To L. H. Morgan   11 August [1870]1

Down. | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

Aug. 11th

Dear Sir

I am much obliged for your extremely kind letter & your present of the concluding chapter, which I am sure I shall read with the greatest interest.2 In one respect it is fortunate for me that you are compelled to leave England so soon, for I shd. have been much disappointed at not being able to receive you here, & this I could not have done, as I am pledged to a visit for 10 days or a fortnight to a friend, & we all leave home very early on Saturday morning.3

I fully agree with your remarks on the extreme importance of studying the habits & institutions, if they can be so called, of savages. I have had lately to attend a little to this subject, as I have sent my M.S. to the Printers for a work on the “Descent of man”; but I have chiefly to treat of veritably primeval times before man was fully man.—4

With much respect for your admirable investigations, believe me | Dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from L. H. Morgan, 9 August 1870.
3
See letter from L. H. Morgan, 9 August 1870; CD visited William Erasmus Darwin in Southampton from Saturday 13 to 26 August 1870 (see ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
4
CD had sent the bulk of the manuscript of Descent to the printers on 9 August (see letter to Mr Dorrell, 9 August 1870).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 Beckenham] before del ‘Bromley.’
2.4 chiefly] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7300,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7300