Is in a mess with his correspondence and will get no assistance before 1 April.

Has agreed to give an address on the Darwinian theory at Nottingham [meeting of BAAS].

Sorrow about Mrs Langton. Has been haunted by death these six or eight years. Now cannot bear to look at children asleep in bed – a sight he once thought the loveliest thing in creation.

Asks CD whether he knows of a medicine to check vomiting – for a friend dying from starvation as a result.

Duke of Somerset is looking for two naturalists for survey ship to Korea and Strait of Magellan.

Had Busks and Lyells to dinner.

Examines and criticises evidence for CD’s hypothesis that the glacial period was not one of universal cold. Physicists deny its possibility.

Lyell wants to see JDH’s last letter [the part on glacial periods]. Lyell full of concern about astronomical causes of heat and cold on the globe.

Encloses letter from John Scott.

Asks to visit Down on Saturday.

Reference to description of Begonia phyllomaniaca.

Thanks for the explicit account of Pangenesis. Thinks he now follows CD’s ideas but Pangenesis is very difficult and speculative.

Oliver has lost his little girl.

Orchids.

Lyell has written to JDH about coal-plants of Melville Island.

Has glanced at first edition of Principles and has no doubt that Lyell meant the whole globe was cooler when land was massed at poles. JDH doubts this.

Refers to enclosure from Asa Gray

with whom he can talk calmly now that war is over. North had no right to resort to bloodshed.

Startled by CD’s attendance at Royal Society soirée.

Has asked E. B. Tylor to make up questions for consuls and missionaries, through whose wives a lot of most curious information [for Descent?] could be obtained.

Tying umbilical cord has always been a mystery to JDH.

John Crawfurd’s paper on cultivated plants is shocking twaddle ["On the migration of cultivated plants in reference to ethnology", J. Bot. Br. & Foreign 4 (1866): 317–32].

R. T. Lowe back from Madeira.

ARW's marriage to Annie Mitten.

W. H. Harvey is dead. His loss to science.

Will get a copy of Crawfurd’s paper. It was such trash he tore his up.

His letter to Asa Gray was about his [JDH’s] proof that America will have an aristocracy from interbreeding of wealth, intellect, and beauty; and the lower classes, not having time for politics, will leave them to the aforementioned.

JDH sends a list of the principal confirmatory evidences of CD’s theory which he has prepared at W. R. Grove’s request for Nottingham speech ["Presidential address", Rep. BAAS 26 (1866): liii–lxxxi].

He is not grieved at CD’s omissions of his [JDH’s] work [from Origin, 4th ed.]. It proves nothing – claims only to be illustration of using CD’s methods.

Suggests a memorial from Huxley, Murchison, and other geologists on the Gallegos fossils. He will speak privately to Duke of Somerset.

Working on "Insular floras" lecture for BAAS Nottingham meeting [see 5135].

Puzzled at distribution of Madeiran and Canaries plants and insects.

Supports Forbes’s Atlantis hypothesis [see 956], which he has reread and to which he will allude.

Wollaston disappointing on Madeiran insects.

Questions for his lecture on "Insular floras".

Comments on CD’s criticism of Atlantis. Has no fixed opinion on continental extensions. Great objections to hypotheses of CD and Forbes: botanical to CD’s; geological to Forbes’s. Will point out that natural selection is necessary to both hypotheses.

Alexander Beatson mentions a bird in considerable numbers on St Helena which appears to contradict CD’s statement in Journal of researches that only introduced land birds exist there.

The Azores flora and fauna tell heavily against Atlantis joining them with America and against transoceanic migration from America.

Will do justice to CD’s objections to continental extension theory.

CD misunderstood his question about Isthmus.

Responds to CD’s other points about Madeira and the Azores.

Is attempting to sum up the two theories impartially and must raise all the difficulties with each. More on his differences with CD.

No summary available.