Declines, regretfully, to contribute to or to have his name appear on a new magazine.

Thanks for monstrous floral specimen, but it is a common one.

Asks for information about cases for stove-plants. [Answers recorded in another hand.]

Encloses a dialogue on species from a New Zealand newspaper [S. Butler’s First dialogue on evolution, from the Christchurch Press].

Discusses exchange of photographs with Édouard Claparède, "for whom I feel the highest respect".

Sends a photograph of himself.

Requests that correspondent take some action regarding the state of horses on his farm. Robert Ainslie of Tromer Lodge, Down, was fined in 1852 following CD’s complaints.

The apparent difference in arm lengths of compositors is due to a drooping shoulder. File-makers stand in a peculiar position and call one of their legs the hind leg.

Has not seen K. E. von Baer’s paper ["Über Papuas und Alfuren", Mem. Acad. Imp. Sci. St.-Pétersbourg (Sci. Nat.) 8 (1859): 269–346], but has read extract.

Knew of case of hairy and toothless family through John Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy from the Governor-General of India [2d ed. (1834)].

Working on causes of variability.

Gives information about obtaining the most recent (4th) edition of Origin.

Is glad to hear that his correspondent is interested in the subject.

CD must decline his correspondent’s kind offer [unspecified], but he is out of health and has passed the part about dogs in a work now at the printer’s [Variation].

Suggests, if further notice is to be taken of Variation, that the reviewer grapple with the subject of Pangenesis. Thanks him for his fair and friendly spirit.

Testimonial for James Archer, who leaves CD’s service after six months.

Gives his opinion of Rolla Charles Meadows Rouse, who is tutoring Horace Darwin in mathematics.

Has not heard that Horace has a chance of a minor scholarship.

"My experiment was intended solely to show that colour reappeared, and I choose kinds which breed [true] to colour, as is certainly the case with [sports] and those which I tried . . .

I have recorded an undoubted case of wild rock Pigeons caught in Scotland having bred in confinement …"

"When a man has laboured hard in science & has proved that he is capable of original research, he may [some]times indulge in speculation [&] the public will indulge him. But even in this case it is a common error to speculate too largely, for speculation is far easier than observation or experiments . . ."

[A quotation in CD’s hand, signed and dated, from the introduction to Orchids.] "I have never once expressed a wish for aid or for information, which has not been granted, as far as possible, in the most liberal spirit."

Thanks correspondent for sending curious facts about his cats.

Comments on a case of crossing distant plants of Habenaria

and on hermaphroditism in hybrid plants.

Thanks correspondent for sending extracts about the jackal.