My dear Hooker

I must just thank you for your long & interesting letter. I am very sorry to hear about Lady Hooker: it must be a great anxiety to you. An operation is so horrid a thing.¹

Do not forget, when free from care & if you ever have time how heartily glad we sh^d. be to see you here.

I heard from Lyell this morning & he tells me a piece of news.— You are a good-for-nothing man: here you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to spare & you must write a review on my Book! I thought it a very good one, & was so much struck with it, that I sent it to Lyell.² But I assumed as a matter of course that it was Lindleys:³ now that I know it is yours I have reread it, & my kind & good friend it has warmed my heart with all the honourable & noble things you say of me & it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the G. Chronicle; but now I admire it in another spirit.

Farewell with hearty thanks. What a lot we shall have to talk about if we ever meet.— There are several points in your Essay which I wish to discuss.⁴ (I have just lent it to J. Lubbock) & some point in Asa Grays.⁵

Farewell    your affect. | C. Darwin

I shall be very glad to hear that Lady Hooker has got over her dreadful trial.

We have three children in bed with measles.⁶

Lyell is going at Man with an audacity that frightens me: it is a good joke he used always to caution me to slip over man.—