Alphons Engelhardt sends many greetings to Charles Darwin.

No doubt you will be amazed to receive a letter from a man completely unknown to you, a lowly student of physics, and written in a language that has now long been considered among the number of ‘dead languages’.

Allow me to explain this novel surprise to you: as I have already said above, I am a student, and in fact a student of the discipline of natural science; because of this I have studied your writings, and it is with ardent enthusiasm that I have studied them and studied them again! These things being so, you thoroughly see and completely understand—particularly, since I understand well enough how true your theory is, how confirmed by relevant arguments—that I cannot refrain from asking for a few small lines, written by the hand of him who is a man so perceptive in investigating natural science, and whose intelligence, both most expert at conjecturing and drawing conclusions, and most acute in observing and investigating, has had outstanding success in tracking down and searching into the very origins of things. However—although I had tried long and hard to obtain some lines written by your hand, for which I am afire with very great desire—since I had not achieved that which I had desired, I had no other option but to ask you yourself.

Because the English language is unknown to me, I have written in Latin, hoping that you perhaps will think this pleading letter not unworthy of a kindly answer.

It was right for me to seek from you, or rather to beseech you, that—because of the veneration and zeal, with which I honour you—you should pardon these immodest prayers and treat me with indulgence.

May you indulge me, exalted man, and may you make me happy by honouring me with a kind reply written in your own hand.

Farewell!

In Russia, Dorpat in Livonia.³ Altstrasse, N^o. 5. | 15th April