" So I will leave my decision open for a day or two. Your letter
has been, and will be, of use to me in other ways: thus I had quite
forgotten that you had taken up the case of the giraffe in your first
memoir, and I must look to this. I feel very doubtful how far I shall
succeed in answering Mivart; it is so difficult to answer objections to
doubtful points and make the discussion readable. I shall make only a
selection. The worst of it is that I cannot possibly hunt through all my
references for isolated points; it would take me three weeks of
intolerably hard work. I wish I had your power of arguing clearly. At
present I feel sick of everything, and if I could occupy my time and
forget my daily discomforts or little miseries, I would never publish
another word. But I shall cheer up, I daresay, soon, being only just got
over a bad attack. Farewell. God knows why I bother you about myself.
I can say nothing more about missing links than what I have said. I
should rely much on pre-Silurian times; but then comes Sir W. Thomson
like an odious spectre. Farewell.
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