Two letters for WED at E. A. Darwin's. G. H. Darwin has been to dentist. Please collect and pay for GHD’s skates.

CD’s opinion of minor critics and commentators on Origin.

H. C. Watson’s notion of genera converging is dismissed.

Thanks for mentioning J. G. Kurr on nectaries [Untersuchungen über die Bedeutung der Nektarien in den Blumen (1833)]. Requests observations on flowers with curved pistils. Finds they curve toward nectary, thus lying in path of insect.

Writes of Henrietta’s illness.

Changes in admission to Athenaeum.

Slowly working at his volume on Variation.

Experiments on insectivorous and "sensitive" plants.

Comments on JL’s paper ["Notes on the generative organs, and on the formation of the egg in the Annulosa", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 11 (1860–2): 117–24].

Henrietta’s continuing poor health. JDH’s suggestion to rub her with cod-liver oil.

Asa Gray’s pamphlet.

Ill health.

Invites Mrs Huxley and the children to spend a fortnight at Down.

MS of Chauncey Wright’s review has not yet arrived.

[P.S. missing from original.]

Sends correspondence between Dr Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood I [of Etruria] on glaciers.

Also a pamphlet [Asa Gray, Natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology (1861)] containing "the best account" of the Origin.

Comments on JL’s Seasons with sea-horses [1861]. Thinks JL bold to defend his bear–whale illustration.

Praise for DO’s paper on Hamamelidaceae ["On Sycopis", Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 23 (1862): 83–9, read 15 Mar 1860]. Everything points to its being a "bankrupt" family.

Hydropathy at Malvern may take him from Drosera. Requests Dionaea and Cypripedium.

CD expresses his gratification that a geologist of AG’s standing and influence subscribes to the idea of the mutability of species.

Invitation to Down for weekend with Huxley and W. B. Carpenter.

Argument, based on geographical distribution and competition, for a mundane glacial period rather than cooling of one longitudinal belt at a time.

CD will publish on Primula [Collected papers 2: 45–63]. Will DO ask W. H. Fitch to make woodcuts of "pin" and "non-pin" primroses [i.e., long-styled and short-styled forms]? Encloses a sketch.

Asks for information about JC’s essay, "On the relation of the domesticated animals to civilisation" [read at BAAS meeting 1859].

Henslow is dying.

H. W. Bates’s excellent article against glacial period [Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. 5 (1860): 352–3] leaves CD "dumbfounded".

H. C. Watson’s hostility.

Affectionate regards to Henslow.