MARX TO ENGELS*” 

[London,] 3 October 1866 

Dear Engels, 

The enclosed bill will give you some idea of what adventures I 
have had today and yesterday. It was not yesterday that it became 
due, as Sawyer had said. This delay of one day would have been 
welcome in other circumstances, but in present circumstances it 
was exceedingly unfortunate. When your letter arrived yesterday, 
I went straight to our baker, Whithers, as there was nothing left to 
pawn, and borrowed £1 from him. But when the bill arrived this 
morning, it was for £48-1-5d. and not, as I had thought, £46. It 
was my own fault, of course, for not noting the amount. I had 
thought Sawyer would have deducted the Proprietor Tax which [ 
had paid and which was not deducted from the previous bill (by 
law it falls on him). That was not the case. (He will therefore have 
to deduct the whole lot for next quarter.) Hence my mistake over 
the £46. The bill was presented this morning at 9 o’clock sharp, 
and IJ discovered to my horror that I was £2-1-5d. short. Que 
fatre?* I asked the presenter of the bill to wait (at our house), as I 
had to go and change some money. [ had no alternative but to 
return to the good baker, who pulled a very long face, as I am 
deep in the red on account of his supplying of provisions. 
However, he performed. 

a What was to be done? 

Ad vocem* Trémaux”: your verdict ‘that there is nothing to his 
whole theory because he knows nothing of geology, and_ is 
incapable of even the most common-or-garden literary-historical 
critique’* recurs almost word for word in Cuvier’s ‘Discours sur les 
Révolutions du Globe’ in his attack on the doctrine of the 
variabilité des espéces,’ in which he makes fun of German 
nature-worshippers, among others, who formulated Darwin’s basic 
idea in its entirety, however far they were from being able to prove 
it. However, that did not prevent Cuvier, who was a great 
geologist and for a naturalist also an exceptional literary-historical 
critic, from being wrong, and the people who formulated the new 
idea, from being right. Trémaux’s basic idea about the influence of 
the soil (although he does not, of course, attach any value to 
historical modifications of this influence, and I myself would 
include amongst these historical modifications the chemical altera- 
tion in the surface soil brought about by agriculture, etc., as well 
as the varying influence which, with varying modes of production, 
such things as coalfields, etc., have) is, in my opinion, an idea 
which needs only to be formulated to acquire permanent scientific 
status, and that quite independently of the way Trémaux presents 
it 

Salut. 
Your 
K. Marx