Will send as many copies as possible of JT's reprinting of JH's letters to the Athenaeum. Asks if JH has seen Thomas Rawson Birks's book on matter and ether.

CD thanks the sender of a Cypripedium. He finds its pollination contrivances interesting.

CD has spoken to Hooker of JS’s scientific merit, but has not suggested him for a colonial appointment.

Advice on style of writing.

Making extensive extract of JS’s orchid paper to communicate to Linnean Society [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 8 (1865): 162–7].