From V. O. Kovalevsky   [after 8 June 1872]1

47. Bernard Street. Russel Square

Dear Sir!

I come for a couple of months to England with the object of writing a osteological monography of the Hyopotamus and Anthracotherium, for which I collected ample materials in France and Switzerland, and I am busy comparing them now with the same genera from the Isle of Wight in the Brit. Museum.2 If your health allows You to receive visits, I shall be very happy to call on You the first Sunday You find convenient, and spend some hours at Down.3

Your very truly | W. Kowalevsky

1
The date is established by the reference to Kovalevsky’s work on Hyopotamus and Anthracotherium in the British Museum; he began this work in mid-June 1872, having been in Lyon until at least 8 June (Davitashvili 1951, p. 224).
2
Kovalevsky had spent the previous summer in Paris studying the fossil collections at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle (see Correspondence vol. 19, letter from V. O. Kovalevsky, 19 August [1871] and n. 5). For his discussion of fossil bones found on the Isle of Wight, including humerus and ulna of the extinct ungulate Hyopotamus, see Kovalevsky 1873, especially pp. 32–6, and Kovalevsky 1873–4.
3
Kovalevsky visited CD sometime before mid-July; although the visit was not recorded in Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242), it was mentioned in a letter to his brother, Alexander Onufrievich Kovalevsky (Davitashvili 1951, p. 157).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8388,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8388