From Walter Leaf to Horace Darwin 5 April 1874

My dear Bounder,

Many thanks for your letter and congratulations. I am extremely sorry to hear that you have been seedy. Could you manage to come over here for a day or two? Say next Sunday? We should be vy glad if you would.

I am just in the middle of the "Descent of Man"; and very interested, I need hardly say. I am afraid I may have shocked you by confessing to ^H[illeg] not having read it before: but I seem to have had no time whatever for such reading for a long time till now.

Those d—d medals dont come out for another fortnight; it strikes me that the Examiners are cursedly lazy about them.

Have you been hearing from K? I have just written to try and persuade him to come over here in the course of a week or so. The worst of it is that I have to read Family Prayers now, as my father is ill; and I am afraid I shall laugh so if you and K were here.

I will certainly try to pay you a visit at the works some time this Vac.

Yours ever | Walter Leaf