Description
Having read Bastian’s memoir, G H Lewes specifies in this letter [to H C Bastian], a wish to use a quotation for his second 'art' [article] on Darwin. Lewes also asks Bastian to advise him on an experiment to concoct the solution 'Gum Damara and Benzine', which Lewes has failed to reproduce successfully. Dated Friday. Written from The Priory, Regent's Park. Signed G H Lewes.
NB. The Nuneaton Library index gives this letter a date of 24 April 1868.
Facsimile
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Transcript
The Priory,
21, North Bank, Regents Park.
Friday
My dear Sir
I have read your admirable memoir with as much interest as is compatible with comprehensive ignorance of the subject - especially interested in the part relating to the nervous system. The paper came just in time to give me a quotation for my second art on Darwin.
I don't know how to explain it by any other hypothesis than stupidity but I have ignobly failed in my attempts to make a solution of gum Damara and Benzine. At first I thought the cause might lie in the lost virtue of the Benzine I had which was very old so I bought some fresh, and yet after a fortnight's immersion the gum declining to melt.
Further I have weighed my biobromat of potase and Ammonia according to your suggestions - & one per cent gives me a solution suspiciously dark - much darker indeed than any I have ever thought of using. I was right was I not in weighing 20 grs to a fourounce bottle of water?
Forgive me for bothering you with such small details & _ _ _ _ _. (indecipherable)
Ever yours
G. H. Lewes
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