus animalium and imagines that if the old teleologist were alive CD would convince him of his errors.

Thanks WO for gift of his translation [Aristotle’s De partibus animalium]. Suspects the introduction would interest him more than the text "notwithstanding that he [Aristotle] was such a wonderful old fellow".

Trying to get some Darwinians into the Institut de France.

No summary available.

Politics at Kew led to a letter of thanks to CD from the First Commissioner for his gift.

Thanks for Earthworms.

Sends preferred address.

Has just read CD’s book on worms and is finding tower-like worm-casts, as CD described, in Alpes-Maritimes. Relates case of garden worms and moles.

CD sends cheque for £250 [see 13620].

Suggests that the tendency of the left arm to move with the right leg (and vice versa) during walking is a rudiment of quadrupedal locomotion and thus bears on the descent of man.

Asks GHD to send a copy of his "paper on the moon" [probably Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 171 (1880): 713–891] to V. O. Kovalevsky.