My dear Darwin,

With this I am sending to Kew for you a little specimen of a plant which I think will interest you— It’s beauty will certainly please you.¹

My friend M^r Glenie will be delighted, I am sure, to hear from you.² He tells me he has a pair of the black-boned fowls ♂ & ♀ both white & that he hopes to succeed in raising a brood of chickens from them. M^r. Layard’s specimens, I should judge from his note, were all smoke coloured.³

I have perused your new Book with the greatest possible interest, and am not aghast at your Pangenesis Theory.⁴ Indeed it is not at all inconsistent with my own views given in some preliminary remarks to a little paper on Diatoms published in the Ann. of Nat. Hist for March 1848.⁵ You, however, put the idea into a more definite shape, making quality depend upon innumerable highly organised atoms or cells. One may have an infinitessimally small quantity of a liquid containing many sorts of chrystallizable substances each of which would chrystallise under proper conditions—so why not of highly organised substances each ready to pronounce itself under favorable circumstances? I cannot see why—

Your’s always | most sincerely | G. H. K. Thwaites.