My dear M^r Rich

It is always a pleasure to me to receive a letter from you. I am very sorry to hear that you have been more troubled than usual with your old complaint.¹ Anyone who looked at you would think that you had passed through life with few evils, & yet you have had an unusual amount of suffering. As a turnkey remarked in one of Dickens’ novels “Life is a rum thing”.² As for myself I have been better than usual until about a fortnight ago, when I had a cough, & this pulled me down & made me miserable to a strange degree; but my dear old wife insisted on my taking Quinine, & though I have very little faith in medicine, this, I think, has done me much good.³ Well we are both so old that we must expect some troubles: I shall be 73 on Feb. 12^th.

I have been glad to hear about the pine-leaves & you are the first man who has confirmed my account that they are drawn in by the base with a very few exceptions.⁴ With respect to your Wandsworth case I think that if I had heard of it, before publishing, I would have said nothing about the ledges; for the Grisedale case, mentioned in my book & observed whilst I was correcting the proof-sheets, made me feel rather doubtful. Yet the Corniche case shows the worms at least aid in making the ledges. Nevertheless I wish I had said nothing about the confounded ledges.⁵ The success of this worm-book has been almost laughable. I have, however, been plagued with an endless stream of letters on the subject; most of them very foolish & enthusiastic, but some containing good fact, which I have used in correcting yesterday the “Sixth Thousandth”.⁶

Your friend George’s work about the viscous state of the earth & tides & the moon has lately been attracting much attention, & all the great judges think highly of the work.⁷ He intends to try for the Plumian Professorship of Mathematicks & Nat. Philosophy at Cambridge, which is a good & honourable post of about 800^£ a year. I think that he will get it, when Challis is dead & he is very near his end; but G. says he does not care much about it, as it will interfere with his own original work.⁸ He has all the great men Sir W. Thompson, Adams, Stokes &c on his side.—⁹ He has lately been chief examiner for the mathematical Tripos, which was tremendous work; & the day before yesterday he started from Southampton for a 5 weeks tour to Jamaica for complete rest to see the Blue Mountains & escape the rigour of the early spring.¹⁰ I believe that George will some day be a great scientific swell.

The war-office has just offered Leonard a post in the Government survey at Southampton & very civilly told him to go down & inspect the place & accept or not as he liked. So he went down, but has decided that it w^d not be worth his while to accept, as it w^d. entail his giving up his expedition (on which he had been ordered) to Queensland in Australia to observe the Transit of Venus.¹¹

Dear old William at Southampton has not been very well, but is now better. He has had too much work—a willing horse is always overworked—& all the arrangements for receiving the Brit. Assoc. there this summer have been thrown on his shoulders, other idle men having shirked the work.—¹² But good Heavens, what a deal I have written about my sons. I have had some hard work this autumn with the microscope; but this is over, & I have only to write out two papers for Linnean Society.—¹³ We have had a good many visitors; but none who w^d have interested you, except probably M^rs. Ritchie, the daughter of Thackeray, who is a most amusing & pleasant person.—¹⁴

I have not seen Huxley for some time, but my wife heard this morning from M^rs. Huxley, who wrote from her bed, with a bad account of herself & of several of her children; but none I hope are at all dangerously ill.¹⁵ Farewell my kind good friend— Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Many thanks about the picture, which if I survive you & this I do not expect, shall be hung in my study as a perpetual memento of you.—¹⁶