My dear Darwin

I write on behalf of the Polar Committee of the Royal Society to ask for any suggestions you may be inclined to offer us, as instructions to the Naturalists who are to accompany the new Expedition¹

The task of drawing up detailed instructions is divided among a lot of us; but you are as full of ideas as an egg is full of meat and are shrewdly suspected of having, somewhere in your capacious cranium, a store of notions, which could be of great value to the Naturalists—

All I can say is that if you have not already ‘collected facts’ on this topic it will be the first subject I ever suggested to you on which you had not—

Of course we do not expect you to put yourself to any great trouble—nor ask for such a thing—: but if you will jot down any notes that occur to you we shall be thankful—

We must have everything in hand for printing by March 15^th—

Ever | Yours very faithy | T H Huxley