My Abstract will be about five hundred pages of the size of your first edition of the 'Elements of Geology.'
Pray forgive me troubling you with the above queries; and you shall have no more trouble on the subject. I hope the world goes well with you, and that you are getting on with your various works.
I am working very hard for me, and long to finish and be free and try to recover some health.
My dear Lyell, ever yours, C. DARWIN.
Very sincere thanks to you for standing my proxy for the Wollaston Medal.
P.S. Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more UN-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, etc., etc., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem to me fair.
Or had I better say NOTHING to Murray, and assume that he cannot object to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological Treatise which runs slap counter to Genesis.
INCLOSURE. AN ABSTRACT OF AN ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES AND VARIETIES THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION BY CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.
Fellow of the Royal Geological and Linnean Societies...
LONDON:
etc., etc., etc., etc.
1859.