1843-44 DARWIN AND WOODCUTS 209 



Down, Farnborough, Kent. 



1 My dear Owen, — ... I am much pleased 

 at your praise of my Coral volume, and am very 

 glad you recommend it to the notice of voyagers. 

 It would undoubtedly be far more suggestive to 

 any one who will really attend to the subject, but 

 for the generality, perhaps, the abstract in my 

 journal would be the most [useful]. ... I have 

 lately read with very great interest all the parts 

 which I could follow in your Report on Arche- 

 types, &c. You may remember that I suggested 

 explanations to the woodcuts. I am not a quarter 

 satisfied yet. You may with perfect justice say 

 you do not write for tyros ; but if ever you take 

 compassion (and there is no other claim) on 

 ignoramuses such as myself, you will in every 

 woodcut give the name to every letter or number 

 in your woodcuts, even if repeated 500 times, 

 for just that many times will it make your work 

 intelligible to the ignorant. 



■ Believe me, 



' Yours very sincerely, 



' C. Darwin.' 



It was in this month also that a box arrived 

 from New Zealand containing a large assortment 

 of the bones of the dinornis, of which he had 

 already described the ■ shaft of a femur' in 1837. 



' On January 19,' the diary records, * we 

 opened the long-expected box from New Zealand, 



vol. 1. p 



