From T. H. Farrer 5 November 1881
66 Hills Road | Cambridge
5 Nov/81
My dear Mr Darwin
Effie brought me yesterday from Bryanston Square your book on worms,1 which I should have got & read long since, if I had not been very busily employed in unearthing and squashing the far more unworthy reptiles who are preaching Fair Trade.2 Indeed it is a shame to put them in comparison with your honest clients whose dealings & transfers like all honest trading is good for themselves and does a lot of good to others at the same time, good which they do not think of.3
Abinger I see plays a much larger part than I had imagined.—4 that pleasant autumn fortnight has given a good big stone to the building.— You, like Leibnitz, will have to take as a motto the value of the apparently “Infinitely little”.5 It is strange to think of worms playing so large a part.
We are having a very pleasant night & morning with the H’s on our way to my chief at Birmingham.6 She seems very well—though as to looks—!! It is impossible not to be anxious but everything seems as promising as possible.—7 H, has been showing me the shop about which he seems in excellent spirits.8 Think of its being suggested to him to devise a frame for pianos
Believe me | Sincerely yours | T H Farrer
Footnotes
Bibliography
Biagini, Eugenio. 1992. Liberty, retrenchment and reform: popular liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860–1880. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cattermole, Michael J. G. and Wolfe, Arthur F. 1987. Horace Darwin’s shop: a history of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company 1878 to 1968. Bristol and Boston: Adam Hilger.
Earthworms: The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms: with observations on their habits. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1881.
Farrer, Thomas Henry. 1882. Free trade versus fair trade. London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.
Katz, Mihail and Sherry, David. 2012. Leibniz’s infinitesimals: their fictionality, their modern implementations, and their foes from Berkeley to Russell and beyond. Erkenntnis 78: 571–625.
Summary
Has received Earthworms.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13461
- From
- Thomas Henry Farrer, 1st baronet and 1st Baron Farrer
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Cambridge
- Source of text
- DAR 164: 104
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13461,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13461.xml