My Dear Sir,

I did not write at once, to thank you for your truly kind fulfilment of my request about the photograph—if only because of your leaving home.¹ The two contained in your note are to me invaluable—and they are a possession which I need scarcely say all my friends will be interested in, obtained as it has been by a fortunate accident.

I waited also in order to make the slight return now enclosed. Pray do not be surprised if I also send in a few days a small volume written by myself many years ago—a sea-story which might amuse you at the seaside, if you are still there—and might help to recall your own lighter associations with life afloat.²

I do earnestly hope that the vacation may have set you up in health. The late heat and dryness have relaxed and depressed the strongest constitutions. I had to give up trying to write, almost to read. If mosquitoes are really in England, and even near Edinburgh—the climate must have been in an odd mood, tending for the time to bring people down to the level of Anglo-Indian lassitude.³ It makes them realize better what we owe to our east winds, mists, clouds, and long winter. I suppose the Prime Minister himself might have reason to do this in the summer of 1868—whether or not an oriental temperament might have been able to carry out more conservative courses, with such weather in their favour a little earlier.⁴

Trusting to be excused in these lines and throughout, | I remain, | Dear Sir, | most truly yours | George Cupples

Charles Darwin Esq^e. | &c. &c.