From Francis Darwin to H. E. Darwin [22 January 1870]

Dear Retta

Many thank for for sweet farewell, which I ought to have answered long ago. Now I have got home to this beastly blue ink & I can not express anything in it. I am going out beagling with Henry Lubbock tomorrow unless () keeps his () how to much () () It is a grt pity werent here we had a jolly biling of intellect, & their names are they not written (your) ma's letter? Swinhoe is a sweet man but looks awfully seedy, Gunther talks the true Garmen professor language, he puzzled the governo by talking about the trimāfal forests, & about the töphin. but he is a very sweet man. Pouter & (Skin) have gon hunting to Knockholt– (a) skeleton & a () rhinoseros both in top boots riding respectively on a cart horse & a cameleopard, the cameleopard seems (warry) dicky at starting

I have nothing more at present to state, but will drivel some more in the evening.

The two boys have just come back having chased a fox as the psalmist Pouter says even unto the 3rd & 4th generation I find that the medical lectures begin so early that I must put my jaded brain into harness again, almost at once; one consolation Nat Sc isn't such a [(heavy]) country as Mathematics I have no news to tell about the Waggins I have given Seattygag to M^rs Greaves for good it has beun a (case) of vice & misery, by worrying M^rsG's cap & a () all to bits, & killing a neighbours cat with the assistance of some low friend. These are some depraved () who spend their leisure moments in laying poisoned baits for cats, & the Greveses are apid for Waggins. I have not dared to divulge her baptismal name so they have called her Luce

Yours dear Retta | F D