My dear Sir!

Having perused in certain Polish Newspaper the repport of your work, entitled “The descent of Man & selection in Relation to sex,” where you were pleased to put a Monkey for our Ancestor, I take the liberty to communicate to you my observations of the same matter which occupied my attention from many years.—² I do not believe nor Moses’ tradition contained in the Old Testament about the creation of Paradise with Adam & Eve & fruit trees with other nonsenses, & in the punishement of human race by deluge of earth &C.— I pretend³ that before the Deluge, which was perhaps not once, as it was necessary to strengthen the Glob by the force of fire & watter, the human Being was not created on the earth, although fishes & other animals were in existance, as we find a prove of it in high mountains & pittes which formerly beeing shores of the sea, when watter was exhausted by the pressure of the atmospere & the earth having been petrified in great stones or rocks, we find in them the bones of fishes, oysters, & other animals even of those which are now not in existance, but never of a human bone.—

Even the present Islands England & Ireland when they were cut of from the Continent by the Pas de Calais,⁴ were unpeopled & were during the inondation not entirely covered with watter, as the prove is that there were the woolves in living state to our times when they were destroyed by poison since 1835 to 1840 & now you have not one wolf, which cannot arive from the Continent.⁵

My opinion is that when the land was prepared to support the human Being, the Almighty had trown the human seeds ower the earth, which they grew accordingly to the climate.— And as a prove that we do not procid from one source we find on human form of different climates the differences of skin colours as well as of a construction of our muscles & bones.— The Africans are black, but our professors, the Clergy, who supported the Bible having not any reasonable ⁠⟨⁠fou⁠⟩⁠ndation, pretended: that the black colour of African natives was the consequence of the Sun, while the same black men removed to American or European climates produce the issue of the same black colour.—

When America was discovered by Columbus⁶ the people found there were of copper colour & of different form of skull.— The same fact we may find to the present time over all the world.— When Spaniards had destroyed the original Inhabitants of America & that Country was peopled by Europeans & Africans, the new Inhabitants had not chaged their colour.— Some 30 years ago at the London politechnic Institution a certain Lecturer, whose name I do not recollect, brought from Pultava (in Russia) a certain number of head sculs of Slavonian & Swedish bodies, who were entered⁷ there in 1703 after the Battle when Charles XII was defited by Russians.—⁸ And he, the Lecturer before great audiance had shown to us the difference between Slavonian, Swedish & English Sculs.—

And although we are the Children of one God, we differe amongst ourselves in languige as well as in political and religious ideas, & the last we confound so much with a politic that we differing in religion became inplacable enemis to each other, & this object in the past time was the reason of sever persecution as it may be seen in Cantu’s work lately published,⁹ where we find that when the Astronomy began to assume its observation by the Polish Catholic priest, Copernicus, at Torun in Poznania,¹⁰ who on the tradition of Pitagores deposited in the Athenian Museum some 3 centuries before Chist,¹¹ began to observe the movement of the earth & communicated his discoveries to the learned People at the University of Padua & Crakow, two Catholic Teologians: Augustinus & Cosmias¹² condemned that theory & described, that our glob is a quadrangel with very high walls, on the sumit of which there was an arch, on which the Almighty put two lanterns, one to illuminate the world in the daytime & the other in the night, & whoever would be of different opinion, “let him be condemned”.— The pope reigning at that time approved that opinion, appointed Sacra Inquisitia, called those two fools the holy men, & the progress of astronomy was prohibited.—¹³

Now we can see & freelly discus such questions for which in 1666 in Smithfield Market in London so many thousands perished on the block.—¹⁴

If you encourage me by your answer, or perhaps by sending me your work to peruse, I should try to communicate to you great many of my observations, of which perhaps you will be able to make any use.—

Having nothing to do with the English language for many years, I forgot it, but I hope that you will understend me.—

Please to send me a direction of M^r. Josiah Parkes the Ingenier, or perhaps of any Pole, if they are living yet.—

I have the honour to remain Your | Most Obd^t. Humble Servant | Major Ignatius Jackowski

M⁠⟨⁠r⁠⟩⁠ Darwing. | The Author of the Descent of Man.— At John Murrey’s¹⁵ | London.—