To Edward Cresy¹   [before May 1848?]²

My dear Sir,

I should have written sooner to have thanked you for your kindness, had I not been absent from home for a couple of days. I feel very much obliged to you for taking the trouble to write me so full and clear an account of the change in quality of the wool and I am very glad to have seen it. I am quite prepared to credit the entire statement of Mr. Russell,³ though, owing to the effects of a hot climate on wool having been in some instances much exaggerated, some authors will not admit that climate has any perceptible action. Changes in the same individual certainly seem unusual, nevertheless there is apparently one quite authentic case of an English cat left for a season in East Africa, which became covered with the finest wool or down and was hardly recognizable by its old master, Capt. Owen.⁴

I have never seen so detailed a statement of change effected in England on the same individual as in your letter.

I sincerely hope your health is quite re-established; I was very sorry to hear how seriously ill you have been. I presume that you have left Paris; if you should happen to go there again, I wish you would kindly inform me, and I would beg you to consult a work for me on sheep, (which would not take you more than $\frac{1}{2}$ an hour) which I can not otherwise see.⁵

Pray remember me kindly to Mr. & Mrs. Cresy, whom I hope are well, and believe me, my dear Sir,

Yours sincerely, | C. Darwin.