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To Charles Lyell   28 [June 1859]

Down Bromley Kent

28th

My dear Lyell

It is not worth while troubling you, but my conscience is uneasy at having forgotten to thank you for your Etna,1 which seems to me a magnificent contribution to volcanic Geology & I shd. think you might now rest on your oars in this department.—2

As soon as ever I can get a copy of my Book ready in some six weeks or two months’ time, it shall be sent you; & if you approve of it, even to a moderate extent, it will be the highest satisfaction which I shall ever receive for an amount of labour which no one will ever appreciate.—

Yours most truly | C. Darwin

1
C. Lyell 1858. CD received a copy of the abstract of this paper in July 1858 (see letter to Charles Lyell, 18 July [1858]). The volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in which the full paper was printed was not published until 1859. CD’s copy of the Philosophical Transactions is in the Darwin Library–CUL, but a copy of the separate reprint of Lyell’s paper has not been found.
2
CD and Lyell had discussed Lyell’s theory of the origin of volcanic cones in great detail during the years 1847–57. See Correspondence vols. 4, 5, and 6.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.3 ever receive] ‘ever’ interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2473,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2473