Asks about expression of emotion among Negroes and American Indians in Nicaragua. Queries enclosed.

Thanks for plant names.

H. C. Watson a renegade about natural selection. Discusses HCW’s views.

F. Müller’s letter enclosed.

Friedrich Hildebrand’s experiments are splendid for Pangenesis [Die Geschlechter-Vertheilung bei den Pflanzen (1867)].

Supports relocating the Calcutta Botanic Garden to a site near the Himalayas.

CD was frustrated by the delay [in producing index for Variation], but was quite mollified by WSD’s note; is sorry the work turned out so badly for him.

Congratulations on GHD’s brilliant tripos success.

Grieved by Wollaston’s troubles. Offers contribution of £100. "How foolish men are in their investments."

Delight about George’s success.

Thanks for note about George Darwin’s gaining Second Wrangler.

Royal Society Council would feel bound to vote for Candolle, but privately would twenty times rather see Asa Gray elected.

Asks for title of Wollaston’s Cape Verde book [Coleoptera Hesperidum (1867)].

Supposes JDH has received his letter in answer to Gray.

Has been writing two long papers for Linnean Society [reprinted in Forms of flowers].

Suggests, if further notice is to be taken of Variation, that the reviewer grapple with the subject of Pangenesis. Thanks him for his fair and friendly spirit.

Comments on Wollaston’s troubles

and his book [Coleoptera Hesperidum (1867)].

Mohl’s claim to foreign membership in Royal Society very strong.

Has been in despair about Variation – not worth a fifth part of the labour it cost him.

Is reading F. A. W. Miquel’s Flora du Japon [Prolusio florae Japonicae (1866–7)]; wonders whether A. Murray could be correct in his view that an area of the sea prevented Asiatico-Japan flora colonising western N. America.

Comments on A. Murray’s book [Geographical distribution of mammals (1866)].

Has heard that Variation sold the whole edition of 1500 copies in a week [see 5844]. Has done him a world of good. Pall Mall Gazette has review which pleased him exceedingly [see 5874].

Wants to know how the colour of the eye of the peacock’s tail is produced, whether it depends upon colouring matter in the feathers or reflection, and whether any varying structural change will account for the series of colours surrounding it.

Review in Athenæum full of contempt. Is sure Owen wrote it [see 5931].

Gardeners’ Chronicle review [(1868): 184] favourable.

Fears Pangenesis is still-born. Cites Bates, Spencer, Lubbock, and Sir Henry Holland. Is sure Pangenesis will sometime reappear. Questions that are connected and answered by Pangenesis.

Offers to undertake publication of English translation of Fritz Müller’s Für Darwin. W. S. Dallas will translate it.

Will send English edition [of Variation] when available.

Mentions revisions in second issue concerning graft-hybrids.

Asks for Euryale seed for experiment.

Discusses fertility of crossed and self-fertilised plants.

Thanks for corrections of errors [in Variation].

Does not understand JDH on Pangenesis: on last page he appears to admit all that he regards as mere words on previous pages.

Wallace admires chapter on Pangenesis.

Pangenesis is a comfort. CD gains no idea from words like "potentiality" or "diffusing an influence"; atoms and cells give a distinct idea.

A. Newton told George that Berthold Seemann wrote the Athenæum review

and that Lewis [Lewes] did not write the Pall Mall Gazette review [see 5874].

Thanks GGS for information on the peacock’s feathers. Asks whether the colour zones around the "eye" could result from varying the thickness of the film of colouring matter or whether it would require different kinds of colouring matter.

Wishes he had known of the views of Hippocrates, which are almost identical to his Pangenesis hypothesis. CD advances it as provisional, but secretly expects some such view will have to be admitted.

States his intentions regarding Horace’s future education. CD thought he had made those intentions clear in an earlier letter.