Will send letter to Nature about shell [attached to beetle]. Will use old name of Cyclas.

Recommends PG for chair of natural history.

Thanks HG for kind offer. CD is not well enough to examine the Utricularia, but will try to look at the Nitella.

Feels better. Grateful for THH’s kind letter. Wishes there were more automata like him.

GCW has correctly expressed CD’s views when he says he intentionally left the question of the origin of life uncanvassed as being altogether ultra vires in the present state of our knowledge. Thinks he may somewhere have said that principle of continuity renders it possible that the principle of life will be shown to be a part of, or consequence of, some general law.

Thinks Mr Loct[?] ought to have sent an addressed envelope.

Sends manuscript by Baron de Villa Franca on the apparent grafting of sugar canes.

"Earthworms are hermaphrodite, but two must unite & both produce eggs.–– I have seen hundreds coupled, early in the morning & occasionally during the night.––"

Requests snake poison for experiment.

Edmond Perrier of Paris would be pleased to receive earthworms collected in Venezuela.

CD fears that he exaggerated the importance of worms in forming ledges on hillsides [see Earthworms, p. 278 ff.].

Thanks HG for specimen of Mitella.

CD has tried effects of carbonate of ammonia on chlorophyll grains, but his observations are hardly trustworthy. He finds stooping over the microscope affects his heart.

Thanks for his Catalogue of the Chilean plants.

Encloses paper [by W. Van Dyck] for publication by the Zoological Society ["On Syrian street dogs", Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. (1882): 367–70].

Very anxious that WTVD’s essay [on Syrian street dogs, see 13710] should be published. Has sent it to Zoological Society with a few introductory remarks [see 13753].

Sends signature.

Sends his birth date.

Cannot contribute article to new journal [Field Naturalist and Scientific Student]. Writes only to communicate new facts.

Adds to his previous subscription for the Rolleston Memorial Fund.

Hopes HNM’s position at Oxford is satisfactory.

Requests seeds of Solanum rostratum.

Fritz Müller believes that in plants with anthers of different colours, bees collect from one set alone.

Suggests JET send copy of paper ["Flowers of Solanum rostratum and Cassia chamaecrista", Am. Nat. 16 (1882): 281–7] to Müller.

Remembers signing cards but they must have been lost in the post. Sends signature.