The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to John Downing, 20 October [1873] (Correspondence vol. 21).

An anonymous letter headed ‘Shorthorn breeding and type maintenance’, signed ‘A friend to shorthorn progress’, appeared in Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 31 March 1873, p. 6. An offprint, dated 4 April 1873 and signed ‘J. Downing’, is in DAR 198: 59. CDs notes from ‘Shorthorn breeding’ are in DAR 193: 67. No other letters attributable to Downing have been found in the journal, but according to Downing 1890, the other letter was on ‘Fashionable breeding’. Downing’s manuscript notes have not been found in the Darwin Archive–CUL; CD may have returned them to Downing (see Correspondence vol. 21, letter from John Downing, 13 November 1873).

Downing visited CD on 24 October 1873 (see Correspondence vol. 21, letter from G. H. Darwin, 24 [October 1873]).

CD added a note to Variation 2d ed., p. 97 n. 7, ‘Mr. J. Downing (a successful breeder of Shorthorns in Ireland) informs me that the raisers of the great families of Shorthorns carefully conceal their sterility and want of constitution. He adds that Mr. Bates, after he had bred his herd in-and-in for some years, “lost in one season twenty-eight calves solely from want of constitution.”’