From Arthur Nicols   10 November 1875

My dear Sir.

I am infinitely obliged to you for finding my poor MS.¹ It really was not worth troubling you for a moment: since I, at 35 years of age, ought to have ample time to repeat everything. The tone of your letter distresses me beyond measure, and since this is probably the last letter which will pass between us (for I will not add one grain to your labours) I will speak my whole mind. I am only one of many thousands of men who have taken from you the line of investigation which should lead to the true understanding of this complex life of man and the animals & plants from which he must have sprung.

You, in what you term “old age” have given no doubt the true solution of the case of the rats with the leaden pipe.² They heard the trickling water (as you say) no doubt, and bored into the lead until they reached it. But this testifies to their intelligence and experimental knowledge, I venture to believe.

This solution of the circumstance is due to you, and I can see no other— I have the perforated pipe here, and I shall deposit it in one of the museums of the country. Perhaps the B.M. would not accept it.

It may interest you to know that I am trying in my small way to bring the past of our earth within the ken of the populace by a series of articles on the Tertiary vertebrata in comparison with living (and perhaps representative) forms—for “Frazer” or “Blackwood”.³

Let me subscribe myself—perhaps for the last time— yours faithfully & affectionately, | R. Arthur Nicols.