An enclosure for CD has arrived from the Academy of Sciences in Vienna: please can CD send a postal order for 4s.

Introduces Capt. George Montague Wheeler of the US Engineers, who has charge of the government expedition west of the 100th meridian.

Relates plan for an appendix to his Journal of researches which will include facts of species of birds’ being different in different islands of the Galápagos and also of the lizards and tortoises on the islands. Asks JSH whether he can supply parallels in the plant life.

Asks about Fuegian specimens stored at the Geological Society. CD needs them soon.

Comments on potato disease and its effects on the poor.

Describes visit to his Lincolnshire farm,

to York where he discussed hybrids with the Dean of Manchester [William Herbert],

his meeting with Charles Waterton, and his delight with Chatsworth.

Disappointed at Hooker’s failure to receive the Edinburgh chair; believes JDH will make a great botanist.

Thanks RM for "Dynamics of earthquakes" [Trans. R. Irish Acad. 21 (1848): 50–106]. It has cleared up his ideas on undulations. Now wishes he had said nothing about them in Journal of researches. Sends his paper ["Certain volcanic phenomena in S. America", Collected papers 1: 53–86]. Wishes RM would investigate Chile. Speculates whether earthquakes coincide with moon or tides.

Comments on David Milne’s paper ["On the parallel roads of Lochaber" (1847), Trans. R. Soc. Edinburgh 16 (1849): 395–418]. CD still believes in marine origin. Rejects barrier of detritus at mouth of Glen Roy. If roads were formed by lake, it must have been ice-lake.

Comments on evidence of glaciers and icebergs in North Wales. Thinks pass caused by tidal channel, not river. Suggests that RC make altitude measurements at various points.

Requests AW to ask Arthur Adams, who is going on a polar expedition to Lancaster Sound, to collect cirripedes.

Asks location of "Cape Rivers".

Requests receipt for payments to Society in 1858–9.

Is pleased GHKT goes a little way with him.

Has rectified in foreign editions of Origin his omission of an explanation of the failure of many forms to progress;

also has discussion of beauty in MS. Does GHKT really believe Diatomaceae, for instance, were created beautiful so that man, millions of generations later, should admire them through a microscope? CD attributes most of these structures to unknown laws of growth; useful structures are accounted for by natural selection.

Thanks CH for correction of blunder in Origin about hive-bees sucking clover: "a greater kindness than a new fact".

Hopes to be well enough on Friday to see JL.

Several of the family have had influenza.

Sends a sentence, quoting JP, on inherited peculiarities in eye-brows. Asks whether he may use it in his chapter on inheritance [Variation, ch. 12].

Thanks GB for proposing him for Copley Medal; suspects he is responsible for the praise in Sabine’s "splendid eulogy" on his work. Has, however, written to Sabine to say he would have liked a little more said about the Origin.

Family news. Describes [final] illness of Susan Darwin [d. 3 Oct 1866]. CD’s health better.

Making rapid progress on Variation.

Has heard of hybrids between moths mentioned by WDF.

Work on [4th] edition of Origin has delayed Variation.

Is obliged for the facts about the hybrids [see 5910], which permit him to reject the view of B. D. Walsh (and H. W. Bates?) that organs play an important part in keeping incipient species distinct.

He has asked John Murray to send RM a copy of Variation.

Thanks for copies of FVH’s "Preliminary field report [of the U. S. Geological Survey] of Colorado and New Mexico" [Am. J. Sci. 49 (1870): 258–63] and Geological report [of the exploration] of the Yellowstone [and Missouri] River[s under the direction of Captain W. F. Reynolds (1869)].

Will collect the "precious animal" [deerhound puppy] from King’s Cross.

Thanks GC for information on the perch.

CD plans to use notes provided by GB. [See Origin, 6th ed., p. 193.]

"Please accept my thanks for your kind present of your two Papers."