My dear Lyell

I am very glad to hear about Owen; not but what I fully expect many & bitter sneers from him.—

I am glad to hear that you used the same line of argument as Spencer’s to the Bishop: it seems to me much the safest & truest.—²

I cannot help wondering at your zeal about my Book. I declare to Heaven you seem to care as much about my Book, as I do myself.— You have no right to be so eminently unselfish! I have taken off my spit a letter of Ramsays; as every geologist convert, I think very important.³ By the way I saw some time ago letter from H. D. Rogers to Huxley in which he goes very far with us.—⁴ I send also first page of 2^d letter from Bronn; showing that he is thinking more about the Book. It seems he is going to translate it himself. The rest of letter was only doubt about meaning of unusual English terms.—⁵

I had letter today from Sir W. Jardine,—strongly opposed to my views—but his attack on my ornithological accuracy has frittered into absolutely nothing.—⁶ He says Andrew Murray has just read Paper to Royal Soc^y. versus my views.,—I presume brought in somehow incidentally.—⁷

I do not know whether the degraded flowers of Aspicarpa fruit, but in some other cases the degraded flowers are more fertile than the perfect.—⁸

I can easily believe in your criticisms on part of H. Spencer’s work: I have just read his Essay on population, in which he discusses life & publishes such dreadful hypothetical rubbish on the nature of reproduction.⁹

My dear Lyell | Yours ever gratefully | C. Darwin