My dear Falconer

What a good kind friend you are. I know well that this medal must have cost you a deal of trouble.² It is a very great honour to me, but I declare the knowledge that you and a few other friends³ have so much interested themselves on the subject is the real cream of the enjoyment to me; indeed it is to me worth far more than many medals. So accept my true and cordial thanks. I hope that I may yet have strength to do a little more work in natural science; shaky and old though I be. I have chuckled and triumphed over your postscript about poor M. Brullé and his young pupils.⁴ About a week ago I had a nearly similar account from Germany and at the same time I heard of some splendid converts in such men as Leuckart, Gegenbaur &c.⁵ You may say what you like about yourself, but I look at a man who treats Natural History in the spirit with which you do, exactly as good for what I believe to be the truth, as a convert.⁶

Farewell my good friend with sincere thanks | Your true friend | Charles Darwin