It would be a pleasure to see "the first enunciator of the theory of Natural Selection" but his health makes it impossible. Hopes to come to London soon and would like to arrange an interview with PM if he is staying more than a week.

CD is too ill to write.

As for natural selection, he is more faithful to PM’s "own original child" than PM is himself. To illustrate, CD relates the metaphor of an architect selecting well-shaped stones and rejecting ill-shaped ones. [See Variation 2: 431.]