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To Emil Holub   23 January 1882

Down, Beckenham, | Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)

Jan 23d 1882—

Dear Sir

I received a few days ago your very kind card & this morning the handsome present of the 2d. Edit of your fine book of Travels. I thank you sincerely for this gift, & shall be extremely glad to add this work to my Library, though I read it with much interest, shortly after the 1st Edit: appeared.—1 Permit me, as an old man, to tell you how heartily I admired your noble zeal for Science, which led you several times under such difficulties to expose yourself to much hardship & danger for the sake of adding to our knowledge of nature.2

Believe me that you have my true good wishes for your future success & happiness, & I remain, Dear Sir, | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin

1
The card has not been found. A copy of the second edition of Seven years in South Africa (Holub 1881b) is in the Darwin Library–Down. The first edition was also published in 1881 (Holub 1881a).
2
Holub described various dangers during his travels, such as evading a lion that attacked the camp at night (Holub 1881a, 1: 27–9).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13641,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13641