to
Summary
Thanks for information on cave rat.
CD is obliged for news of J. D. Dana’s recovery.
Will use BS’s information about cave rat in revised [3d] edition of Origin.
Transcription
Down Bromley Kent
Decr. 4th
My dear Sir
I must trouble you with a few lines to thank you very sincerely for your note with some additional information on the Cave-Ratf2 & for your printed letter, which I well remember reading some years ago in your Journal.f3 Several of your statements in your letter have interested me much, & the whole subject of these cave blind animals seems to me eminently curious.—
I am much obliged to you for telling me about Prof. Dana;f4 pray give him my very kind remembrances; I believe no one, except his personal friends, will more rejoice at his perfect recovery than I shall.—
I am preparing a new corrected Edition of my “Origin” & shall take the liberty to quote a few words from your letter on the Cave-Rat.—f5
With sincere thanks & respect, pray believe me | My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | C. Darwin
Footnotes
- f1
- Dated by the relationship to the letter from Benjamin Silliman Jr, 27 October 1860. CD’s letter to Silliman was enclosed with the letter to Jeffries Wyman, 3 December [1860], for Wyman to forward.
- f2
- Letter from Benjamin Silliman Jr, 27 October 1860.
- f3
- Silliman 1851 was published in the American Journal of Science and Arts, of which Silliman was principal editor. There is an annotated copy in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
- f4
- James Dwight Dana.
- f5
- Origin 3d ed., p. 154; Peckham ed. 1959, p. 253.