Anxious to see Haast’s letter.

JDH’s views on Poles and Franco-Prussian conflict.

CD thanks AN for the note and remarks on the partridge’s leg. CD is too ill to write a note, but will send [for] the specimen as soon as he can. [See 4326.]

Returns a borrowed extract from the [Zoological?] Record.

Has read JS’s paper [MS of "Observations on the functions and structure of the reproductive organs in the Primulaceae", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 78–126] which has interested him greatly. Will communicate it to the Linnean Society if JS carries out a few corrections.

Would like to hear about his Verbascum and Passiflora experiments.

Moncure Conway wants to call on CD.

EAD has seen the extract from Mill’s [System of] Logic which Carpenter read when arguing CD should have the Copley. Has CD seen it?

CD has been seriously ill. Doubts he will be able to receive a visit.

Suggests a possible explanation of the supposed paucity of intermediate forms in fossil formations.

Pleased CD has had his [FH’s] orchid paper published [Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3d ser. 12 (1863): 169–74].

Extension of CD’s Primula heterostyly work.

Pleased with JDH’s account of his French tour.

Doctor Brinton, recommended by Busk, does not believe CD’s brain or heart affected. Feels he is going steadily downhill. If so, hopes his life will be short.

Sends Haast’s letter.

Mrs Darwin has written that CD is no better, and visitors have been forbidden.

CD’s Copley Medal. The numbers were ten to eight in CD’s favour but the Cambridge men mustered strongly for Sedgwick.

Asks whether he ought to write to CD while he is ill.

Wonders if he might use Haast’s notes on introduced animals for a notice he is preparing ["Note on the replacement of species in the colonies and elsewhere", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864): 123–7].

Preparation for his address with particular concern that JP approve the part relating to [Adam] Sedgwick. Urges JP to sit at dinner with him as a sign of approval of the award [of the Copley Medal].

Admits his own dismay regarding the efforts of the younger geologists and zoologists to obtain the Copley Medal for CD on the grounds of the Origin and his anxiety about the next year’s award.

Sends Haast’s report; JDH may use any and all of the details in the letter.

Asks identity of a reviewer of Lyell’s Antiquity of man [Edinburgh Rev. 118 (1863): 254–302].

Offers letters to Eliza Meteyard for her book [The life of Josiah Wedgwood (1865–6)].

CD has a Wedgwood vase of his father’s for JDH.

CD agrees about reversion.

The discovery of crossing in cryptogams is very interesting.

ED writes on behalf of her husband, who is ill, to thank FH for his letter

and to thank [L. C.] Treviranus for his paper on orchids.

CD wishes to know whether Orchis pyramidalis grows in FH’s neighbourhood. He needs a fresh specimen to compare the stigma with those grown locally.

Sends annual cheque for Down parish charities.

CD is too ill to write.

As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]