My dear Sir,

You are so very kind, that I scarcely know how to thank you. Your whole letter testifies to such a sympathizing regardfulness, that I feel I have not deserved it¹

With regard to your new book, how could I have the very slightest objection against D^r Krause’s or any one else’s publishing part of it or the whole    I had not yet asked you, if I might translate it like the others.² Only I had some idea that it would be very nice for me to translate it, as I have translated your first paper on veg. mould (Trans Geol Soc. 2. Ser. Vol. 5. 1837), which, together with the Geology of the Falkland Islands on the connection of certain volcanic phenomena in S. America, on the distribution of erratic boulders, on the old glaciers of Caernarvonshire and on atmospheric dust, forms the 2. part of the 12. Volume of our Edition of your collected works under the title “Smaller Geological Papers.”³ But it is so perfectly self evident that you may dispose of the book, that I almost regret having told you of my idea to translate it.

My health is, I am sorry to say, just now rather bad. After I had overcome a very hard cold in October and November I worked too hard (Annual Record for the Zool. Station at Naples and the exceedingly troublesome and sometimes highly diplomatic correspondence with the Reporters and with Dohrn himself, who is one of the finest and heartiest fellows I ever knew and a friend of some twenty years standing, but who deals with all the details from a bird’s eye stand point and not from the only rational one, the practical, who always goes ahead with new plans and by this overthrows the old ones.)⁴ Now I am again short of nervous force, and the worst of it, I got in this so called spring a bronchitis and tracheitis, that I shall be obliged to put off work and to change the air for 10 or 12 days, just to keep the engine going till the long vacations.⁵ Of course I am somewhat depressed, but I trust I shall overcome it.

Again and again my heartfelt thanks.

Believe me | Yours ever sincerely | J. Victor Carus