account of the horse family and its comparison with pigeons; and if that does not convince and stagger you, then you are unconvertible.  I do not expect Mr. Darwin’s larger work will add anything to the general strength of his argument.  It will consist chiefly of the details (often numerical) and experiments and calculations of which he has already given the summaries and results.  It will therefore be more confusing and less interesting to the general reader.  It will prove to scientific men the accuracy of his details, and point out the sources of his information, but as not one in a thousand readers will ever test these details and references the smaller work will remain for general purposes the best....

I see that the Great Exhibition for 1862 seems determined on.  If so it will be a great inducement to me to cut short the period of my banishment and get home in time to see it.  I assure you I now feel at times very great longings for the peace and quiet of home—­very much weariness of this troublesome, wearisome, wandering life.  I have lost some of that elasticity and freshness which made the overcoming of difficulties a pleasure, and the country and people are now too familiar to me to retain any of the charms of novelty which gild over so much that is really monotonous and disagreeable.  My health, too, gives way, and I cannot now put up so well with fatigue and privations as at first.  All these causes will induce me to come home as soon as possible, and I think I may promise, if no accident happens, to come back to dear and beautiful England in the summer of next year.  C. Allen will stay a year longer and complete the work which I shall not be able to do.

I have been pretty comfortable here, having for two months had the society of Mr. Geach, a Cornish mining engineer who has been looking for copper here.  He is a very intelligent and pleasant fellow, but has now left.  Another Englishman, Capt.  Hart, is a resident here.  He has a little house on the foot of the hills two miles out of town; I have a cottage (which was Mr. Geach’s) a quarter of a mile farther.  He is what you may call a speculative man:  he reads a good deal, knows a little and wants to know more, and is fond of speculating on the most abstruse and unattainable points of science and philosophy.  You would be astonished at the number of men among the captains and traders of these parts who have more than an average amount of literary and scientific taste; whereas among the naval and military officers and various Government officials very few have any such taste, but find their only amusements in card-playing and dissipation.  Some of the most intelligent and best informed Dutchmen I have met with are trading captains and merchants.