HA’s paper on leaf arrangement is almost ready; asks CD to communicate it to the Royal Society. Seeks permission to quote from CD’s notes.

Has sent phyllotaxy paper to G. G. Stokes with the letter from CD to show credentials.

Will not have time to read new Sachs edition CD offered.

Thanks for CD’s sponsorship of paper [Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 21 (1873): 176–9].

Thanks for congratulations on appearance of abstract of HA’s paper [Nature 7 (1873): 343–4].

Explains again his theory of "contraction with twist" by which compact buds and a spiral phyllotaxy have evolved. Explains how the peculiar phyllotaxy of the teasel is explicable by this process of "condensation".

The Royal Society referees have rejected HA’s phyllotaxy paper, and it will not be printed in Philosophical Transactions. HA is not sorry for he has found new facts which limit the applicability of his views. Now believes that the original leaf arrangement was not necessarily always two-ranked but rather that existing arrangements have developed from a variety of forms with differing numbers of leaf-ranks.

Illustrates, with reference to different species of Gasteria, the role of twisting in the development of leaf arrangement.