My dear Sir Charles, I returned last night from a hasty journey to Ireland, whither I betook myself on Thursday night, being attracted vulture-wise by the scent of a quantity of carboniferous corpses. The journey was as well worth the trouble as any I ever undertook, seeing that in a morning's work I turned out ten genera of vertebrate animals of which five are certainly new; and of these four are Labyrinthodonts, amphibia of new types. These four are baptised Ophiderpeton, Lepterpeton, Ichthyerpeton, Keraterpeton. They all have ossified spinal columns and limbs. The special interest attaching to the two first is that they represent a type of Labyrinthodonts hitherto unknown, and corresponding with Siren and Amphiuma among living Amphibia. Ophiderpeton, for example, is like an eel, about three feet long with small fore legs and rudimentary hind ones. In the year of grace 1861, there were three genera of European carboniferous Labyrinthodonts known, Archegosaurus, Scleroceplus, Parabatrachus. The vertebral column of Archegosaurus was alone known, and it was in a remarkably imperfect state of ossification. Since that date, by a succession of odd chances, seven new genera have come into my hands, and of these six certainly have well-ossified and developed vertebral columns. I reckon there are now about thirty genera of Labyrinthodonts known from all parts of the world and all deposits. Of these eleven have been established by myself in the course of the last half-dozen years, upon remains which have come into my hands by the merest chance. Five and twenty years ago, all the world but yourself believed that a vertebrate animal of higher organisation than a fish in the carboniferous rocks never existed. I think the whole story is not a bad comment upon negative evidence. January 1, 1865. My dear Darwin, I cannot do better than write my first letter of the year to you, if it is only to wish you and yours your fair share (and more than your fair share, if need be) of good for the New Year. The immediate cause of my writing, however, was turning out my pocket and finding therein an unanswered letter of yours containing a scrap on which is a request for a photograph, which I am afraid I overlooked. At least I hope I did, and then my manners won't be so bad. I enclose the latest version of myself. I wish I could follow out your suggestion about a book on zoology. (By the way please to tell Miss Emma that my last book IS a book. [The first volume of his Hunterian Lectures on "Comparative Anatomy." A second volume never appeared. Miss Darwin, as her father wrote to Huxley after the delivery of his Working Men's Lectures in 1862, "was reading your Lectures, and ended by saying, 'I wish he would write a book.' I answered, 'he has just written a great book on the skull.' 'I don't call that a book,' she replied, and added, 'I want something that people can read; he does write so well.'"] Marry come up! Does her ladyship call it a pamphlet?)