Autograph Letter Signed, to ‘Dear Conrad’, enquiring about him, sending “this by a boy so don’t be at the trouble of writing but let me have a verbal message stating how you are” de WALLICH, George Charles

Tower House, 26 June, no year given. 2½ pages 8 x 5 inches, small stain from seal. George Charles Wallich (1815–1899), military surgeon and oceanographer. in 1838 Wallich became assistant surgeon in the Indian army and saw considerable active service during the next nineteen years, taking part in the Sutlej and Punjab campaigns of 1842 and 1847 and acting as field surgeon during the Santal rebellion of 1855–6. Later he was appointed as naturalist in HMS Bulldog during a voyage under the command of Sir Leopold McClintock in 1860 to investigate a possible northern route for the proposed north-Atlantic telegraph cable. His most important work was The North-Atlantic Sea-Bed (1862), which included his general views on deep-sea biology and in particular a refutation of the ‘azoic theory’, put forward by Edward Forbes in 1843, according to which the depths of the ocean beyond a few hundred metres were devoid of life. [DNB]