... I am working most steadily at my Abstract [Origin of Species], but it grows to an inordinate length; yet fully to make my view clear (and never giving briefly more than a fact or two, and slurring over difficulties), I cannot make it shorter. It will yet take me three or four months; so slow do I work, though never idle. You cannot imagine what a service you have done me in making me make this Abstract; for though I thought I had got all clear, it has clarified my brains very much, by making me weigh the relative importance of the several elements.
He was not so fully occupied but that he could find time to help his boys in their collecting. He sent a short notice to the Entomologists' Weekly Intelligencer, June 25th, 1859, recording the capture of Licinus silphoides, Clytus mysticus, Panagæus 4-pustulatus. The notice begins with the words, "We three very young collectors having lately taken in the parish of Down," &c., and is signed by three of his boys, but was clearly not written by them. I have a vivid recollection of the pleasure of turning out my bottle of dead beetles for my father to name, and the excitement, in which he fully shared, when any of them proved to be uncommon ones. The following letter to Mr. Fox (Nov. 13th, 1858), illustrates this point:—
"I am reminded of old days by my third boy having just begun collecting beetles, and he caught the other day Brachinus crepitans, of immortal Whittlesea Mere memory. My blood boiled with old ardour when he caught a Licinus—a prize unknown to me."
And again to Sir John Lubbock:—
"I feel like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles—is not this a magnanimous simile for a decayed entomologist?—It really almost makes me long to begin collecting again. Adios.
"'Floreat Entomologia'!—to which toast at Cambridge I have drunk many a glass of wine. So again, 'Floreat Entomologia.'—N.B. I have not now been drinking any glasses full of wine."
C D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, Jan. 23rd, 1859.
... I enclose letters to you and me from Wallace. I admire extremely the spirit in which they are written. I never felt very sure what he would say. He must be an amiable man. Please return that to me, and Lyell ought to be told how well satisfied he is. These letters have vividly brought before me how much I owe to your and Lyell's most kind and generous conduct in all this affair.
... How glad I shall be when the Abstract is finished, and I can rest!...