i860.] reviews. 141 



member, have venerated) of care in breeding cats, I do not 

 know whether Mr. Kirby was your uncle by marriage, but 

 your letters show me that you ought to have Kirby blood in 

 your veins, and that if you had not taken to languages you 

 would have been a first-rate naturalist. 



I sincerely hope that you will be able to carry out your in- 

 tention of writing on the " Birth, Life, and Death of Words." 

 Anyhow, you have a capital title, and some think this the 

 most difficult part of a book. I remember years ago at the 

 Cape of Good Hope, Sir J. Herschel saying to me, I wish 

 some one would treat language as Lyell has treated geology. 

 What a linguist you must be to translate the Koran I Having 

 a vilely bad head for languages, I feel an awful respect for 

 linguists. 



I do not know whether my brother-in-law, Hensleigh 

 Wedgwood's 'Etymological Dictionary' would be at all in 

 your line ; but he treats briefly on the genesis of words ; and, 

 as it seems to me, very ingeniously. You kindly say that 

 you would communicate any facts which might occur to you, 

 and I am sure that I should be most grateful. Of the multi- 

 tude of letters which I receive, not one in a thousand is like 

 yours in value. 



With my cordial thanks, and apologies for this untidy let- 

 ter written in haste, pray believe me, my dear Sir, 



Yours sincerely obliged, 



Ch. Darwin. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



November 20th [i860]. 



.... I have not had heart to read Phillips* yet, or a 

 tremendous long hostile review by Professor Bowen in the 

 4to Mem. of the American Academy of Sciences. f (By the 



* * Life on the Earth.' 



f " Remarks on the latest form of the Development Theory." By 

 Francis Bowen, Professor of Natural Religion and Moral Philosophy, at 

 Harvard University. ' American Academy of Arts and Sciences,' vol. viii. 



