My dear Sir,

I am much obliged for your last letter, the justice of which I perfectly see; but I am afraid I must have expressed myself too strongly as I had no wish for you to claim so much from your own works as you appear to have inferred.¹ However your Preface shall remain unaltered & perhaps I may take upon myself (of course with your approval) to claim a little more for you than appears directly from the work in hand.

I have made considerable progress with the translation— the first Essay (“Seasonal Dimorphism”) is nearly completed & a specimen is now with Messrs. Sampson Low & Marston for their approval before getting the affair finally settled with them.² Dr. Weismann has been so good as to look up another lithographer for me at Würzburg who will do the plates (under Weismann’s supervision) at a much lower price.³

Might I so far trespass on your time as to ask your opinion whether the German word “phyletische” so frequently used by Weismann might be Anglicised into “phyletic” without “treading on the corns” of the philologists. I like it better than “innate” or “inherent”— The German word is new so far as the dictionaries are concerned.⁴

There is one other matter which I wished to ask you about & which is really the chief “raison d’être” of the present letter.

A friend of mine, the Principal of a School at Bayswater, is getting up a course of lectures to which I & several gentlemen are going to contribute, but we have a preponderance of physical science & I am anxious to secure a biological lecture— does your son Mr. Francis Darwin care about this kind of thing?⁵ One lecture of about an hour’s duration is all that is required— “Self-defense among plants” would do admirably. The lectures are on Tuesday evenings at 8 o’clock. I can promise an appreciative audience & a fee of two guineas, & I shall be happy to give any personal assistance that may be required. Seeing the vast state of ignorance that still prevails among “the people” such a concession on the part of your son would be conferring a great benefit. I should be grateful if you would kindly lay the matter before him.

I trust the severity of the weather has not influenced your health.

Yours faithfully, | R. Meldola.