I am doing nothing just now but writing articles and putting down
anti-Darwinians, being dreadfully ridden upon by a horrid
old-man-of-the-sea, who has agreed to let me have the piece of land I
have set my heart on, and which I have been trying to get of him since
last February, but who will not answer letters, will not sign an
agreement, and keeps me week after week in anxiety, though I have
accepted his own terms unconditionally, one of which is that I pay rent
from last Michaelmas! And now the finest weather for planting is going
by. It is a bit of a wilderness that can be made into a splendid
imitation of a Welsh valley in little, and will enable me to gather
round me all the beauties of the temperate flora which I so much admire,
or I would not put up with the little fellow's ways. The fixing on a
residence for the rest of your life is an important event, and I am not
likely to be in a very settled frame of mind for some time.
I am answering A. Murray's Geographical Distribution of Coleoptera for
my Entomological Society Presidential Address, and am printing a second
edition of my "Essays," with a few notes and additions.
Pages:
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398