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[In Shipley's hand:] Ansrd accepted seals AES

Royal Gardens Kew Director

Kew Dec 23 1908

My dear Shipley,

In reply to your circular letter received on 19th inst. I have to say that we have gone carefully through the letters from Mr Darwin which we have at Kew.

We have

1) 44 original letters to Professor Henslow 1831-37 bound.

2) 7 to Sir W. J. Hooker scattered through 6 thick 4to volumes of Hookerian Correspondence.

3) 11 to Lindley in a thick 4to volume of Lindley's correspondence.

4) 48 to Bentham in a thick 4to volume of Lindley's correspondence.

5) a few letters to Sir J.D. Hooker similarly inaccessible because bound up.

So far as I can gather none of the letters are of outstanding importance as being the vehicle of first communication

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of any important fact or result, so that it does not seem worth while to break up any of the bound volumes in order to exhibit the letters, or any of them.

But I may mention that in a panel in the cover of the volume first mentioned— that containing the letters to Professor Henslow— there is a set of six of Darwin's seals.

If you thought that this item were of sufficient human interest to serve as an exhibit I need not tell you that I should be glad to place it at your disposal for exhibition in the Library of Christ's college—

yours sincerely D. Prain

A. E. Shipley, Esq., F.R.S.

Christ's College,

Cambridge