My dear FitzRoy.

Many thanks for your letter which I have forwarded to Shrewsbury, as your kind enquiries will I am sure gratify my Father and my two sisters who live with him his health lately has been a good deal shaken— The Antipodes to which you refer, has not altered the style of your letters, as I know by comparison, for a few days ago I found in a bundle of old letters two addressed to me at B. Ayres from you & I have seldom read nicer & kinder letters.—

You will be glad to hear that Cap: King’s T. del Fuego plants² have at last been published by D^r. J. Hooker (the Antarctic Botanist) in first rate style;³ —he has also made out a capital memoir on my Galapagos plants (the collection of which you so much favoured, by leaving me on James Is^d.) and they turn out of extraordinary interest & novelty.—⁴ I have had a disagreeable incident with Governor Grey of New Zealand;—when Stokes was writing his book⁵ he sent me a proof, asking me my opinion whether he had contradicted some statement of Grey’s civilly to which I answered in the affirmative, & ended my note in these words— “Poor Grey, what an amusing book he has written—but what a catalogue of mishaps & mismanagement; it was an expedition of a set of School Boys.”—⁶ Well, some malicious scoundrel, without Stokes’ knowledge, sent this note to Grey—, who returned it to me with a short, though civil note!⁷ Is not this disagreeable and the more so, as if I had expressed my whole opinion it would not have been so contemptuous; thank Heaven, I hope I shall never see him again.⁸

Farewell— I hope that you may soon get a ship, & be on your own element again, though it seems a cruel wish— | Ever yours very sincerely— | C. Darwin.

P.S. I sent the Yarmouth Scrap to Lyell as he has worked far more than anyone, on the changes on the English Coast.