This letter fragment was published by Francis in his Life and letters of Charles Darwin (LL 3: 237), as showing a hint of CD’s views on the connection being made in Germany between Darwinism and Socialism. Francis traced the connection to comments made by Rudolf Virchow in an address to the assembly of German naturalists and physicians in Munich in 1877 (Virchow 1877, p. 12). On the interrelationship of Darwinism and Socialism in late-nineteenth-century Germany, see Kelly 1981, especially pp. 58–60, and Weikart 1999. See also letter from Carl Kraus, 8 January 1879.