dear sir

I embrace the first opportunity to thank you for y^r delightful volume this day received being volume 3 of the Voyages of the Adventures of the Beagle. It did not diminish the value of the gift that I had last summer imported the entire work including the quartos on Natural History¹ and your volume formed my instructive & entertaining repast at the close of every evening during a public engagement on Geology, in Boston in January & February Last.²

Your kindness enables me to gratify a scientific friend with another copy of your work and I am happy to be made acquainted with a gentleman for whose talents & character I have the highest respect.

Your volume is not second in interest and instruction to any work of the kind I have ever read & you will permit me to say I place only one other book of travels in the same class of excellence with yours— I mean Sir Robert Kerr Porter’s travels in the Caucasus Persia &c in two thick quartos with numerous illust-rations.³ His work is not particularly scientific but is still most instructive and interesting. M^r. Lyell’s citations from your work when in M.S. strongly excited my curiosity and I was richly repaid in the perusal by your numerous and highly important geological observations many of which I had occasion to cite in my geological lectures in Boston delivered to about 3000 people in two audiences.

As a small mark of my respect (although a very inadequate return) I request you to accept the last Vol of the American Journal of Science and Arts being the 38^th. which I now forward to my agents Wiley & Putnam Paternoster Row London and remain dear sir with the best wishes for your long continued usefulness

very respectfully & truly | your obliged & obedient | servant | Benjamin Silliman.

I have not perused the other volumes of the voyage &c but hope to have that pleasure by & by.

I add to the Vol. of the Journal two little Geological tracts of mine.⁴

Permit me to ask when we are to expect your additional volume—⁵ I have twice sent for it & in both instances have received the work which you have been so kind as to send me.— I trust we are not in error in expecting another volume & I look for it with the greatest interest.