Darwin Correspondence Project

Down Bromley Kent

June 14th

My dear Sir

The Diagram will do very well & I will send it shortly to Mr West to have a few trifling corrections made.

I get on very slowly with proofs. I remember writing to you that I thought there would be not much corrections. I honestly wrote what I thought, but was most grievously mistaken. I find the style incredibly bad, & most difficult to make clear & smooth. I am extremely sorry to say, on account of expence, & loss of time for me, that the corrections are very heavy,—as heavy as possible.

But from casual glances, I still hope that later chapters are not so badly written. How I could have written so badly is quite inconceivable, but I suppose it was owing to my whole attention being fixed on general line of argument, & not on details. All I can say is that I am very sorry.—

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

P.S. | I have been looking at the corrections & considering them. It seems to me that I shall put you to a quite unfair expence.— If you please I shd like to enter into some such arrangement as following.— When work completed, you to allow in the account a fairly moderately heavy charge for corrections & all excess over that to be deducted from my profits, or paid by me individually.