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To A. C. Ramsay   23 February [1860]1

Down Bromley Kent

Feby. 23d

Dear Ramsay

I must write a line to say how sincerely rejoiced I am to hear that your health is nearly reestablished. I remember Sir H. Holland telling me that a gradual & slow recovery of health was always better than a sudden jump.2 I am extremely much pleased to hear that you like my Book. I look at every geological believer of the mutation of species as a most important gain.— There will be a long & stiff battle before such doctrines are generally admitted. The progress of subject will now depend far more on such men as yourself than on anything I can do.—

You put, as it seems to me, the general arguments against the eternal immutability of species with great clearness.—

With very sincere thanks for your note. | Believe me | Yours very truly | C. Darwin

I hope to be in London in a day or two & will call at Museum for chance of seeing you.—3

1
Dated by the relationship to the letter from A. C. Ramsay, 21 February 1860.
2
Henry Holland, a distant relative of CD’s, was a prominent London physician.
3
The Museum of Practical Geology, located in Jermyn Street, London, was run by the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Ramsay was the local director for Great Britain and a lecturer at the Government School of Mines. Emma Darwin’s diary records that CD went to London on 27 February 1860.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2711,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2711