From Francis Galton   12 November 1879

My dear Darwin

It was with the greatest pleasure that I received & read your biography of D^r.Darwin¹

What a marvel of condensation it is, and how firmly you lay hold of facts that had long been distorted and ram them home into their right places.

The biography seems to me quite a new order of writing, so scientifically accurate in its treatment. The many passages you quote are curiously modern in their conception and (Excuse this horrid paper which folds the wrong way) simple in expression, (considering his average style)   I still can’t quite appreciate the flow in his mind which made it possible for him to write so very hypothetically for the most part, while at the same time his strictly scientific gifts were of so high an order. There seems to be an unexplained residuum, even after what you quote from him about the value of hypotheses.—² I see you have mentioned me twice, very kindly—but too flatteringly for my deserts.³ How you are down upon M^rs Schimmelpenninck & Miss Seward.!⁴

I now, with fear & trembling lest you should finally vote me a confirmed bore, venture to enclose copies of some queries I have just had printed & am circulating, after having obtained by personal enquiries a good deal of very curious information on the points in question.⁵ I venture to ask you more particularly, because the “visualising” faculty of D^r. Darwin appears to have been remarkable & of a peculiar order & it is possible that your’s through inheritance may also be similarly peculiar. It is perfectly marvellous how the faculty varies, & moreover some very able men intellectually do not possess it   They do their work by words. I am in correspondence, with Max Müller about this, who is an outré “nominalist”.⁶

Very sincerely y^rs | Francis Galton.

Thanks for Bowditch (children’s growth), which you kindly sent me.⁷