My dear M^r. Darwin

I am very sorry to hear so sad an account of your family, but hope that you are now getting out of your troubles.¹ Atherley called here the other day & gave a flourishing account of William, but leaving him for a fortnight was even more complimentary.²

My Swiss tour was most successful;³ besides spending a week in the mountains with Tyndall & Huxley,⁴ which was capital fun, I visited nearly all the collections of Lake antiquities & saw five of the Pfahlbauten themselves.⁵ Three of them, those at Nernier, Thonon, & Morges in the Lake of Geneva I saw from a boat. The water was from 8 to 12 f^t. deep, but so clear that I could see quite well, the piles & other things at the bottom.

We thought we saw a hatchet and I undressed & dived for it. After two or three ineffectual attempts we poked at it with a pole, & it turned out to be only a bit of wood. At Wauwyl the old floor is covered by three or four feet of peat, and the lake has been drained. We spent several hours in digging & got three hatchets, three or four implements in bone & a great many bits of pottery & more or less broken bones. There also the beams forming the floor are preserved in the peat, & one could stand, as it were, on the old floor.

I have got a hymenopterous insect which uses its wings to swim with in the water! Probably it is looking for a victim on which to lay eggs; but it strikes me as a most curious adaptation & one which would interest you much.⁶

I have also a case of dimorphism in Psocus, but have not yet been able to make out much about it. It had been already suspected by Westwood.⁷

Your case of trimorphism makes ones mental mouth water for more information.⁸

Let me know when you return as I am very anxious for a talk with you.⁹

Yours affec | John Lubbock

P.S. I send a subscription to Martin¹⁰