Returns Asa Gray’s letter. Disappointed with Gray. Comments on America. British–American relations.

JDH has probably influenced Bates by pointing out applicability of CD’s views to his cases.

Is greatly puzzled by difference in effect of external conditions on individual animals and plants. Cannot conceive that climate could affect even such a single character as a hooked seed.

Does not think Huxley is right about "saltus".

Identifies Calanthe masuca.

Asa Gray would not quarrel with them – "snubbing from us may have done him more good than our sympathy".

If CD means the old Vaucher, he was considered a very accurate, acute, able observer.

Lighthearted thoughts on "the development of an Aristocracy" after a visit to Walcot Hall, Shropshire.

On CD’s point about the effect of changed conditions on the reproductive organs, JDH does not see why this is not "itself a variation, not necessarily induced by domestication, but accompanying some variety artificially selected".

Variations are centrifugal because the chances are a million to one that identity of form once lost will return.

In the human race, we find no reversion "that would lead us to confound a man with his ancestors".

Will hope to be able to send Vanilla flowers in a day or two.

How is CD after his tremendous effect on the placid Linneans? ["Sexual forms of Catasetum", Collected papers 2: 63–70; read 3 Apr 1862.]

Is it convenient for him and Willy to come to Down from Thursday to Sunday?

Household problems – stolen silver, maids. His house for some months has had reputation for being not a little disreputable.

On Cameroon plants.

Has dissected Leschenaultia biloba flowers. Finds no stigmatic surface in the indusium. Describes what is the apparent stigma but has found no pollen-tubes to confirm it as the real one.

Discusses Leschenaultia, finds no stigmatic surface in the indusium.

Gives information on where to obtain paper for drying plants and where to obtain a microscope.

Does not know Rhododendron boothii; is sending Rhododendron keysii, a remarkable form. Will send Melastomataceae anon.

Sends two flowers of Vanilla and two Melastomataceae.

Has worked on Cameroon list ["Mountain flowering plants and ferns of the Cameroons", in Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains (1863) 2: 270–7]

and Genera plantarum.

Oliver has written able paper on dimorphism for Natural History Review [n.s. 2 (1862): 235–43].

CD’s account of Viola is novel and interesting.

Has finished Cameroon mountain plants.

Jury work at exhibition.

Domestic problems – wife is ill, no cook, etc.

Household problems: wife’s health, visitors to Kew.

Will go to sale of J. C. Ross’s effects looking for glacial and Kerguelen Land works not at British Museum.

M. J. Berkeley wrote London Review & Wkly J. Polit. article.

CD is "out of sight the best physiological observer and experimenter that Botany ever saw".

Laments how much he [JDH] missed when doing the Listera ["Functions and structure of the rostellum of Listera ovata", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 144 (1854): 259–64].

Illness of wife and father.

"More plants from Fernando Po and more European".

Will see to Masdevallia and Bonatea.

Domestic matters.

Lyell’s health.

CD’s eczema.

Hopes CD will solve the mystery of Melastoma.

JDH’s trip to Switzerland with his wife.

Has seen Oswald Heer’s fossils, including a leaf, apparently dicotyledonous, from the Lower Lias in Jura.

Value of insect and crustacean fossils for systematic determination.

JDH "impressed with identity of physical features and what wonderful analogy of biological [features] between Alps and Himalayas".

Wife’s health improved by trip.

Heer’s collections convince JDH that Miocene vegetation was Himalayan, not American, as Heer supposed.

Zurich promises to be a good natural history school.

Review of Natural History Review in Parthenon [1 (1862): 373–5].

Observations on Welwitschia.

On microscopes.

Cannot remember any plants but Melastoma with different coloured polliniferous anthers.