To Paul Edmund de Strzelecki [25 May 1845]
Down Bromley Kent
Sunday
My dear Sir
I received a few days since your kind & valuable present:1 I am exceedingly obliged to you for it, though I feel that I have no claim on so magnificent a present.
I congratulate you on having completed a work which must have cost you so much labour & I am astonished at the number of deep subjects which you discuss. I must be permitted to express my sorrow that there are not far more copious extracts from the ‘M.S. Journal’: I hope some day to see it fully published.— You speak of your unidiomatic English; I heartily wish that one quarter of our English authors could think & write in language one half as spirited yet so simple.
Once again allow me to thank you very sincerely & believe me My dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | C. Darwin
You were so good, when I last saw you, as to say, that you would take the trouble of informing me (as a guide for myself) what you paid for the engraving of the shells alone.2 The plates appear to me admirable.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Natural selection: Charles Darwin’s Natural selection: being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by R. C. Stauffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.
Strzelecki, Paul Edmund de. 1845. Physical description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. London.
Summary
Thanks PEdeS for gift of his book [Physical description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (1845)].
Asks how much engravings of shells cost.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-871
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Paul Edmund de Strzelecki
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Yale University: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (GEN MSS MISC Group 1559 F-3)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 871,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-871.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 3
