Has heard CD is about to be proposed again for the Académie Française, but Huxley is proposed at the same time and may succeed against CD "as being more orthodox!"

Cambridge University will offer CD an honorary degree.

Writes in detail about Cambridge offer of the honorary LL.D.

Loss of water from leaf surfaces; action of a still air layer.

Proposal for CD’s LL.D.

Writes again about arrangements for the honorary degree ceremony.

Has been working on tides, which he is almost certain have altered the obliquity of the ecliptic.

Will look for worm-castings in the cloisters,

and will send CD items from the Cambridge papers on the honorary degree.

Has hit on a possible fallacy in W. Thomson’s theory of secular cooling of the earth.

Asks CD if he would like to sign GHD’s Royal Society proposal for membership.

Has been reading Samuel Haughton on geological time ["Notes on physical geology, no. III", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 26 (1877): 534–46]. It is utter rubbish. Asks whether CD thinks GHD should write a critical note on the subject [see Nature 17 (1878): 509–10].

Recounts some figures relating deaf-mutism and consanguineous marriages.

GHD has failed to be elected to the Royal Society.

Is frustrated to see, from a paragraph in Nature [18 (1878): 242], that Charles Lagrange has got hold of the same sort of ideas as he has.

Erasmus is unwell.

Refers to Charles Lagrange, who is working on the same subject as GHD, but in a fundamentally different way.

Sends drawings of specimens [of Thalia] CD requested.

Recounts the experiments on Fechner’s law he has found in Helmholz; they are on the smallest perceptible differences of illumination. Describes how to test whether plants’ responses to lights are in accordance with it.

Encloses William Thomson’s report on GHD’s paper. Some of it was written in Rayleigh’s hand.

Asks CD if he would screw himself up to inviting A. Newton to Down.

Thanks CD [for his increased allowance?].

Writes of his tour [in Algeria].

Encloses some references [missing] to information on Dr Erasmus Darwin.

Sends CD an article on Dr Erasmus Darwin [from Monthly Magazine, see 12028].

Tells of a "discovery" he has made about taking observations of the sun. Does not know yet whether it is new.

Sends abstracts of more articles [on Dr Erasmus Darwin] from Monthly Magazine.

Sends results of his researches on the Darwin family at the Record Office.