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.