My dear Mr Darwin

I received your very kind note and the auto. for Mr Parkes who was delighted with it.¹ I took the opportunity to remind him that there were 150£ unexpended for exploration of caves &c & he promised to let me spend it my own way   if he does, some fresh discoveries may be looked for.² I shall send a man to Queensland to dig only the classification can be done here.— With regard to the flowers of the Eucalypti I can only say that if not bees, at least wasps, some flies, a hundred and more different kind of beetles orthoptera, Homoptera,³ &c &c visit the flowers as long as there is pollen to be seen   I went out on purpose a few days ago and found the low dwarf Eucalypti near Long Bay⁴ covered with all sorts of insects though the flowers were withered but then there were not many bushes together— the insects of course prefer the fresh flowers but are also plentiful on dry ones.—

Every 5 or 6 years we have a good season for insects and were it not for the manifold duties which keep me in Sydney I would be always out observing.— I shall ask Mr Masters⁵ my colleague who is a first class Entomologist and a professional gardener to try Long Bay again tomorrow and bring the flowers and what is on them in the shape of insects   I gave your original note to Dr Bennett and he has promised to stir some of his correspondents up to observe.—⁶

The wasps are more plentiful than other creatures on the flowers than the Buprestidæ Melolonthas and Cetonias various longicorns &c just as I send you a bottle full by book post.—⁷

I hope you will receive everything safe & I hope also that you will not put yourself out in writing to me   Only let me tell you what I know or have observed and dont think for a moment that I shall get lazy if you do not write. I am just now busy to reconstruct a Diprotodon and hope to convince my friends and enemies that the animal was a Phalanger and just between the Native Bear and Wombat.⁸

I got his legs, shoulder & pelvic girdle all right and mounted and am at the vertebræ & ribs now.—

more next mail   I shall take your advice & write the book—⁹ but I dare not speak out as I like to, or I will have been Curator “for the longest time”, because there is no greater offence as when you hurt a mans vanity—and I assure you the Vanity of our men of science—or better Collectors of specimens and accumulators of hard names—is great in proportion as their pursuit is useless. Original observations are out of the question with such men, they are mere Collectors and are the greatest drawback to the success of this Institution because by their constant interference and insatiable desire to possess everything themselves they would have long ago disgusted a less stouter heart than mine.—¹⁰

There is nothing like hoping for better things and with my best wishes for your speedy recovery I remain | dear Mr Darwin | Yours very | sincerely | Gerard Krefft

P.S. | I bought a ♀ pig from New Guinea which after about 3 months time presented me with 3 young;—one striped like our common european wild pig the other two black with white feet; one—the boar—has 2 brown stripes on the loins (the fully brown striped & the plain black one are females.—) This pig is very intelligent follows me like a dog up and down stairs & often scratched at the library-door for hours till I let her in. I put her into an enclosure and after a few attempts to get out she made a clear jump through a small window about 2 feet square and four feet 6 inch off the ground. She did not cut herself but hurt her head internally and bleeding dreadfully rushed down the back stairs into the basement then up another flight of steps, which is a very steep one, and into my room snorting and trying to draw my attention to her   Of course I put her into comfortable quarters and had to feed her for about a month with my hands after which she got better and I allowed her to run about   she never destroyed anything, but a few days before her “confinement” she pulled all my Bananas down ripped them into shreads cut a young fig tree up and behaved like a cracy pig.— I thought it was going to rain hard & as the damage was done I did not disturb her. Judge of my astonishment when I found 3 little ones in the Bannana litter the next day.— The family is getting on well.—

Now I believe that this pig was lined by a common boar either in N. Guinea or on board H.MS. Basilisk—¹¹ if so it proves that the Common wild & the present N. Guinea pig interbreed and are probably varieties of each other only.— The skulls of both animals are much alike, but the last molar is larger in the Sus scrofa.¹² The hair resembles that of the wild boar though it is much thinner; there is also a white patch along the snout.— The pig is fond of all womankind & has probably been suckled by a woman a common occurance in New Guinea.—

GK

The young had canines half an inch long on the first day already

GK

Ch Darwin Esq FRS | Down, Beckenham