Has been ill with pleurisy.

Sends more corrections and additions for American edition of Origin.

CD’s list of fifteen converts. His opinions on opponents and supporters.

Orders J. B. Jukes’s Student’s manual of geology [1857] and Macmillan’s Magazine (Dec 1859).

Discusses the direction of WED’s studies.

Tells of the response to the Origin and the impact that it has made in England and abroad.

Gardeners’ Chronicle has reprinted THH’s Times review.

W. H. Harvey made weak attack on Origin [Gard. Chron. (1860): 145–6], to which Hooker made admirable rejoinder [Gard. Chron. (1860): 170–1].

Thanks for a shell of an edible mollusc and also specimens of blind cave animals, which he will present in FW’s name to the British Museum.

Responds to JL’s comments on effect of natural selection on grouse or reindeer.

Asks if dirt adheres to feet of water-birds.

Reports on the snakes he collected in the Galapagos.

Orders first part of vol. 3 of Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire naturelle générale des règnes organiques [3 vols. (1854–62)].

Will be glad to have SPW’s criticisms of Origin.

Discusses his use of terms, "typical" and "specialisation".

Emphasises large body of facts explained by his theory of species.

Further additions and corrections for American Origin.

Views of Owen, G. H. K. Thwaites, and W. H. Harvey on CD’s theories.

Lyell and CD would urge JDH to make his essays into a book, but see he has embarked on a huge project with G. Bentham [Genera plantarum, 3 vols. (1862–83)].

Discusses the intellectual development of the ancient Greeks as an objection to evolution and gives his reply.

Asks if JP can send criticism of Origin.

JDH coming to Down. Huxley will be invited.

Recommends papers on Styrian Cave insects and American cave animals.

Invites THH to join Hooker at Down on 5 April.

Thanks HGB [for his Morphologische Studien (1858)].

Pleased at quickness of translation.

Is glad to read Greg’s remarks on Origin. Discusses MS Greg has sent for review on proportion of sexes at birth.

Is pleased GHKT goes a little way with him.

Has rectified in foreign editions of Origin his omission of an explanation of the failure of many forms to progress;

also has discussion of beauty in MS. Does GHKT really believe Diatomaceae, for instance, were created beautiful so that man, millions of generations later, should admire them through a microscope? CD attributes most of these structures to unknown laws of growth; useful structures are accounted for by natural selection.