From Hugh Falconer   10 September 1863

Suess 1863; see letter to Hugh Falconer, 4 [September 1863]. On 5 September 1863, Falconer sent CD’s letter of 4 [September 1863] to his niece, Grace Anne McCall, commenting: ‘Your note of yesterday acknowledging the pamphlet by Suess, has just come to hand. I enclose a note from Darwin which will amuse you. You will see by it, that the said pamphlet is in request’ (Falconer Museum, Forres, ZF/97). Falconer again wrote to his niece on 20 September: ‘Remember that Charles Darwin has written to me for the German pamphlet and that I told him you would forward it to him’ (Falconer Museum, Forres, ZF/110).

Falconer was elected foreign secretary of the Geological Society of London on 20 February 1863 (Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 19 (1863): xviii).

CD was undergoing treatment at James Smith Ayerst’s hydropathic establishment at Malvern Wells, Worcestershire (see ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 11, Appendix II)).

Falconer refers to his ongoing research on the palaeontological evidence relating to prehistoric humans, and on Pleistocene mammals (DSB). Falconer had arranged to visit the Auvergne with Édouard Lartet, who organised visits to palaeontological collections and meetings with palaeontologists (see the letter from Lartet to Falconer of 3 September 1863 in the Falconer Museum, Forres, ZF/300). Falconer travelled to Le Puy, in the Velay region, and to Clermont, the capital of the Auvergne, between 14 and 20 September, and also visited museums in Paris and Chartres, returning to London on 23 September (see the letters from Falconer to Grace McCall, 15 September 1863 and 20 September 1863, in the Falconer Museum, Forres, ZF/98 and 110, and Falconer 1868, 2: 479).