My dear Sir

I have much pleasure in expressing my opinion that you are excellently fitted for the post of Assistant Secretary to the Geological Society.² I rest my opinion on your very extensive knowledge of all branches of natural history,— Your familiarity also with so many foreign languages & your intimate knowledge of German would be highly serviceable in editing our Journal & Transactions;³ but one of your highest claims rests, as it appears to me, on your power of writing vigorous & clear English, as everyone will admit, who has read your many papers in various scientific Journals, or your Translation of von Siebolds work on Parthenogenesis.—⁴

Your powers of work are well known to be unusually great, so as to have excited the surprise of some of our hardest working naturalists; & of this power the Zoological Record, so valuable to naturalists, offers the clearest proof.—⁵

The experience which you must have acquired during your charge of the Museum at York, will probably render the care of our large geological Museum not difficult to you.—⁶

Therefore I beg leave to repeat my wishes for your success & I remain, My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin

To | W. S. Dallas Esq^re.