My Dear Mr Darwin,

I take the opportunity of my wife’s sending a note to Mrs Darwin, to write a line or two and say with what interest I have read your new book.¹ In the first place I was delighted beforehand to see that it was not simply a short Essay, in slim form—but a volume which in appearance might rank with those of “The Descent of Man &c.”² And the feeling of satisfaction was thoroughly borne out by finding that instead of an Excursus or episode—as I had supposed from your previous announcement³—it is really a carrying out of the great discussion into a quarter whence important lights are shed upon the main theme. This “breaking out in a new place” comes by surprise upon one—and will be so felt by the public—just when the subject seemed to have been for a time exhausted. Here have you been quietly accumulating a whole flood of fact from aside, when it might have been thought you were sufficiently occupied with the rest of it—and this you let out now to swell the general effect. It seems to me that the treatment of the difficult and complicated topic is successful in a high degree—that the principles laid down and brought to bear on it are adequate for the purpose, and have been so made clear as to leave definitely conceivable what was before inarticulated and blank. Most people, I daresay, like myself, had no notion at all that so much had been done in the way of gathering facts about Expression—and the book presents such an encyclopædia of these, as to require a second reading before one can well recover oneself from the bewilderment of being instructed in them. How far, for instance, may an approach have been begun to be pushed towards the line of defensive argument which orthodoxists (I suppose) found upon Man’s possession of the faculty of speech? Or has this nothing to do with the question?

I wish I could have supplied some little notes of observation about animals. I may mention that it struck me, in going along, that you by no means push your inferences too far on any occasion that I am aware of.

At page 230. you say “it is by no means clear why the hand should be raised to the mouth or face &c” when endeavouring to assist reflection by a movement. Is this not an involuntary movement of the most natural kind? There is a natural tendency to support the head when thinking—because its muscles tend to be relaxed. The bodily powers are unconsciously wanted to assist—&c.

In regard to the sounds uttered by dogs, I have noticed that they can and do purr when pleased, or desirous to attract attention, or to show pleasure.

The burrowing tendency of dogs is frequently shown.

Female dogs are regularly in the habit of vomiting up their food to their young, after the young reach a certain age.⁴ This, many of them can do at pleasure, hours after they have been fed. It has often bothered me greatly.

I mention such things merely by the way.

I trust you have been in better health of late. It gives me great pleasure to have had this opportunity of communicating with you, though to so little purpose in the way of remark upon the book you so very kindly sent.

With very kind regards I remain, | Dear Mr Darwin | ever truly yours | George Cupples

Charles Darwin, Esq^r.