JDH to be appointed Assistant Director at Kew.

On where to publish seed-salting paper. Floating problem perhaps more important than germination.

CD upset because salted seeds do not float.

CD’s seed paper in Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 255–8];

CD attacks Forbes’s "Atlantis".

Considers solutions to floating problem. Decides to test Azores seeds.

Photographs and drawings of CD.

Plant movement experiments with Hedysarum gyrans.

Asks JDH not to send H. C. Watson’s paper on Azores plants [Hooker’s Lond. J. Bot. 2 (1843): 1–9, 125–31, 394–408; 3 (1844): 582–617; 6 (1847): 380–97].

CD cannot endure trying all the Azorean seeds.

Seeds: worried they will turn into another barnacle job.

Studies plants colonising abandoned field.

Experiment on plant sleep movements.

CD objects to "Atlantis" because no evidence; does not affect species theory.

Finds Forbes’s continental theories, migration, and double creation are all unsatisfactory explanations of geographical distribution of plants.

Is currently working on problems of sea transport of plant species.

European plants on Australian Alps only explicable by double creations.

Detailed response to JDH’s critique of sea transport and continental connection theories. JDH’s claim that low plants are widely distributed fits both theories.

Species theory does not touch origin of life.

Thanks for Hedysarum.

Pleasure in identifying field plants.

Has used borrowing rights at Linnean Society Library arranged for him by JDH.

Has named 35 species of grasses.

Seed-salting continues.

Australian Leguminosae problem: of 900 species not ten are common to southwest and southeast. No migration; hence either creation or variation.

Himalayan thistles: graded intermediates between large and small English species, "shakes species to their foundations". Similarity of CD’s and his views on species.

CD experiments: sowing seeds in fields; "breaking" seeds’ constitution with coloured light; plant hybridisation. Compiling works on hybridism.

Respect for W. B. Carpenter.

Note on "nectar secreting" to Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 258–9].

Has read a paper, presumably by JDH, using the Madeiran flora to argue against Forbes’s doctrine.

JDH asked how far CD will go in attributing common descent; he intends to show "the facts & arguments for & against the common descent of species of same genus; & then show how far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more & more widely different".

Parcels sent to Down by coach may get lost.

Praise for JDH’s Flora Indica [J. D. Hooker and T. Thomson (1855)] from CD and C. J. F. Bunbury.

CD and J. S. Henslow dining in London. JDH invited.

Morning with H. C. Watson; discussed problems of inferences from buried seeds.

When JDH goes to Germany, will he ask seed men if their marvellous true breeding lines are the result of selection.

Sick of seed-salting.

Reading Candolle with great interest.

Seeds of two tropical island plants have floated for ten days.

Naudin’s theory, in J. Decaisne’s review of Flora Indica, of subspecies descended from a single stock only adds to the confusion. John Lindley and M. J. Berkeley cut down species.