Thanks GGS for calculation [to determine the chances of the same peculiarity recurring in a family, see Variation 2: 5]

He is certain he heard "expressly excluded" [of Origin from consideration in Royal Society award of Copley Medal]. Believes GGS may have inadvertently substituted "excluded" for "omitted". THH then submits his reasons for objecting to the passage as a whole even with the word "omitted".

THH never imagined that "we" referred to anyone but the [Royal] Society Council. Still objects to inclusion of the passage, since "an agreement to say nothing" [about the Origin] does not justify comment on it by one party to the agreement.

THH rejects GGS’s charges. Chides him with possibility that if he substituted "Falconer" for "Busk" he might have done it also for "excluded" and "omitted".

Wants to know how the colour of the eye of the peacock’s tail is produced, whether it depends upon colouring matter in the feathers or reflection, and whether any varying structural change will account for the series of colours surrounding it.

Thanks GGS for information on the peacock’s feathers. Asks whether the colour zones around the "eye" could result from varying the thickness of the film of colouring matter or whether it would require different kinds of colouring matter.

Sends GGS examples of feathers from an albino peacock and repeats his query about the zones of colour [see 5950].

CD is curious about the feathers but will wait to see whether H. C. Sorby’s paper appears.

The Society’s rejection of R. L. Tait’s paper on Nepenthes is a lesson which will last CD for his life. It is clear that he should not have sent it.