Thanks for gift of Spirit of nature (1880).

JBI’s "barnacles" would have been extraordinary, but they are hard lichens.

Has revisited Cambridge.

Answers correspondent’s questions on his birth date and when he began work on origin of species.

CD is familiar with cases of prepotency that are so strong that a cross has no effect.

Informs HWB of arrangements for signing the memorial to W. E. Gladstone [for a civil pension for Wallace]. CD has got Duke of Argyll to write to Gladstone in favour of it.

Asks HWB to sign the memorial, possibly with official title, and then to pass it quickly to Hooker.

Alarm over Wallace’s memorial; asks HWB if he has received it and forwarded it to Hooker. Wanted to get it to Gladstone before Parliament met.

Gladstone has recommended yearly pension of £200 for Wallace.

Thanks for Evolutionist at large [1881]. Envies GA’s power of writing. Some statements are too bold, but several of the views are new to CD and seem "extremely probable".

CD interested in JBI’s observations of behaviour of bees. Finds his criticism about hexagonal cells made by queen wasps a good one. Cannot remember how he got out of the difficulty.

His book on worms to be published soon.

E. A. Darwin has died after short illness.

Wasps’ nest has arrived.

Gives his view of how queen wasp builds a hexagonal cell by straightening walls between several cells, which she builds at the same time.

Would like to cite the case of the celt in a new printing of Earthworms. Asks for details.

Thanks GA for his article ["The daisy’s pedigree", Cornhill Mag. 44 (1881): 168–81].

The evolutionary argument that petals are transformed stamens is "striking and apparently valid". Doubts petals are naturally yellow.

Wallace’s "generalization about much modified parts being splendidly coloured" is also dubious except as both are caused by sexual selection.

Asks HWB to sign and return F.R.S. certificate for Raphael Meldola; if he objects to signing, CD will not mention the fact. [Meldola elected F.R.S., June 1886.]