Thanks JL for his book [Origin of civilization (1870)], which he has read with "extreme interest". Wishes JL had published four or five months earlier as CD would have "so profited & saved so much work". CD will have to modify some of what he has written [in Descent]. Sees they differ a good deal about moral sense "but hardly two men ever do agree on this perplexing subject".

JL’s note of the 16th [see 7277] about the Census arrived too late for CD to answer.

EFL’s account of what CD has done in natural history is full and accurate and could not have been done better. He has added the titles of his later books and the name of his maternal grandfather [Josiah Wedgwood] of whom he is proud.