To M. E. Lyell   [24 October 1849]1

Down. Farnborough. Kent.

Wednesday night.

Dear Lady Lyell.

I am going to beg a very, very great favour of you— it is to translate one Page (& the title) of either Danish or Swedish or some such language.—2 I know not to whom else to apply & I am quite dreadfully interested about the Barnacles therin described.— Does Lyell know Loven, or his address & title? for I must write to him; if Lyell knows him I wd use his name as introduction; Loven I know by name as a first rate naturalist.3

Accidentally I forgot to give you the “Footsteps”4 which I now return, having ordered a copy for myself.—

I sincerely hope the “Craters of Denudation”5 prosper; I pin my faith to this view. Please tell Sir C. Lyell that outside the crater-like mountains at St. Jago, even throughout a distance of 2 or 3 miles there has been much denudation of the older Volcanic rocks contemporaneous with those of the ring of mountains.6

I hope that you will not find the page troublesome & that you will forgive me asking you.

Pray believe me | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin.

We all young & old are in a very flourishing condition.

1
The Wednesday before the letter to Albany Hancock, [29 or 30 October 1849], in which CD refers to having received Mary Lyell’s translation.
2
Like her sisters, Joanna and Leonora Horner, Mary Lyell was evidently an accomplished linguist. CD had asked for a copy of Lovén’s paper (Lovén 1844) in his letter to Albany Hancock, 29 September [1849].
5
Charles Lyell’s paper on this subject was read to the Geological Society on 19 December 1849 (C. Lyell 1850a).
6
St Jago (S\ {a}o Tiago), Cape Verde Islands. See Volcanic islands, pp. 1–22 and C. Lyell 1850a, p. 211.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1266,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1266