Asks permission for French translation [of "Biographical sketch of an infant"].

Advises correspondent on adopting a career; "each person shd. follow his natural bent & improve his special abilities".

Strongly recommends study of J. S. Mill’s Logic.

His own zeal for science was most stimulated by Herschel’s Introduction to the study of natural philosophy.

Requests duplicates of [H. M. S.] Challenger Pycnogonidae.

Emperor of Brazil continues to press JDH for a meeting with CD.

JDH’s daughter, Harriet, marries W. T. Thiselton-Dyer.

Having just read Climbing plants, wishes CD to have enclosed pamphlets, one on cucumbers from 20 years ago, and another on movement in vegetables, also very old.

Thanks OB for his work on Schopenhauer [Arthur Schopenhauer. Beitrag zu einer Dogmatik der Religionslosen (1877)]

and for his remarks on bees and clover. When CD spoke, last spring, of the few seeds produced by red clover, he supposed it was due to rarity of humble-bees.

Reports an annual bean plant that formed a tuber and is now growing in the second year.

Criticises Herbert Spencer’s Principles of sociology, particularly for its treatment of the family, for its superficiality, and for its dependence on J. F. McLennan’s views on exogamy. Americans are coming to see Spencer’s ideas as too broad.

Asks for a copy [of an unknown item] to be sent to Down.

Thanks for CD’s £5 contribution towards Jules Michelet’s tomb.

Has heard through Asa Gray of CD’s interest in his work on Lithospermum and Oxalis. Thinks dimorphism in Oxalis is but early stage toward complete separation of sexes.

Explains the delay in publishing [Forms of flowers].

Has not heard from Appleton about an American edition [of Forms of flowers]. Asks how many copies Murray is printing.

CD interested in EK’s argument against belief that sense of colour has been recently acquired by man. Describes his observations of the difficulty his own children had in distinguishing, or naming, colours.

Adds that it appeared to him the gustatory sense of his children, when young, differed from that of grown-up persons.

He is delivering address at the British Medical Association’s Manchester meeting ["Address in medicine", Br. Med. J. (1877) pt 2: 168–73]. Will develop theme that parasites are variations of common types, e.g., Bacillus anthracis is a variant of B. subtilis. Asks for more examples.

Wants CD’s advice on who would undertake describing the Crustacea from the Challenger expedition [1872–6].