From W. S. Dallas   20 November 1867

Yorkshire Philosophical Society | York

20 Nov. 1867

My dear Sir

Except in the two or three earlier chapters of your book I have adopted your plan of giving every author’s name,—the others I must fill in before completion.—1 It makes the labour very great, however, & I cannot get on so quickly as I could wish.—2

Instead of 6 sheets per noctem 3 upon which I calculated, I can only get through 3 or at most 4— Still I hope to finish Vol. I. tomorrow night, & I have now up to page 192 of Vol. 2 in rough impressions.— I shall press on as fast as I can, but the work cannot be done quickly & well, as its very nature requires that much consideration should be given to almost every paragraph.—

Believe me | Your’s very truly | W. S. Dallas.

The proofs can be managed in any way most convenient to you.—

Chas. Darwin Esq.

1
On the inclusion of authors’ names in the index of Variation, see the letter to W. S. Dallas, 8 November [1867], and the letter from W. S. Dallas, 10 November 1867.
2
In his letter of 4 November 1867, Dallas had expressed the hope that he would finish the index ‘in a fortnight’.
3
Per noctem: per night (Latin). Dallas was curator of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s museum (Modern English biography); he also worked for the Zoological Record (letter from W. S. Dallas, 4 November 1867 and n. 3).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5689,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5689