To T. H. Huxley   10 June 1868

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

June 10 1868

My Dear Huxley

In a letter from Mr. Dallas just received he says he has just been reading Häckel’s book & thinks it one of the most remarkable of our time; & then asks wd the Ray Soc. publish a translation?1 As you see every body, I have thought this suggestion worth passing on for the chance of your agreeing with it.

The German is too difficult for ordinary mortals, though a joke to Henle who troubles the peace of all my family.2

This note requires no sort of answer.

I hope Mrs Huxley & all of you are pretty well. I often think of your little man & can fancy I see him now with the spoon sticking perpendicularly out of his mouth & his eyes as roguish eyes as those of an angel.3

As Mrs Huxley won’t sell him she might loan him to us & I wd return him with his manners highly polished.

Ever yours | C. Darwin

LS

1
See letter from W. S. Dallas, 9 June 1868 and n. 5. CD refers to William Sweetland Dallas, Ernst Haeckel, and Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie (Haeckel 1866).
2
CD probably refers to part of Henle 1855–71 (Handbuch der systematischen Anatomie des Menschen): an annotated copy of volume 1, part 3, on muscles, is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 368).
3
Henrietta Anne Huxley and her children had stayed at Down House from 18 April to 4 May 1868. CD refers in particular to Henry Huxley, who was 3 years old in 1868.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6239,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6239