TO COUNT SAPORTA.

Down, August 15th, 1878.
I thank you very sincerely for your kind and interesting letter.

It would be false in me to pretend that I care very much about my election to the Institute, but the sympathy of some few of my friends has gratified me deeply.
I am extremely glad to hear that you are going to publish a work on the more ancient fossil plants; and I thank you beforehand for the volume which you kindly say that you will send me.

I earnestly hope that you will give, at least incidentally, the results at which you have arrived with respect to the more recent Tertiary plants; for the close gradation of such forms seems to me a fact of paramount importance for the principle of evolution.

Your cases are like those on the gradation in the genus Equus, recently discovered by Marsh in North America.
LETTER 288.