Congratulations on birth of daughter. CD used to dread birth-time.

Sexual selection has turned out to be a large subject.

Sends second lot of grass grown from locust dung pellets from Natal.

On Pour le Mérite; JDH has made him think more highly of it.

Messiah is the one thing he would like to hear again, but thinks his soul might be too dried up now to appreciate it. Sometimes hates science for making him "a withered leaf" for everything else.

Frank [Darwin] now doing botany seriously.

Thanks for name of grass.

Plans to go to Isle of Wight on 17 July.

Frank cannot come to Kew, as he will be reading this long vacation at Cambridge.

Delighted with Bentham’s Presidential Address [Linnean Society, 1868].