To S. P. Woodward   15 May [1856]1

Down

15 May

[Returning thanks for the Supplement to his correspondent’s Manual of the Mollusca,2 eloquently praising the book and Woodward’s labours in the cause of science]

‘What an amount of labour is condensed in your little volume! & how marvellously cheap.— I fully believe & hope that you will reap the only reward worth having, the consciousness that you have done good service to the cause of Science.’

1
The date as given in Sotheby’s catalogue. It is corroborated by the publication date of part three of Woodward 1851–6 (see n. 2, below).
2
The third part of Woodward’s Manual of the Mollusca (Woodward 1851–6), entitled ‘Supplement to the rudimentary treatise on recent fossil shells’, was published in May 1856 (Publishers’ Circular, 2 June 1856, p. 227). A copy of the entire work is in the Darwin Library–CUL. The third part, covering the geographical distribution of shells, is heavily annotated.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1875,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1875