My dear Sir

I received your Letter dated the 2^d Inst on the eve of my starting for this place, and was truly sorry to observe that your health had imposed on you the necessity of going away for a change of air.¹ I hope you have derived the much to be desired benefit from that change, and are now again returned to the scene of your labours in fit frame to pursue them with that ardour & success which have hitherto so distinguished them. I find it necessary too to make a change occasionally, and here, in a solitude, I can recruit at leisure, tho’ as Chairman of a Parochial Board here I am not without some smatter of Business to vary the quiet monotony of Country life²

But here I am away from my laboratory—and at a distance from it I find myself unfitted to resume the all engrossing subjects to which your Letters allude. But depend upon my aiding you in all I can in the field you are now upon where brighter laurels than have yet been gathered await you

Singularly, the frenchman M. Neumann,³—your information as to whom obliges & gratifies me much,—put that question to me you do—whether I knew an instance of seed from a weeping tree reproducing a weeper? I must make the same answer to you I did to him— I am unacquainted with such a result & never myself tried the experiment

I shall set to work on the experiments you alluded to—and my Gardener at Hay Lodge writes me of the arrival of a hamper of plants from London containing some of the subjects⁴

Meantime with fervent wishes for your better health | I am | yours most faithy | I. anderson Henry

I return to Hay Lodge next Wednesday

Charles Darwin Esq^re. F.R.S. &c.