Ɛpsilon

To Annals and Magazine of Natural History   [December 1846]

Down Farnborough Kent

Saturday

My dear Sir

I fear the enclosed is longer than you wished, but a page in Annals swallows up much M.S. I cd. not make it shorter to do justice to work, or to make my little notice1 at all interesting.

I have marked one page for extraction,2 without which my remarks wd be unintelligible.—. I hope you will not think my notice too laudatory; it expresses my most honest conviction after careful perusal; You can alter it as you like, but I rather hope you won’t shorten much. I have inserted some critical objections; as too much praise defeats its end.— Heaven knows whether this notice will suit you,—but I hope so.

Yours very faithfully | C. Darwin

P.S. | If you do not much object, I shd be very glad to correct press, as my style is often very faulty.

1
CD’s unsigned review of George Robert Waterhouse’s A natural history of the Mammalia vol. 1, Marsupiata (Waterhouse 1846–8). It appeared in the January 1847 issue of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 19: 53–6 (see Collected papers 1: 214–17).
2
CD refers, not to his manuscript, but to p. 537 of Waterhouse’s volume, which is quoted in the review. CD’s copy of Waterhouse 1846–8 is in the Darwin Library–CUL, in the original parts, the earliest numbers of which are dated 1845.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.1 marked] interl
2.6 you] before omitted point
4.1 not] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1000,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1000