You have not attacked it nearly so much as I feared you would. You do not seem to have detected MANY errors. It was nearly all written from memory, and hence I was particularly fearful; it would have been better if the whole had first been carefully written out, and abstracted afterwards. I look at it as morally certain that it must include much error in some of its general views. I will just run over a few points in your note, but do not trouble yourself to reply without you have something important to say...
...I should like to know whether the case of Endemic bats in islands struck you; it has me especially; perhaps too strongly.
With hearty thanks, ever yours, C. DARWIN.
P.S. You cannot tell what a relief it has been to me your looking over this chapter, as I felt very shaky on it.
I shall to-morrow finish my last chapter (except a recapitulation) on Affinities, Homologies, Embryology, etc., and the facts seem to me to come out VERY strong for mutability of species.
I have been much interested in working out the chapter.
I shall now, thank God, begin looking over the old first chapters for press.
But my health is now so very poor, that even this will take me long.
CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down [March] 24th [1859].
My dear Fox,
It was very good of you to write to me in the midst of all your troubles, though you seem to have got over some of them, in the recovery of your wife's and your own health. I had not heard lately of your mother's health, and am sorry to hear so poor an account. But as she does not suffer much, that is the great thing; for mere life I do not think is much valued by the old. What a time you must have had of it, when you had to go backwards and forwards.
We are all pretty well, and our eldest daughter is improving. I can see daylight through my work, and am now finally correcting my chapters for the press; and I hope in a month or six weeks to have proof-sheets. I am weary of my work. It is a very odd thing that I have no sensation that I overwork my brain; but facts compel me to conclude that my brain was never formed for much thinking. We are resolved to go for two or three months, when I have finished, to Ilkley, or some such place, to see if I can anyhow give my health a good start, for it certainly has been wretched of late, and has incapacitated me for everything. You do me injustice when you think that I work for fame; I value it to a certain extent; but, if I know myself, I work from a sort of instinct to try to make out truth. How glad I should be if you could sometime come to Down; especially when I get a little better, as I still hope to be. We have set up a billiard table, and I find it does me a deal of good, and drives the horrid species out of my head. Farewell, my dear old friend.
Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, March 28th [1859].
My dear Lyell,
If I keep decently well, I hope to be able to go to press with my volume early in May. This being so, I want much to beg a little advice from you. >From an expression in Lady Lyell's note, I fancy that you have spoken to Murray. Is it so? And is he willing to publish my Abstract? If you will tell me whether anything, and what has passed, I will then write to him. Does he know at all of the subject of the book? Secondly, can you advise me, whether I had better state what terms of publication I should prefer, or first ask him to propose terms? And what do you think would be fair terms for an edition? Share profits, or what?
Lastly, will you be so very kind as to look at the enclosed title and give me your opinion and any criticisms; you must remember that, if I have health and it appears worth doing, I have a much larger and full book on the same subject nearly ready.
My Abstract will be about five hundred pages of the size of your first edition of the 'Elements of Geology.'
Pray forgive me troubling you with the above queries; and you shall have no more trouble on the subject. I hope the world goes well with you, and that you are getting on with your various works.