Has read the notes on Rond [Round] Island which he owes to JDH. What an enigma its flora and fauna present, especially the problem of monocotyledons! Asks JDH’s opinion.

A new book on St Helena confirms CD’s observations.

Would like to see JDH become Sir J. H. Does not think JDH owes his position in science to his father.

Sends questions on Round Island – if JDH should write [to Henry Barkly?].

Has he read Federico Delpino on Marantaceae [Nuovo G. Bot. Ital. 1 (1869): 293–206]?

Concern about futures of Willy [Hooker] and Horace [Darwin].

Henrietta [Darwin] back from Cannes.

CD has been to Cambridge to visit Frank [Darwin]. Saw Sedgwick, who took him to the [Geological] Museum and utterly exhausted him. Humiliating to be "killed by a man of 86".

Saw Alfred Newton.

CD has been working away on man, to much greater length (as usual) than expected,

and on cross- and self-fertilisation.

Does JDH happen to have seeds of Canna warszewiczii matured in some hot country?

Sympathises with JDH on Dawson’s paper – amusing that Dawson hashes up E. D. Cope’s and L. Agassiz’s views.

Returns H. C. Watson’s letter.

CD must study JDH’s manner of arrangement of varieties and subspecies, etc.

Orders seeds, ripened in Algiers; imported seed would be of no use. [Forwarded to Algiers by JDH, see 7272.]

Asks whether JDH can send seeds of Hibiscus africanus and of Nolana prostrata raised at Kew.

Thanks JDH for offer of lilies.

The paper on orchids is by Hermann Müller [Verh. Naturhist. Ver. Preuss. Rheinlande & Westphalens 25 (1868): 1–62], on Platanthera and Epipactis.

Cites another work by P. Rohrbach [Über den Blüthenbau (1866)].

MS [of Descent] ready for printer.

Has read Bentham’s last Linnean Society [Presidential] Address [Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1870): lxxiv–xciv] with great interest.

Thinks well of Claparède’s criticism; worth publishing as an answer to Wallace. Bates thinks Wallace’s heterodox views have done mischief to the cause of evolution. Wallace thinks Claparède’s article very weak, CD concludes, because Claparède has arrived at an unpleasant judgment very much like Lyell’s about Bentham’s address.

CD would wager Lyell lately has said something about European Proteaceae.

Does not remember anyone before Wallace on Sumatra and Java.

CD does not think he has a chance against Brandt in French Academy election.

Has not heard of Curtis on Dionaea.

Duke of Argyll is clever, but it is a sin to speak of a real old Duke as a "little beggar".

"My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design."

On spontaneous generation and Bastian.

Discusses germination of charlock after a long interval.

Comments on JDH’s report of Liverpool meeting.

Huxley’s address.

Sir Roderick [Murchison]’s "apotheosis".

Tyndall’s lecture is "grand" except for egotistical beginning. Some Frenchmen have pitched into CD for using the "as if" reasoning, which Tyndall shows is justified.

Has just read George Rolleston’s address in Nature.

Anton Dohrn says German public have high opinion of Lyell.

Does not think so poorly of Nature as JDH does, by any means; fears Popular Science Review is rather ephemeral but more durable than Nature.

The case of the charlock.

No summary available.