Jermyn Street, May 6, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

I was very glad to get your note about my address. I profess to be a
great stoic, you know, but there are some people from whom I am glad to
get a pat on the back. Still I am not quite content with that, and I
want to know what you think of the argument--whether you agree with what
I say about contemporaneity or not, and whether you are prepared to
admit--as I think your views compel you to do--that the whole Geological
Record is only the skimmings of the pot of life.

Furthermore, I want you to chuckle with me over the notion I find a
great many people entertain--that the address is dead against your
views. The fact being, as they will by and by wake up [to] see that
yours is the only hypothesis which is not negatived by the facts,--one
of its great merits being that it allows not only of indefinite standing
still, but of indefinite retrogression.

I am going to try to work the whole argument into an intelligible form
for the general public as a chapter in my forthcoming "Evidence" (one
half of which I am happy to say is now written) ["Evidence as to Man's
Place in Nature."], so I shall be very glad of any criticisms or hints.

Since I saw you--indeed, from the following Tuesday onwards--I have
amused myself by spending ten days or so in bed. I had an unaccountable
prostration of strength which they called influenza, but which, I
believe, was nothing but some obstruction in the liver.

Of course I can't persuade people of this, and they will have it that it