My dear Sir

I feel very thankful to you for the great care which you take in making the Translation.² Tadorna is of course wrong.³ The reference (p. 170) to Annal. des Sc. Nat Zoolg is correct, for the reference is to a paper by Dujardin who makes statement on authority of Decaisne.⁴

The quoted sentence about the proportion of white in the W. Indian cattle (p. 229) is correct, though very badly expressed: when the author said that “the white are terribly tormented by the insects; & they are weak &c &c”—he meant by “they” “the cattle are weak & sluggish in proportion to the white”.⁵

You will have received by this time the last sheet, index & Titles. I have told the publisher to send you a clean copy;⁶ but I daresay it will be some little time before it reaches you.—

No doubt you will be so glad to finish so dull & laborious a work as the translation that you will get it done as soon as you can. If the Publisher causes delay in printing, it would be well to suggest to him that the only chance of a fair sale will be when the second volume is published.—⁷ I hope you will not forget that I said from the first that I was very doubtful whether the book was worth translating, & so I told the French & Russian publishers, so that if the book causes them a loss I am not to blame.—⁸

With cordial thanks for the great honour which you have conferred on me by the translation & with sincere respect, I remain | My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I am very much pleased with the appearance of the German edition, but I am much too poor a German scholar to judge of style; but I have not the least doubt that it is excellent.⁹