The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
2nd. March 68
My dear Sir
I understand that you did not disapprove the little notice I wrote of your last book in the Pall Mall Gazette, and as I am now engaged in a more elaborate consideration of it for the Fortnightly Review I venture to appeal to your greater experience to enlighten me on a morphological detail of interest—2 Are there not some animals with nails, or hooks, at the tip of the tail? I have an indistinct remembrance of such a thing, but cannot feel sure whether it exists out of my fancy—or in what animal. The suggestion arose in my mind when considering the analogical position of nails, claws, hooks, beaks & horns—always at extremities & never anywhere else.3
While I am troubling you let me also ask in what way you understand Natural Selection...
