Invites correspondent to dinner and overnight the next Friday, and gives directions at length from London to Down. "I have heard from Mr Litchfield that you are in London … will you give us the pleasure of seeing you here".

Delighted CD’s groom will take the rabbits;

has just done proof of a paper to the Royal Society on "blood-relationship", defining kinship between parents and offspring.

Sends a drawing of dog’s expression for CD to approve and return.

Comments on drawing of dog. Will get it engraved [see Expression, pp. 52, 53].

Will send MS of Expression to printers next week.

Sends drawings of dogs in different attitudes, drawn by his friend A. May. FD should not trouble CD unless he thinks the drawings will please him. [See Expression, pp. 54–5.]

Thanks CD for his note and cheque for young May.

Will send copy of second edition of Erewhon, in which he has set himself straight about "having intended no villainy by the machines". [See 8318.]

Send parcel to Orpington station.

A review and criticism of Chauncey Wright’s paper on phyllotaxy [Mem. Am. Acad. Arts & Sci. n.s. 9 (1867–73): 379–415]. Does not believe that the "distributive" and "cyclical" properties, which CW claims characterise the existing spiral orders of leaf arrangement, can be shown to be advantageous to plants. CW’s speculations on the origins of the spiral arrangement of leaves are purely hypothetical.

Sends, via C. L. Brace, his book [Botany for young people, pt 2 How plants behave (1872)], "your own science adapted to juvenile minds".