Dear Darwin

I should have written earlier to thank you for your book, but was hoping to be able to read more of it before doing so.¹ I have not however found time to get beyond the first 3 chapters, but that is quite sufficient to shew me how exceedingly interesting you have made the subject & how completely & admirably you have worked it out. I expect it will be one of the most popular of your works. I have just been asked to write a review of it for the “Quarterly Journal of Science”,— for which purpose I shall be in duty bound to seek out some deficiencies, however minute, so as to give my notice some flavour of criticism.²

The cuts & photos. are admirable, and my little boy & girl³ seized it at once to look at the naughty babies.

With best wishes | Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace

Charles Darwin Esq.

P.S. I will take the opportunity of asking you if you know of any book that will give me a complete catalogue of vertebrate fossils with some indication of their affinities.⁴ | A.R.W.