As soon as I received your first intimation about Schneider's book I wrote over for it, and received a copy some weeks ago. I then lent it to Sully, who wanted to read it, so do not yet know what it is worth. I, together with my wife--who reads French much more quickly than I can--am now engaged upon all the French books on animal intelligence which you kindly lent me. I am also preparing for my Royal Institution lecture on the 7th of May. I will afterwards publish it in some of the magazines, and, last of all, in an expanded and more detailed form, it will go into my book on Animal Intelligence. I went to see ---- the other day on Spiritualism. He answered privately a letter that I wrote to 'Nature,' signed 'F.R.S.,' which was a feeler for some material to investigate. I had never spoken to ---- before, but although I passed a very pleasant afternoon with him, I did not learn anything new about Spiritualism. He seemed to me to have the faculty of deglutition too well developed. Thus, for instance, he seemed rather queer on the subject of astrology! and when I asked whether he thought it worthy of common sense to imagine that, spirits or no spirits, the conjunctions of _planets_ could exercise any causative influence on the destinies of children born under them, he answered that having already 'swallowed so much,' he did not know where to stop!! My wife and baby are both flourishing. I noticed that the latter, at four days old, could always tell which hand I touched, inclining its head towards that hand. _From C. Darwin to G. J. Romanes._ September 14, 1880. We send you our best thanks for your magnificent present of game. I have not tasted black-game for _nearly half a century_, when I killed some on my father-in-law's land in Staffordshire. I hope that you are well and strong and do not give up all your time to shooting. Pray tell Mrs. Romanes, if you turn idle, I shall say it is her fault, and being an old man, shall scold her. But you have done too splendid work to turn idle, so I need not fear, and shall never have audaciously to scold Mrs. Romanes. But I am writing great rubbish. You refer to some Zoological station on your coast, and I now remember seeing something about it, and that more money was wanted for apparatus, therefore I send a cheque of 5_l._ 5_s._ just to show my goodwill. Yours very sincerely, CH. DARWIN. We went to the Lakes for three weeks to Coniston, and the scenery gave me more pleasure than I thought my soul, or whatever remains of it, was capable of feeling. We saw Ruskin several times, and he was uncommonly pleasant. _To C. Darwin, Esq._ 18 Cornwall Terrace: November 18, 1880. Very many thanks for your kind assistance and expressions of approval. It was stupid of me to forget your article in 'Nature' about the geese. I now quite well remember reading it when it came out.