Summary

Wishes to visit Down.

Summary

Has received all the proof-sheets of first volume and of second volume to p. 168 [Descent].

Leaves for Paris tomorrow.

Summary

Since March has been living in Heidelberg, where his wife is studying mathematics and physics.

The Russian translation of Variation has been printed in his absence; he will bring a copy to Down if he receives one from Russia.

Summary

Reports on the wholesale murder in Paris.

His wife, Sofya Kovalevsky, is working for her examinations.

VOK is studying embryology.

Alexander has left Suez and is now in Jaffa.

Summary

Will translate passages as CD requests [see 7735].

Bitter at Prussian militarism.

Summary

A. J. Gaudry is one of few supporters of Darwinism in Paris.

The climate is so hostile that Kovalevsky must mitigate his views so as not to irritate the French.

Working on Anchitherium, which he believes is intermediate between Palaeotherium and the horse.

His brother-in-law has been arrested.

Summary

Leaving England.

Asks CD to send four sheets [of Descent proofs].

Summary

The first half of vol. 2 of Variation is printed.

News of his marriage.

Sends portraits of Russian scientists.

Hopes CD will write his book on man and asks permission to translate it.

Moving to Germany for two or three years.

Summary

VOK and his wife walked 25 miles through the Prussian lines to Paris.

Natural history collections undamaged by bombardment, but Edmond Hébert and A. J. Gaudry fear Prussians will rob them.

Several sheets of Descent lost as they passed through the lines.

Summary

His translation and printing of Variation will be completed in two months.

His work on a relief committee for Russia’s agricultural distress has forced him to travel 1000 miles in the last week.

Plans to visit CD in July.

Summary

Russian Expression has sold nearly 2000 copies.

Plans to come to England to study collections of vertebrate fossils from the Chalk. This will complement his work in the south of France.

Summary

Progress on his Russian translation of Descent.

Alexander Kovalevsky is at Tor in Sinai, where C. G. Ehrenberg was in 1827.

Has CD seen Ernst Haeckel’s new book [Biologische Studien (1870–7)]?

Summary

Paris is in the hands of "brigands and socialists", but one grows accustomed to sporadic bombardment,

and VOK is peacefully studying invertebrate palaeontology collections.

Reports on Paul Gervais’ successful cross between a Triton and an axolotl.

Summary

Thanks VOK for the present of A. E. Brehm’s Illustrirtes Thierleben [1864–7].

The woodcuts will do admirably [for Variation].