After reading Descent, MTM sends report of a dog that woke its master at 7 a.m. on work days and 8 a.m. on Sunday.

Thanks correspondent for information about a dog.

Sends an article for insertion in Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Suggests sending a proof ‘as my hand-writing is so bad’.

Asks CD’s opinion of John Denny’s idea that males have prepotent transmission power in plants. A. J. F. Wegmann says the females are prepotent.

Seeks an interview with CD to discuss reorganisation of Gardeners’ Chronicle.

CD refuses an interview because of a severe headache, but wishes all success to the Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Thanks for the monoecious hop. It was the first monstrosity he ever observed.

Contemplates an article in Gardeners’ Chronicle on the horticultural bearing of CD’s fertilisation work.

Will publish note forwarded by CD on a male hop with apparently female flowers (Gardeners’ Chronicle, 8 August 1874, p. 174). 

Discusses flower structures of the hop.

Thanks correspondent for article on CD in Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Has told publisher to send a copy of Insectivorous plants.

Thanks MTM for his excellent review [of Insectivorous plants]

and for his trouble about the gooseberry.

He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]

In response to CD’s query, answers that he has frequently heard discussions at the Horticultural Society of a saccharine secretion from leaves of the lime and has no doubt it really does occur. [See Cross and self-fertilisation, p. 402.]

Discusses views of [Alexander James] Maule on potatoes.

Discusses graft-hybrids.

Reports on the flowering and growth of a branch of Echeveria stolonifera.

Thanks CD for his specimen of "self-containedness". Some of the bromeliads will flower under similar treatment, but MTM does not know whether they seed.

Sends the name of a plant: Cotyledon stolonifera.