From G. H. Lewes   8 August 1868

Dear M^r Darwin

You can understand how deeply gratified I am by your approval, which is all the more pleasant because I have the best reasons for supposing that the articles have not been much liked by the public of the Review— the editor is urgent that they should close! I am also indebted to you for your notes, & hope I may be allowed to use them in the Reprint.¹

As to my absurdly obscure sentence—which I see now to be obscure—it was meant to express a very plain position, namely that from very different starting points a similar result might be reached.² A pus cell or a blood corpuscle has a genesis wholly distinct from the forms indistinguably similar which are produced in a viscid substance by slow imbibition— here a difference of genesis & an identity of form are demonstrable. In animal identities a like difference of origin (genesis) is conceivable.

I am not defending my phrase which will be abolished—only hinting that I had an idea to express.

You have no doubt seen it but if not may be interested in Kowalefsky’s Memoir on the Development of Amphioxus in the S^t. Petersburg Academy Memoirs (tome XI: N^o 4).³ It has made me restless with desire to find myself somewhere on the Mediterranean coast with a supply of embryos! His observations are all in favor of your view & against mine.—which is not pleasant (for me).

Believe me | Yours very sincerely | G H Lewes

Charles Darwin Esq