Two letters for WED at E. A. Darwin's. G. H. Darwin has been to dentist. Please collect and pay for GHD’s skates.
Describes her compassion for all his sufferings and writes of her wish that his gratitude could be offered to heaven as well as to herself. To her, the only relief is to try to believe that suffering and illness are from God’s hand "to help us to exalt our minds & to look forward with hope to a future state".
CD too ill to write.
He thanks Appleton for most beautiful work of natural history he has ever seen.
Glad to hear of the plant; CD instructs WED to make further observations. If it is a good case he will insist on WED’s sending a communication to the Linnean Society.
Encloses a four-page printed pamphlet on the cruelty of steel traps [see Collected papers 2: 83–4].
CD too unwell to read. JS should not send Primula paper MS until CD returns home.
JS’s MS [of Primula paper] arrived, but CD is too ill to read it.
CD has sent JS’s paper on orchid sterility to Botanische Zeitung and to Hooker.
Thanks to WDF’s directions, Anne’s tombstone has been found.
CD improved, but recovery is slow. She describes treatment.
Encloses paper she and CD have written [see 4294, which was wrongly addressed by ED and had not reached WDF].
Apologises that CD is too unwell to do any work, but he is most interested in the frequent occurrence of inherited variations in one locality. It would have been a pleasure to visit if his health had permitted.
CD’s health.
Family and local news.
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.]
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.
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.]
CD too ill to write.
Has evidence of long life of seed transported on a partridge’s foot.
Sends a squib by Samuel Butler on the Origin.
Thanks WDF for his letter [on steel traps].
Gives a better report of CD’s health since he gave up water-cure.
CD too unwell to answer JvH’s letter.
He was interested in the "marvellous ground parrot"
and the report on "naturalisation of animals in New Zealand".
Honoured by election to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury.
CD too ill to write.
Asks that a presentation copy of Origin be sent off.
He has authorised an Italian translation of Origin.
CD sends thanks for pamphlet.
He has been very unwell for three months; it will be long before he can apply himself to his usual pursuits.
CD would be pleased to sit for a bust by Thomas Woolner for JDH, but he is too ill now.
Emma’s views on slavery and the Civil War.