CD thanks AN for the note and remarks on the partridge’s leg. CD is too ill to write a note, but will send [for] the specimen as soon as he can. [See 4326.]

Returns a borrowed extract from the [Zoological?] Record.

CD’s Copley Medal. The numbers were ten to eight in CD’s favour but the Cambridge men mustered strongly for Sedgwick.

Asks whether he ought to write to CD while he is ill.

Wonders if he might use Haast’s notes on introduced animals for a notice he is preparing ["Note on the replacement of species in the colonies and elsewhere", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 4 (1864): 123–7].

CD agrees about reversion.

The discovery of crossing in cryptogams is very interesting.

ED writes on behalf of her husband, who is ill, to thank FH for his letter

and to thank [L. C.] Treviranus for his paper on orchids.

CD wishes to know whether Orchis pyramidalis grows in FH’s neighbourhood. He needs a fresh specimen to compare the stigma with those grown locally.

CD is too ill to write.

As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]