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The final version of the passage in which Darwin used a cleansed, polite discourse to describe a courtship process which better reflected Victorian notions of modest, passive femininity and sexually-driven, active masculinity.

Darwin queries which part of his manuscript Murray considered “coarse”, confirming in the process that a section on female sexual desire was not his work but a quote from John Hunter’s Essays and Observations on Natural History (1861).

Murray suggests that Darwin tone down a passage on the delicate subject of female sexual desire.

Darwin had included the word ‘sexual’ in the title of an earlier draft of Descent: Murray was relieved when it was omitted.