[ Adam White, Victorian zoologist praised by Charles Darwin. ] Autograph Letter Signed ('Adam White: Assistant Zool Dept Brit. Mus') to his relation Martha [Dewar], regarding family history, and his friend the author and botanist Rev. James Hamilton.

1p., 4to. 31 lines of text, written in a neat and close hand. The letter begins in lighthearted fashion: 'Dear Martha, | I never wrote Poetry in my life, and write as you see a very prosaic Hand; I hope you are not one who form your ideas of character from Handwriting, if you do, I ifear you will regard me as stiff, stubborn, unbending, self willed, and self-opinionated, and very likely you will be not far wrong.' He boasts of having known the recipient and her 'three amiable sisters' for 14 years, and discusses his relationship with them (their father being his mother's cousin), and the fact that his sister, who died at the age of 14 in 1830, 'was named Alison Dewar White: she was a lovely girl, and was removed, just when her accomplishments had begun to manifest themselves and her education to tell'. The final paragraph concerns 'the Rev James Hamilton, author of "Life in Earnest" "The Dew of Hermon" & many other admirable tracts & essays [...] He is a man of very considerable mental powers, of a most cultivated intellect, specially fond of botany & entomology and like me a Fellow off the Linnean Society of London'. The letter concludes: 'my paper fails & I get garrulously gossiping'. In 1851 Darwin provided White with a testimonial in which he expressed his 'high opinion' of his 'Zoological attainments', and praising his 'great zeal for every branch of Natural History'.