Dear M^r Darwin

I went into town yesterday with the intention of writing to you, asking whether you had heard anything from D^r. Krause, thinking that, if your book was to appear early in November, he was running matters rather close.— To my great satisfaction I found his packets waiting for me.—¹ He has made very few marks on the proofs, & of these two or three are indications of misprints or omitted letters which somehow escaped my notice.— In the first page, however, where it is said that your ancestor “deserves considerable credit in connection with the history of the Darwinian theory” he suggests that instead of “history” we should say “præhistory” a word which is hardly admissible, & the only way that I see of getting in the idea intended to be conveyed by it, would be a complete alteration of the construction of the sentence.— But I don’t think it is at all necessary,— the history of anything may surely be held to include an account of those things which led up to its full development, just as we used to read about ancient Britons (& admire their pictures) in the old school histories of England, & about Romulus & Remus & their somewhat eccentric nursing in those of Rome.—²

D^r Krause has bothered me dreadfully with a postscript to his letter in which he says:— “Mir ist auf Seite 30 die Schreibweise “charus” aufgefallen; ist das altenglische Orthographie oder Druckfehler?”³ Now I can find nothing like “charus” on the thirthieth page of the proof, nor indeed anywhere else, for I have just read through the whole in search of it.— From his reference to “altenglische Orthographie” it ought to occur in some quoted passage, but I can see nothing like it.—

One of his marks leads to a query, to settle which I must refer to Buffon,⁴ which I will do tomorrow morning & then at once send in the proofs for correction.— Of course I had better see revises.—

Believe me | Yours very truly | W. S. Dallas

I return Krause’s letter,— you had already settled the “parent” question.⁵