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To Henry Holland   31 January [1862]1

6. Queen Anne St

Jan 31st

My dear Sir Henry

I am very much obliged to you for having lent me your Essay, which I now return.2 It has pleased me much to see that our conclusions agree closely in most respects & indeed are identical in some respects, though I approach the subject as a simple naturalist & you from a more general point of view. I am convinced that if you were to publish your Essay, it would excite much attention & interest.3

With very sincere thanks for all your great kindness & interest which you have shown in my work, I remain, my dear Sir Henry | Yours truly obliged | Charles Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Henry Holland, 30 January [1862] (Correspondence vol. 10).
2
Holland’s manuscript has not been found; it was an essay titled ‘Life and organisation’ ([Holland] 1859), originally published in January 1859, to which Holland added a postscript referring to Origin and CD’s theory of natural selection. For the printed version of the postscript, see Correspondence vol. 10, letter from Henry Holland, 30 January [1862] and Holland 1862, pp. 98–9.
3
The essay was published in Essays on scientific and other subjects from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews (Holland 1862).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3424F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3424F