Dear & much honoured Sir.

I thank you sincerely for your most kind letter.² I feared that you would much disapprove of the “Origin”, & I sent it to you, merely as a mark of my sincere respect. I shall read with much interest your work on the productions of Islands, whenever I receive it.³ I thank you cordially for the notice in the Neuen Jahrbuch für Mineralogie,⁴ & still more for speaking to Schweitzerbart about a Translation;⁵ for I am most anxious that the great & intellectual German people should know something about my Book—

I have told my publisher to send immediately a copy of the new Edition to Schweitzerbart, & I have written to Schweitzerbart that I give up all right to profit for myself; so that I hope a Translation will appear.⁶ I fear that the Book will be difficult to translate & if you could advise Schweitzerbart about a good Translator, it would be of very great service. Still more if you would run your eye over the more difficult parts of the Translation; but this is too great a favour to expect.— I feel sure that it will be difficult to translate from being so much condensed.

Again I thank you for your noble & generous sympathy & I remain with entire respect. | Yours truly obliged | C. Darwin

The new Edition has some few corrections, & I will send in M.S. some additional corrections & a short Historical Preface to Schweitzerbart.—

How interesting you could make the work by editing (I do not mean translating) the work & appending notes of refutation or confirmation.—⁷ The Book has sold so very largely in England that an Editor would, I think, make profit by the Translation.—