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1, Savile Row,

Burlington Gardens, W.

April 30 1886

Dear Mr Darwin

In another envelope I send you the promised letters of your father. They are not all I have, for I have kept back some which contain nothing likely to interest your readers.

You are free to use whatever you propose for the purpose of your work: but the too complimenting expressions would be better curtailed or omitted.

I cannot find the notes I imagined he wrote about Xmas 1880 on the subject of his memorial to the Prime Minister on behalf of Mr Wallace, and I conclude that his first communication on the subject was not by letter, but that he called & asked me to be the intermediary during the Xmas Holidays in passing the memorial on to the gentlemen who come to sign it of whom he left me a list, & to get Lord Aberdeen's signature on Geographical grounds.

A delay having afterwards occurred owing to Dr Hooker being out of town & not returning the memorial, then came an agonized note from your Father saying that he was afraid the opportunity was now lost. This may have been a postcard which I cannot find.

The glacial argument puzzled me a good deal, as I had very nearly forgotten all about it. After searching I have found the enclosed, which must be the paper your father's words apply to. The argument I used must be now very familiar to biologists. Those Belt got over the difficulty by his ingenious polar ice-cap flowering-of-the-sea theory.

Yours sincerely

H W Bates