My dear M^r Kingsley

I am much obliged to you for telling me where your lectures are published as living in the country I might not have heard of their publication. I shall certainly read them & have not the least doubt they will interest me much, judging from an abstract which I saw in some newspaper.²

I can form no opinion about the wonderful case of the migration of the eye in flat-fish; whether Steenstrup is right who seems to think that the eye itself moves by absorption on one side & growth on the other; or whether Thompson is right who thinks that the eye itself does not move, but that the adjoining parts are developed in a wonderfully unequal manner on the two sides of the head.³ The power of development on either side seems to me one of the most curious points of the case. When I read the paper I speculated how the unequal development c^d have originated & imagined that a fish feeding on the ground with its body held laterally might be benefitted by the eye on the lower side becoming deeper & deeper imbedded in the skull, & instead of becoming blind & useless, travelling to the upper side, but this is all baseless speculation.⁴

With many thanks for your kind note believe me | yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin