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With Western mail

40, NEVERN SQUARE,

EARL'S COURT, S.W.

NOV. 25, 1887.

Dear Sir,

Mr. Harris, Editor of the Western Mail has sent me on your letter of 22nd inst., as I wrote the paragraph to which you reply. The Indian Civil Servant who wrote the essay on Infanticide, and

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sent a copy to your father, was Mr. Wedderburn, now Sir W. Wedderburn Bart.

I did not feel justified in publishing the name, as probably Sir William is anxious now to forget an error of judgement which did him a good deal of harm. He came to me in

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Bombay, when I was proprietor and editor of the By. Gazette, and asked me to publish his essay for him. I strongly remonstrated with him, pointing such that it might ruin his career, and at last he was persuaded only to print a few copies for private circulation.

Sometime afterwards

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he came and read to me your father's letter, and recused genuinely [illeg] and unjustified that Mr. Darwin had not accepted the essay as the tribute of a sincere and intelligent disciple.

I daresay if you were rightly to write and ask Sir William if he has any letters from your father, he might himself tell you the whole story—

Yours very truly

J.M. Maclean

(M. P. for Oldham)