To James Smith of Jordanhill¹   28 January [1848]

My dear Sir

I hope that you will excuse the liberty I take in asking you a great favour. I have been employed for the last year & shall be for, I suppose, the next two years on a Monograph, anatomical & systematic on the whole class of Cirripedia. In the last number of the Geolog. Journal I see that you found in Portugal at least six species of Balanus.² Will you entrust me with your specimens to describe,³ that is if I find I can make any hand at the fossil species of which I have already got some, M^r Lyell, & M^r Stutchbury having placed their collections at my disposal. I shall, however, require to keep them sometime & it is absolutely indispensable for me to break up or make section of at least one specimen of each. The characters, hitherto generally used from external aspect, I find, are usually quite valueless; & the internal structure of shell must be in each case examined. In some genera, as far as I yet see, the included animal alone offers distinguishable characters; so that I have some fears about the fossil species, but I mean to try at them.

My friends have been most generous in placing collections at my disposal. M^r Stutchbury has sent me the whole of his magnificent collection & M^r Cuming has placed his at my disposal. Did you collect any recent species on the coast of Portugal & especially at Madeira; if you have any from these quarters or elsewhere (especially if in Spirits) & would entrust them to me, I should feel very grateful.—

I wish to see the species from as many quarters as possible on account of their Geographical Range. I sh^d be much obliged for any information, on habits frequency &c depths, abundance at bottom of sea in dead state &c, which you would kindly take the trouble to supply me with.

Pray believe me, my dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | C. Darwin

I must express to you, how delighted I was with y⁠⟨⁠ou⁠⟩⁠r paper on Malta;⁴ if I was asked for the most striking fact ever discovered, exhibiting the changes of level between land & water & the power of denudation, I should certainly refer to your old roads leading under the sea & over the brink of precipices:⁵ such facts seize the imagination with astonishment. It is my belief that if you were confined a prisoner in a Square in London, you would find some demonstrative proof of the level having changed!