Dear Sir

I am much obliged for your note.— You are at perfect liberty to mention M^r Martials story— I forget whether I said, he was a surgeon of a whaler, but a rather worthless, slightly educated man; perhaps, however, in some respects his story is less likely from this cause to have been invented.—¹

I myself do not think our supposed knowledge of having come from one stock ought to enter into any scientific reasoning. Anyhow the inhabitants of eastern & western Europe have different species of intestinal worms.—

I fear I cannot at present offer to search for the specimens in Spirits, but if you will inform me, (supposing I do not send them before hand) at the latest period, when you absolutely require them for comparison, I will get them out of a chaos of specimens.—²

Believe me | dear Sir | Yours sincerely | C. Darwin

P.S. | I have been informed that the Pediculi generally, if not invariably, perish on wild animals in their passage to England, or in captivity. This, perhaps, may bear on their death in M^r Martial’s story. A slight fever, or even a broken limb with no fever has been known to cause the evacuation of the intestinal worms in a person—facts which show by what slight changes in constitution parasites are affected.