Yours very sincerely, CH. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO H.N. MOSELEY. Down, February 4, 1879.
Dear Moseley,
I have at last read every word of your book, and it has excited in me greater interest than any other scientific book which I have read for a long time. You will perhaps be surprised how slow I have been, but my head prevents me reading except at intervals. If I were asked which parts have interested me most, I should be somewhat puzzled to answer. I fancy that the general reader would prefer your account of Japan. For myself I hesitate between your discussions and description of the Southern ice, which seems to me admirable, and the last chapter which contained many facts and views new to me, though I had read your papers on the stony Hydroid Corals, yet your resume made me realise better than I had done before, what a most curious case it is.
You have also collected a surprising number of valuable facts bearing on the dispersal of plants, far more than in any other book known to me. In fact your volume is a mass of interesting facts and discussions, with hardly a superfluous word; and I heartily congratulate you on its publication.
Your dedication makes me prouder than ever.
Believe me, yours sincerely, CH. DARWIN.
[In November, 1879, he answered for Mr. Galton a series of questions utilised in his 'Inquiries into Human Faculty,' 1883. He wrote to Mr. Galton:—
"I have answered the questions as well as I could, but they are miserably answered, for I have never tried looking into my own mind. Unless others answer very much better than I can do, you will get no good from your queries. Do you not think you ought to have the age of the answerer? I think so, because I can call up faces of many schoolboys, not seen for sixty years, with MUCH DISTINCTNESS, but nowadays I may talk with a man for an hour, and see him several times consecutively, and, after a month, I am utterly unable to recollect what he is at all like. The picture is quite washed out. The greater number of the answers are given in the annexed table.">[
QUESTIONS ON THE FACULTY OF VISUALISING.