Forwards some plant specimens to CD for his comments.

Sends his niece’s [Lucy Wedgwood] observations on worms, vouches for her accuracy, and suggests the piece be inserted in Gardeners’ Chronicle [see "Worms", Gard. Chron. (1868): 324].

Adds his thanks for a "very kind review" of his book [Variation, Gard. Chron. (1868): 124].

MTM did not write Gardeners’ Chronicle review of Variation [(1868): 184].

Encloses letters supporting a project [Botanical Congress?] to promote horticulture, and hopes CD will reconsider giving his support.

Thanks for Emanuel Bonavia’s letter on a Laburnum monster.

After examining a basket of piebald potatoes he does believe them to be a graft-hybrid as Friedrich Hildebrand might suggest.

Sends CD another piebald potato and a spray of holly, from Mr Fish, discussed in Gardeners’ Chronicle of 22 Jan [1869, p. 83].

Sends paper on the "Origin of genera".

J. Decaisne, in last week’s Gardeners’ Chronicle, on the apple, cannot mean there are no intermediates between Malus and Pyrus.

Robert Fenn exhibited potatoes at the Horticultural Society which showed general failure of graft-hybrids and provided an example of reversion to a wild Peruvian tuber resulting from cross-fertilisation.

After reading Descent, MTM sends report of a dog that woke its master at 7 a.m. on work days and 8 a.m. on Sunday.

Thanks correspondent for information about a dog.

Sends an article for insertion in Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Suggests sending a proof ‘as my hand-writing is so bad’.

Asks CD’s opinion of John Denny’s idea that males have prepotent transmission power in plants. A. J. F. Wegmann says the females are prepotent.

Seeks an interview with CD to discuss reorganisation of Gardeners’ Chronicle.

CD refuses an interview because of a severe headache, but wishes all success to the Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Thanks for the monoecious hop. It was the first monstrosity he ever observed.

Contemplates an article in Gardeners’ Chronicle on the horticultural bearing of CD’s fertilisation work.

Will publish note forwarded by CD on a male hop with apparently female flowers (Gardeners’ Chronicle, 8 August 1874, p. 174). 

Discusses flower structures of the hop.

Thanks correspondent for article on CD in Gardeners’ Chronicle.

Has told publisher to send a copy of Insectivorous plants.

Thanks MTM for his excellent review [of Insectivorous plants]

and for his trouble about the gooseberry.

He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]